Snap is slowing the pace of hiring after bringing on hundreds of employees recently.
The social-media platform will continue hiring for open roles and backfilling existing positions. But the company will slow down on recruiting for roles that are not open. Snap will also push some planned hiring into next year.
Evan Spiegel, Snap's founder and CEO, wrote in a note to employees obtained by Insider that revenue growth had slowed in the face of "rising inflation and interest rates, supply chain shortages and labor disruptions, platform policy changes, the impact of the war in Ukraine, and more." While the company expects to hire about 500 employees this year, hiring for new roles will be slowed substantially. The company intends to grow head count by only 10% this year, a fraction of its head-count growth last year.
"Our most meaningful gains over the coming months will come as a result of improved productivity from our existing team members, as we work together and help our new team members get to know Snap and learn how to contribute to their full potential," Spiegel wrote.
In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission about the same time, Snap said its revenue and adjusted profit would be less than anticipated just last month, adding: "The macroeconomic environment has deteriorated further and faster than anticipated."
Snap's stock fell by more than 30% in after-hours trading to its lowest level since the outbreak of the pandemic.
The major hiring slowdown followed other moves by big tech companies like Facebook, which Insider was first to report implemented a broad hiring pause this month. Uber and Twitter followed, the latter of which is dealing with a rocky takeover by Elon Musk.
Snap had accelerated hiring in the past 18 months as the pandemic drove the use of many social and delivery networks to new highs. That stoked extreme competition for tech workers, which led to unsustainably high compensation and expectations of industry layoffs.
Derek Andersen, Snap's chief financial officer, said on a call last month discussing Snap's first-quarter results that head count had grown 52% in the past year, to more than 6,100 employees. Andersen said the company had been "investing heavily" in engineering and product talent. There was no mention of a slowdown in hiring on the call, though Wall Street analysts asked about increased headcount and related costs several times.
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