Last week, Snapchat’s parent company Snap announced it would lay off over 1,200 people out of its roughly 6,400-person workforce, another move in a broader tech labor restructuring.
NurPhoto / Contributor I Getty Images
“We are restructuring our business to increase focus on…. community growth, revenue growth, and augmented reality. Projects that don’t directly contribute to these areas will be discontinued or receive substantially reduced investment,” CEO Evan Spiegel wrote in a statement about the changes to the company last week.
But it reportedly did not go smoothly, according to Insider.
Several people who work or had worked at Snap told the outlet there were technical issues. Namely, people were kicked out of company software during or around the time of their meetings about being laid off.
The outlet added that meetings were added to calendars, where managers read prepared words and let them know about their layoff benefits.
“It was messy, at best,” one let-go worker told Insider.
The company said last week that it was providing four months of pay and help with paying for COBRA insurance, per CNN. Still, the change reportedly felt quick to many.
“It seemed like everything was fine,” a former Snap employee told Insider. “Then literally in one day, everything kinda crashed.” The outlet added that whole or large portions of projects, teams, and products were axed seemingly very quickly.
But is there a good way to lay people off?
It’s a “distasteful part of management that many people fear,” Laurence J. Stybel, CEO and co-founder of Stybel Peabody Associates, told Harvard Business Review. Experts recommended training, practice, and being thoughtful about logistics to make it easier.
Snap did not immediately respond to Entrepreneur‘s request for comment but told Insider it was mostly technical problems.
“We are aware that there were a number of IT issues that occurred on Wednesday and we are deeply sorry that they happened. Evan apologized for this at the start of our company all hands on Thursday, and we are conducting a post-mortem and continue to follow up with any team members who may have been affected,” the company said.
People who were laid off last week were likely not at this Thursday all-hands, Insider noted.
Snap’s stock is down to about $10 a share, from about $46 at the start of the year.
