IMO They need to work hard on a clear business model and ramp up sales against that, not fire the sales people for terrible strategy...
The first wave of layoffs Snap did were related to the hw engineering org. AKA those glasses they mad, right? They were a commercial failure and a distraction so I viewed that as largely a positive sign.
This wave of layoffs seems like they are trimming the fat in sales/marketing, again not necessarily a bad thing. Other companies like twitter have done this and gone on to recover.
I think the biggest problem with Snap right now is how similar it is to Instagram now that Instagram has cloned stories. Twitter served a far different use case from Facebook and they seem pretty safe now that FB is backing away from news.
Refer to Snap's S-1 filing[1]: 60% of daily active users send snaps daily, but only 25% of them post to their story.
As far as I'm concerned, Insta et al are welcome to "stories" clones. Stories aren't what I, or most users, use Snapchat for.
[1] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1564408/000119312517...
As far as I can tell no one has figured out a way to monetize private DM/group messaging via advertising. I actually deleted Facebook messenger from my phone in disgust a while back the first time I saw an advertisement mixed in among my list of conversations; I can’t even imagine what it would be like to have ads directly inserted in the messaging flow.