You can add Snap to the list of big tech companies that have announced mass layoffs in the new 2024 year. Snap, the parent company of the Snapchat social network, revealed it will cut 10 percent of its workforce, or 529 of its employees.
The company revealed its job cuts in a filing to the US Securities and Exchange Commission today. Snap said it made this move "to best position our business to execute on our highest priorities, and to ensure we have the capacity to invest incrementally to support our growth over time." The company will take a one-time charge of between $55 million to $75 million, primarily to handle severance costs for the affected employees.
In August 2022, Snap laid off 20 percent of its workforce, and also shut down the development of original content for Snapchat. It also ended production of its Pixy drone, which only launched a few months beforehand.
Ironically, last week, Snap and the US Consumer Protection Safety Commission launched a full recall of all previously sold Pixy drones, due to a defect in its battery that could cause it to overheat. The US CPSC recorded four indicents of the battery overheating which resulted in one small battery fire and one minor injury.
This is just the latest mass layoff in the tech industry in the first few weeks of 2024. Amazon cut hundreds of jobs this year from its Twitch, Amazon Prime, and MGM divisions, and Google has been slowly cutting jobs from several groups, including Devices and Services, Google Assistant, and YouTube.
eBay also revealed plans to lay off 1,000 of its workers. Salesforce stated it would cut 700 jobs, and PayPal said it would remove 2,500 employees from its workforce. That doesn"t even cover the layoffs in the video and PC game industry, which includes Microsoft, which is cutting 1,900 jobs from its many gaming divisions.