Snapchat Parent Company Goes Easy on Hiring, Cuts Jobs

San Francisco: Snap Inc -- the parent company of popular photo-sharing platform Snapchat -- has fired 18 people in a fresh round of layoffs as the management is evaluating trimming headcount across different teams.

Snap confirmed it had recently laid off 18 people. "The cuts follow about a dozen layoffs in Snap's hardware marketing division last month. The company also plans to slow hiring next year," CNBC said on Friday.

A spokesperson was quoted as saying that the slowdown in hiring was "logical" given how fast the company had grown. The company's workforce expanded from 600 employees by the end of 2015 to 2,600 in the last quarter. However, Snap has not said if additional layoffs are coming. Last month, the company laid off almost a dozen people supporting the hardware division that makes its Spectacles camera glasses.

"Six-year-old Snap hasn't implemented a consistent way to track and evaluate employee performance to date", Newstimes quoted sources close to the company. Meanwhile, Snapchat is expected to overtake Facebook for the first time in the US as the user growth of the latter is set to slow among teenagers and adults, a report by market research firm eMarketer said recently. The app currently has 166 million users globally.

IANS