A: I don't understand why they did this. It makes no sense.
   B: Companies don't do things for no reason.
   A: What is the reason then?
   B: I don't know - most likely they did some sort of calculation.

FYI, this type of exchange is information-free.

Often it doesn't make sense. They need to cut, so they cut. They need to spend, so they spend. They need to hire, so they hire. Is this usually consistent? No. They acquire companies and later shut them down. They hire tons of people then fire them, then later have to hire back people and start up projects that duplicate what they bought but later killed and then realize that the competition is in that market so they start it up again, but in a worse way. They allocate time and money into major moonshot projects and internal efforts and later kill off those projects they invested tons of time and money into. Startups are sociopathic in many ways.

As I learned long ago, don't expect venture-backed and post-IPO startups to act "logically". It's all a big hustle and a scramble for market share and whatever other metrics. There's a lot of collateral damage along the way, employees and customers be damned.

Startups aren't a "meritocracy" and management teams don't operate by best ideas win. Markets are brutal, management teams are opportunistic and often self-serving, investors are focused on growth at all costs and hitting metrics, and companies don't operate in ways that suit logic. They suit the needs to capture markets or do whatever they do to get ahead. Sometimes ethically, sometimes not.

Most of HN is information free. Water cooler banter with 1:20 posts offering anything insightful.

And yet here you are

1:20 is better SNR than most interactions...

Don't forget, you're here forever

It becomes information-full when you add:

C: The calculation that caused this was probably some black-box political battle that was won by Manager A, and lost by Manager B. It was probably decided based on personal preferences and biases of decisionmakers, as well as on who was friends with whom. Decisionmakers that run private corporations make these kinds of decisions all the time, and any attempts at reading the tea leaves, or the chicken entrails, to try to predict or explain these decisions is likely a waste of your time. If you'd like these decisions to be made in the open, you need democracy and transparency, which is not something that's is selected for in the modern business world. This is not a value judgement of the modern business world, it is just a descriptive statement about it.

Oh, there's certainly information. It's conversation steering for some, mind expanding for others, and the hinting tasks the brain with reconciling this question with present understanding. Neurotransmitter flux is being steered one way or another.

The overlap between "people who know what's happening" and "people who post on HN" is not always as high as one might hope.

In my experience in the corporate world, the reason is often one that only makes sense for the person making the decision. Spinning it off right now would be a big investment in time, and thus attention from the higher up's. They have a lot else on their plate right now and would rather not think about that, and the amount of money they would make from spinning it off (in the current environment) is not enough to solve any of their other problems.

It doesn't necessarily mean it couldn't have survived on its own if it were spun off. It just may not be what the decision makers want to be thinking about right now. It's not always about what's important to the company (i.e. the company's money), sometimes it's about what's important to the CEO (who really wants to think about other things, and if they have a major distraction that maybe doesn't go well it could add to board pressure on him to step down).

> one that only makes sense for the person making the decision

And sometimes (often?) that reason is "I'll show him who's boss around here, don't care if it costs millions of dollars and tanks the stock price, I'm untouchable and they're not gonna forget it!"

Good point. Focus is a resource too. If your the world suddenly shifts and you need to focus on survival it might make sense to cut things that might or might not be profitable but are unlikely to carry your business to survival but will for sure require a lot of focus to succeed.

Of course, this is just pure speculation.

I agree it probably made sense for Snap, but it is still a shame when a product people liked gets shut down when in a different context, their traction would have been considered a success.

My guess for the reason is to make it possible to lay off people in france. Probably much easier to shut down the entire product than lay off part of the teAm