
Ask HN: Why does SNAP need 1,859 employees? - newyearnewyou
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.
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kjksf
[https://danluu.com/sounds-easy/](https://danluu.com/sounds-easy/)

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wodenokoto
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.

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

[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/11/technology/snap-public-
co...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/11/technology/snap-public-company-
start-ups.html?_r=1)

~~~
dsacco
It's still a good point. Scaling a company is orthogonal to scaling it
profitably. One is primarily an engineering problem and the other is a
business problem.

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tyingq
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.

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Endy
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.

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

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ExactoKnight
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.

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aey
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).

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

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cuchoi
"As of January 2016, 45.4 million persons were participating in SNAP."
[https://www.snaptohealth.org/snap/snap-frequently-asked-
ques...](https://www.snaptohealth.org/snap/snap-frequently-asked-
questions/#howmany)

[https://www.fns.usda.gov/sites/default/files/pd/SNAPsummary....](https://www.fns.usda.gov/sites/default/files/pd/SNAPsummary.pdf)
[http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-
meter/statements/2016/jul/...](http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-
meter/statements/2016/jul/21/donald-trump/trump-43-million-americans-food-
stamps/)

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

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jamesmishra
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.

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panic
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.

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

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1ba9115454
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.

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Guyag
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.

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forgottenacc57
Because you don't get a big valuation without the appearance of being big.

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mikek
Instagram and WhatsApp show this to be false.

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riffic
That's just how bubbles work.

