Snapchat's cheeky attempts to poach rivals' employees revealed

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/apr/21/snapchats-attempts-poach-rivals-employees-revealed

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Snapchat is using its own app to hint to employees of rival firms that they should leave their jobs and work in Los Angeles with the social network.

The firm has inserted cheeky geofilters – visual overlays optionally applied to snaps sent from a specific location – for pictures sent from the headquarters of companies such as Uber, Pinterest and Airbnb.

Slogans such as “Not sleeping well?” for Airbnb, “This place driving you mad?” for Uber and “Feeling pinned down?” for Pinterest are paired with cartoons featuring the Snapchat ghost – and the web address of the company’s jobs page

On the snapchat geofilter hunt at @Airbnb and found another one. pic.twitter.com/IZbbDfLXqY

“They’re a unique and playful form of recruiting,” a Snapchat spokesperson told Forbes reporters Kathleen Chaykowski and Ryan Mac, who uncovered some of the filters.

But the filters aren’t being well-received everywhere, with a Pinterest employee snapping back his one-word reply: “no”, and a Twitter developer complementing Snapchat boss Evan Spiegel (on Twitter, naturally) for his “nice try”.

Just sent a return message to @Snapchat, since they seemed curious. pic.twitter.com/Qr5d3Ta29r

@evanspiegel nice try pic.twitter.com/TfuCCYjq3r

Competition for the best engineers is often tough in Silicon Valley, and Snapchat (despite being located in Los Angeles, far south of the heart of the tech industry) is known for being an aggressive recruiter. But the competition amongst the upstarts of the trade stands in marked contrast to the older firms such as Apple and Google, who agreed to pay $415m in a class action lawsuit over claims that they colluded to lower salaries and avoid poaching employees from each other.