Mass layoffs continue at tech companies: Snapchat to lay off 10 percent of its workforce

The wave of layoffs that began in the technology sector in 2023 has continued unabated this year. In the last few months, thousands of people have been laid off from many giant companies, from Google to Amazon, Twitch to Discord, and Microsoft to Riot Games.

Now, Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, has joined these companies. The US tech giant announced today that it will part ways with 10% of its total workforce.

The company had announced that it had nearly 5,400 employees in the third quarter of 2023. This means that the 10% layoff will affect around 540 employees. It was not shared which departments the people to be laid off are from; however, it was stated that it covers full-time employees worldwide.

"WE HAVE MADE THE DIFFICULT DECISION TO RESTRUCTURE OUR TEAM"

In the statement made to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regarding the layoffs, the following expressions were used: "We have made the difficult decision to restructure our team to position our business to execute our priorities and to ensure we have the capacity to invest incrementally to support our growth over time."

This mass layoff comes as part of the company's desire to reduce costs and start becoming profitable. It had managed to increase its revenue in the third quarter. However, a decline was seen in the two quarters prior to that. Its financial report for the last quarter of 2023 will be released later this week.

Snap has not been very successful with its products other than Snapchat. For example, its augmented reality glasses were never released for wide-scale sale. In addition, the selfie drone named Pixy was not successful, and the company gave up on this product in just four months. Its subscriptions, such as Snapchat Plus, have also not grown at the expected rate. Despite all this, CEO Evan Spiegel is hopeful. The famous business person says they want to increase the number of daily users by 17%, advertising revenue by 20%, and double the number of Plus subscribers, which is currently 7 million, in 2024. We will wait and see whether they can achieve this while things are constantly going poorly.

News Source: 12punto