Snapchat corporate parent Snap Inc. is indeed making significant staff cuts: A spokesperson confirmed Thursday that it is laying off around 120 members of its engineering team. This comes a day after reports first surfaced about the company's plans to cut at least 100 jobs.
"We have made the exceptionally difficult decision to exit just over 120 members of our team from the company," wrote Snap senior VP of engineering Jerry Hunter in an internal staff memo that was first published by Cheddar.
Hunter painted the layoffs as a way to build "high-performing, technically excellent, and appropriately aligned teams" within the company. "That required us to think carefully about the shape of the organization, and where each member of our team fits," he wrote.
Snap's spokesperson declined to comment on the company's current headcount Thursday, but the company recently told investors that it had 3,069 employees at the end of 2017. Snap had already laid off 22 staffers from its content team and other divisions in January, and also cut jobs in its recruiting and hardware divisions last fall.
The layoffs come about a month after Snap posted its best quarter yet as a public company , adding 8.9 million daily active users in Q4 of 2017 while at the same time beating revenue expectations. Snap CEO Evan Spiegel had already told staff that the company would slow down hiring in 2018.
The company is still in the process of telling affected staffers about their future at the company, and has planned a company-wide meeting for next week to go over the changes with employees, according to Hunter's memo.
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The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.
