Snyk is the latest tech firm to announce it is cutting staff, according to an email sent to Snyk employees from CEO Peter McKay and posted on the company's blog. The layoffs are framed as an "evolution" to refocus the company on emerging enterprise customers, according to the message.
Snyk Cuts 128 Workers
In the message, McKay said the company was cutting 128 staff members—Snykers—primarily from the company's go-to-market and corporate functional areas. McKay said the company anticipated a "tough start" to 2023, and the cuts were an attempt to adapt amid signs that the challenging market conditions would persist.
"Today, I’m sharing three critical adjustments to best position Snyk for both near- and long-term success:
- Rightsize our GTM organization to further focus on customer success, particularly in the enterprise sector;
- Prioritize solidifying our AppSec leadership; and,
- Simplify our organizational layers to get closer to our customers and improve our overall agility, speed and communication," McKay said in the blog.
McKay added that Snyk planned to "invest in our partner ecosystem to ramp partner growth and drive scale for customer outcomes and shift focus away from AppSec early adopters to a growing enterprise customer base.
"...s the developer security market has matured, our customer base has evolved from early adopters to the early majority, including some of the world’s largest, most complex organizations. These global brands are counting on our team to deliver on our developer security vision, which we know is so much more than a simple product purchase – it’s a cultural revolution. Simply put, they need more help from us," McKay said. "Fully seizing this enterprise opportunity will require infusing new skill sets and enterprise expertise into Sales, R&D, Customer Experience and Partner/Channel in the near term. We’ll also pivot from transactional customer engagement to a more consultative approach that extends post-sale. It’s critical that we set ourselves up to make all of our customers more successful, allowing them to fully reap the benefits of DevSecOps."
Industry Layoffs
When it comes to layoffs, Snyk is not alone. Cloud security vendor Zscaler announced layoffs after what it called a rough fiscal second quarter. Software tools giant Atlassian laid off 5% of its workforce as it "shifted priorities." Accenture axed 19,000 jobs last month, and Veeam laid off 3.8% of its workforce. Oxford, U.K.-based platform security vendor Sophos in January laid off 10% of its staff, or 450 workers. In February, San Francisco-based identity security giant Okta axed 5% of its workers – or roughly 300 employees – while Atlanta-based cybersecurity services vendor Secureworks cut 9% of its staff, or approximately 210 positions, according to BankInfoSecurity.
