Doing the Doggone Unexpected

Snowflake’s hiring news stands out as significant because cloud and other technology companies have been shedding workers like a dog prepping for summer.

These firms — which include Google, parts of Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure, and more — got themselves into a sticky wicket after overhiring during COVID-19. As we’ve said before and will say again, executives kept approving personnel additions to try to meet unprecedented demand, but didn’t seem to think ahead about the post-pandemic ripple effects.

Now, thousands of people are paying the price for hiring decisions made by executives, but for which the executives themselves haven’t really been held responsible. (We’re far from the only publication calling out this disparity, by the way.)

Snowflake, for its part, says it will continue to prioritize hiring in product, engineering and sales. On the flip side, the company is slowing hiring in groups “where we don’t see the productivity,” CFO Scarpelli said.

He also would not commit to faster revenue growth “unless we see productivity increase in the sale organization.”

But there’s one announcement that might actually speed up Snowflake’s sales. See the next slide.