Sources: Snap fires security chief over secret relationship with a consultant and pushes out his boss, the head of HR, amid multiple departures in recent months
Alex Heath / Cheddar :
Context & Ripple Effects
Snap's leadership churn is now a running story: Tim Sehn stepped down as head of engineering in late 2017, the company cut roughly 100 engineering jobs in early 2018, and just three days ago CFO Tim Stone resigned after going around Evan Spiegel to ask the board for a raise. Today's report adds two more exits at once — the security chief, fired over an undisclosed relationship with a consultant, and his boss, the head of HR, pushed out alongside him.
What makes this round different is the pairing: the two functions responsible for vetting conduct and managing people are both suddenly leaderless, and one of the departures stems from exactly the kind of behavior those functions exist to police.
First-order effects
- Snap is simultaneously without a chief security officer and a head of HR, stacking on top of a vacant CFO seat left by Tim Stone's resignation days earlier.
- The secret consultant relationship puts Snap's security-vendor dealings under scrutiny, since the fired security chief controlled engagement with outside firms.
Second-order effects
- With the ethics-sensitive roles empty at once, Snap's board — the same body Tim Stone went around over pay — faces pressure to tighten oversight of executive conduct and procurement.
- Competing for senior talent gets harder for Snap while rivals can point to a bench that has turned over repeatedly since the engineering cuts.
Third-order effects
- The replacement path points to a flatter structure: Snap eventually hired former Secret Service director James Murray as chief security officer reporting directly to Spiegel, routing around the management layer that just failed.
- If the departure pattern holds, Snap's functional-chief model gives way to concentrated control under the CEO — a structure whose cultural costs surfaced later in the company's own investigation into racism and sexism accusations.
The trend: Since 2017 Snap has been replacing departed functional chiefs with direct reports to Spiegel, trading delegated management for CEO-centered control.