Daily Tech Snippet: Thursday, February 23

• Snapdeal orders mass lay-off: Once a success story of the burgeoning start-up ecosystem, Gurgaon-based online marketplace Snapdeal on Wednesday said it would cut more jobs, stop paying its founders and sell its digital wallet FreeCharge.  Co-founder Kunal Bahl, in an email to employees on Wednesday, finally accepted tough decisions— including letting go of people and a full pay cut for him— are being taken. It has also put on sale FreeCharge and is in talks with Naspers, the South Africa-based internet group, to sell it for $300 million. Though the company refused to divulge the exact number of people to be sacked, sources close to the development said 800 employees would be laid off over the next few days. Sources confirmed 100 were asked to go on the day itself, within a few minutes of Bahl’s email. “By the time we finished reading the mail, HR (human resource) called us to their office. They said we would get three months of severance pay. We said yes, as that was the only option on the table,” said an employee who was sacked on Wednesday. According to sources, employees from marketing, ad-tech, category, digital marketing, engineering team, catalogues, have all been asked to leave. Bahl and his co-founder Rohit Bansal said they will not take pay henceforth. Job cuts at the beleaguered start-up continued, as it struggled to raise fresh funds and compete against larger rivals such as Flipkart and Amazon. SoftBank-backed Snapdeal would have 1,300 people left on its rolls after the current round of retrenchment— a cut of 87 per cent since its peak of 10,000 in February 2016.

• Inside Uber’s Aggressive, Unrestrained Workplace Culture: Interviews with more than 30 current and former Uber employees, as well as reviews of internal emails, chat logs and tape-recorded meetings, paint a picture of an often unrestrained workplace culture. Among the most egregious accusations from employees, who either witnessed or were subject to incidents and who asked to remain anonymous because of confidentiality agreements and fear of retaliation: One Uber manager groped female co-workers’ breasts at a company retreat in Las Vegas. A director shouted a homophobic slur at a subordinate during a heated confrontation in a meeting. Another manager threatened to beat an underperforming employee’s head in with a baseball bat.

• New details emerge about Palantir’s custom software for spy agencies: A new report by The Intercept provides some compelling specifics on collaboration between Palo Alto’s secretive big data shop Palantir and the intelligence agencies that it keeps on its client roster. While some broad strokes are known about Palantir’s relationship with spy agencies, the finer points seldom see daylight. That guarantee of secrecy no doubt aids the company’s growth into 2017, though its cozy relationship with a presidency keen on implementing aggressive policies with big opportunities for big data certainly can’t hurt, either. The report goes into more detail on the development of two particular software systems, one called Kite and one known as XKEYSCORE Helper. Through Kite, implemented by GCHQ, Palantir offered deep customization: “Out of the box, Kite was able to handle a variety of types of data (including dates, images, geolocations, etc.), but GCHQ was free to extend it by writing custom fields for complicated types of data the agency might need to analyze. The import tools were designed to handle a variety of use cases, including static data sets, databases that were updated frequently, and data stores controlled by third parties to which GCHQ was able to gain access.” Designed in apparent collaboration with Palantir, XKEYSCORE Helper sought to make data obtained through the NSA’s muscular XKEYSCORE program more digestible and offered a way to port it into Palantir’s more analyst-friendly interface: “This collaborative environment also produced a piece of software called “XKEYSCORE Helper,” a tool programmed with Palantir (and thoroughly stamped with its logo) that allowed analysts to essentially import data from the NSA’s pipeline, investigate and visualize it through Palantir, and then presumably pass it to fellow analysts or Five Eyes intelligence partners.”

• Fitbit's Sales Plummet as Device's Popularity Fades: Fitbit Inc.’s fourth-quarter revenue fell 19 percent, hurt by fading consumer demand for its once-popular wearable fitness trackers. Revenue in the quarter -- which includes the holiday shopping season -- dropped to $573.8 million, the company said Wednesday in a statement. Fitbit in Januaryhad forecast sales of $572 million to $580 million. Before then, analysts had been predicting $736.4 million, the average of estimates compiled by Bloomberg. The company’s loss excluding certain costs was 56 cents a share. Analysts on average had projected a loss of 53 cents a share. Chief Executive Officer James Park has been trying to prove that Fitbit is more than just a maker of trendy gadgets. The appeal of its wristbands has waned with consumers as the company faces competition from Apple Inc.’s higher-end watch and cheaper Chinese models, and last month Fitbit said it would eliminate 6 percent of its workforce. Park is seeking to diversify the business, including expanding into the smartwatch category and pushing its corporate-wellness offerings. His goal is to turn Fitbit into a digital-health company -- one that relies less on consumers and focuses on selling to the health-care industry -- but that strategy will take years to unfold.