Snap Said To Skip Bonuses, Combat Morale Slump After Rough Year (bloomberg.com) 16
An anonymous reader shares a report: On Wednesday, Snap (parent company of messaging service Snapchat) sent employees a survey asking a broad set of questions to understand what they're happy about, what they want to improve, and what they want to say, anonymously, one year after the company's initial public offering. Grievances will be aired. Just last month, the company reported revenue that beat Wall Street's projections for the first time, causing the stock to surge 47 percent. Internally, the picture isn't as celebratory. The year involved a complete rethinking of the advertising business, an exodus of top executives, a broadly critiqued redesign of the Snapchat photo-sharing application and stiff competition from Facebook's Instagram, leaving the shares close to their IPO price. While Snap topped Wall Street's estimates last quarter, employees were told they didn't beat internal goals -- and wouldn't be getting cash bonuses, according to people familiar with the matter.
Snap's internal targets weren't defined for employees, but that wasn't a surprise at a company where Chief Executive Officer Evan Spiegel tightly controls aspects of the business he cares about -- especially the spread of information, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing internal matters. There is a sense among employees that since going public, Snap has only become more beholden to the one shareholder who matters: Spiegel.
Snap's internal targets weren't defined for employees, but that wasn't a surprise at a company where Chief Executive Officer Evan Spiegel tightly controls aspects of the business he cares about -- especially the spread of information, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing internal matters. There is a sense among employees that since going public, Snap has only become more beholden to the one shareholder who matters: Spiegel.
Welcome back (Score:2)
It's been a rough few days for /. too
Re: (Score:2)
What happened? Been jonesin' for the /. for a while.
Well... (Score:1)
Zero path possible to meet target (Score:1)
Logically if target is never defined there are no way to for any employee outside of the CxO circle “in the loop” to ever strive to work hard to meet the goal.
Who knows, it might have been a ruse to wriggle out their unspoken obligation to pay bonus. But the whole premise is logically flawed and no one trust the management anymore once they somehow are told they missed the target even though they exceed expectations.
Stanford Boy (Score:2)
A smarmy scumbag from the Standford Butt-Buddies old boys' network, head of a loss-making surveillance company that survives by sucking QE money from the venture capital teat, contemptuously mistreats his employees and keeps all the ill-gotten lucre for himself and his cronies.
Is anyone at all shocked by this? Venture capitalists and their running dogs will *always* exploit tech workers. So long as we as an industry refuse to act with solidarity, no one should be surprised when the boot he's licking decide
There will be no bonuses ... (Score:2)
... until morale improves
Why do VCs allow founders to stay in charge? (Score:2)
And why do the founders want to stay in charge once they've made a fortune?
I get why you would want some founders to stay in charge, there are certain businesses where the founder may actually provide significant product input or be deeply involved in design decisions due to specialized knowledge or experience. But in a lot of these businesses, once "version 1.0" comes out that actually implements the main idea, is the founder's further input really all that important? Especially with Snapchat, it's kind
The victim of Facebook's Instagram (Score:2)
I think what hurt Snapchat (besides its much-hated user interface change recently) was the fact their user base is a small fraction of the Facebook-owned Instagram, especially when Instagram starting taking most of Snapchat's feature set. I'm actually kind of surprised that Snap, Inc. didn't sue Facebook for possibly illegally duplicating many of Snapchat's features.
Let the Exodus Begin (Score:2)
No bonus because you didn't meet the targets that we didn't define for you.
Doesn't seem like it could possibly be true.
If it is, it seems like a great way to get most of their best talent to leave.