European staff hit by Snyk restructure
Start-up became latest cybersecurity vendor to announce job cuts on Monday
Snyk's European staff were not immune from the cybersecurity vendor's move to cut 14 per cent of its global workforce this week.
The start-up's CEO, Peter McKay, announced in a blog post on Monday that it had laid off 198 staff, citing "continued headwinds facing the global economy".
It is just the latest cybersecurity vendor to downsize in recent months, with Malwarebytes, IronNet, OneTrust, Cybereason, Lacework and Deep Instinct all laying off between 10 and 25 per cent of their workforces during the summer, CRN UK sister title CRN US reports.
Dozens of Snyk's staff - known as ‘Snykers' - took to social media yesterday to confirm they were among those affected. This includes the Boston-based outfit's seventh employee, as well as its EMEA partner alliances team manager, Tom Dell, who joined the vendor 12 months ago.
Having bagged $530m in funding last September in a deal that valued it at $8.5bn, Snyk has made two rounds of job cuts this year, which McKay linked to the worsening global economic outlook. The company, which started life in London and Tel Aviv, is still on a path to growth, he insisted however.
"In June, I shared that we needed to adapt to an evolved mindset balancing continued top line growth with profitability and committed to becoming free cash flow positive in 2024. Our business continues to grow aggressively, more than doubling in size each year with currently over 2,300 customers, but we now must operate even more efficiently in order for Snyk to effectively withstand the continued headwinds facing the global economy," he wrote.
In EMEA, Snyk works with distributor Arrow ECS and lists Softcat, Barrier Networks, Phoenix Software, Sep2 and Saepio among its local partners.
Jonathan Lassman, director of security VAR NGS, said that he had looked at Snyk but had opted against engaging with the vendor.
"There are thousands and thousands of products out there but a lot are features and not full-blown products that do ‘a little bit of something'. I thought that Snyk's product is one that fitted that category," he said.
"You have to be careful which ones you promote because you may end up spending six months promoting a product that no one wants to buy."