Ask HN: Why does SNAP need 1,859 employees?

46 pointsnewyearnewyou9y ago25 comments

Do they really need this many people to handle advertisers and run the app? I know they have a research team for the spectacles but this seems excessive.

25 comments

24 comments · 11 top-level

adamb_9y ago· 4 in thread

Compared to the # of users -- i.e. orders of magnitude greater -- that's a pretty reasonably-sized team.

ac299y ago

Compared to revenue it doesnt seem crazy either: at approx $150M in Q1-17, thats over $300k revenue per employee per year (if the revenue and headcount stays flat). Certainly there are many profitable companies at a ratio like that.

But for ad-fueled companies the bar to profitability and long term success is quite a bit higher:

Alphabet does about 4x that ($1.3M/employee/year) [0], and Facebook does even better ($1.8M/employee/year) [1][2].

[0] https://abc.xyz/investor/news/earnings/2017/Q1_alphabet_earn...

[1] https://investor.fb.com/investor-news/press-release-details/...

[2] https://newsroom.fb.com/company-info/

cuchoi9y ago

"As of January 2016, 45.4 million persons were participating in SNAP." https://www.snaptohealth.org/snap/snap-frequently-asked-ques...

https://www.fns.usda.gov/sites/default/files/pd/SNAPsummary.... http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/jul/...

lovich9y ago

I think they meant SNAP the ticker symbol for Snapchat and not the government program.

wand3r9y ago

I also thought it was that Snap initially.

kjksf9y ago· 3 in thread

https://danluu.com/sounds-easy/

tedmiston9y ago

I think developers also easily forget that building a business, relationships, and marketing are non-trivial tasks that take more than a weekend.

wodenokoto9y ago

This was a great article.

The point about adding engineers until marginal returns per employee reaches their salary is a great angle in explaining why companies don't want to stay lean.

Klockan9y ago

That would be a good point if Snap inc was making money.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/11/technology/snap-public-co...

1 more reply

Endy9y ago· 2 in thread

I'm sorry, but do you mean SNAP as in SnapChat, or do you mean SNAP as in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program? Either one has good reason to have a sizable team.

paulddraper9y ago

I was really confused by the comments until I realized SNAP must be SnapChat.

brador9y ago

SNAP is the stock symbol for Snapchat.

forgottenacc579y ago· 2 in thread

Because you don't get a big valuation without the appearance of being big.

mikek9y ago

Instagram and WhatsApp show this to be false.

o2l9y ago

But aren't they already big in terms of users. And the people who valuate the business should be easily able to cut through this false appearance. Whatsapp got a big valuation with <100 employees.

ExactoKnight9y ago· 1 in thread

It's the iron law of oligarchy at work. I struggle to find many tech companies outside of the big four that didn't begin to decline long term post-IPO.

aey9y ago

Their obligation to maximize shareholder returns is what drives them to grow as much as possible.

The big 4 just happen to have done a good job at it (or got lucky).

1ba91154549y ago· 1 in thread

It's like when you watch a film and the credits roll by at the end. There seems to be hundreds of people involved and I often think maybe they could have gotten away with a few actors and a cameraman.

Guyag9y ago

I've seen (but can't find) some discussion on here about the movie industry in relation to this, I think in relation to what Netflix is doing with their originals. Apparently it's really heavily unionised, with people having incredibly specific jobs which only they are allowed to do, which is strongly baked into their general culture. Doubt it's the same case as SNAP, but just an interesting titbit. Can't find a source offhand.

tyingq9y ago

Judging by their jobs page, it's uber-specialization and the natural tendency of job preservation.

For example, there's these four jobs: Character Artist/Bitmoji, Illustrator/Bitmoji, Product Design/Bitmoji, Technical Lead/Bitmoji

No idea how many people already work on it. But there will be four more. And they will find ways to justify their existence, and grow the size of the group so that their relative importance versus other products gives enough internal power.

jamesmishra9y ago

Snapchat does a few different things now:

- hardware design

- computer vision

- iOS, Android, and server development

- content production -- shooting video, writing scripts, etc.

- selling advertising -- they need many account managers and salespeople for this

and then there is HR, Legal, and Finance to support the aforementioned orgs.

For a company like Snap, 1,859 employees is pretty small. At this time of writing, Uber has somewhere around 12,000 and Facebook has about 18,000.

panic9y ago

They don't need that many employees. Every team wants to hire more people for various reasons, so more people will be hired as long as there is budget for it.

Sevii9y ago

Building the core platform maybe took 100. Optimizing the platform to make money probably takes 1000+.

riffic9y ago

That's just how bubbles work.

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