Main image of article Snap Announces Hiring Slowdown, Focus on 'Improved Productivity'

When it comes to hiring slowdowns among social-media giants, Meta/Facebook and Twitter now have company: Snap CEO Evan Spiegel just announced his company would slow hiring through the end of the year in order to manage its budgets.

Snap hired 2,000 employees over the past year, and intends to bring another 500 onboard before the end of 2022, Spiegel added, according to CNBC. Pressures facing the company include inflation, supply-chain issues, and aggressive privacy controls on Apple’s iPhone, and could result in significant declines in both revenue and adjusted earnings for the current quarter.

“Our most meaningful gains over the coming months will come as a result of improved productivity from our existing team members,” Spiegel wrote in a statement.

According to levels.fyi, which crowdsources its salary data, an entry-level software engineer at Snap (i.e., L3) can expect to earn $135,366 in base salary, combined with annual stock options worth $53,488, and a bonus of $11,996 (for a total of $200,850). Those at an L7 level can make quite a bit more: $242,000 in salary, $528,000 in stock, and $23,800 in bonuses (totaling $793,000).

As you might expect, Snap’s compensation is roughly in line with that of its rivals, including Meta/Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. As the company becomes more selective about its hiring, what kind of skills does it want job candidates to have? According to Emsi Burning Glass, which collects and analyzes millions of job postings from across the country, Snap’s most in-demand skills include Python, data science, software engineering, product management, Java, machine learning, C++, the principles of software development, and SQL.

Over the past 90 days, Snap has also posted open jobs for product managers, software developers/engineers, data scientists, software product managers, backend developers/managers, and iOS developers/managers. That’s a wide range of positions, and suggests that Snap continues to have big plans for the future despite its current hiring slowdown.