Meta cuts hiring plans, warns employees of ‘serious times’

Facebook parent company Meta Platforms has dropped its plans of hiring engineers by minimum 30% in 2022, CEO Mark Zuckerberg told employees, as he cautioned them against a deep economic downturn, reports Reuters.

“If I had to bet, I’d say that this might be one of the worst downturns that we’ve seen in recent history,” Zuckerberg told workers in a weekly employee Q&A session.

Meta has slashed its target for hiring engineers this year to around 6,000-7,000 downwards of an initial plan to on board about 10,000 new engineers, Zuckerberg said.

According to a memo to employees, published in full in The Verge, Meta’s chief product officer, Chris Cox stressed that the company is in serious times here and the headwinds are fierce.”

Cox further outlined in the memo that the company must “prioritise more ruthlessly, be thoughtful about measuring and understanding what drives impact, invest in developer efficiency and velocity inside the company, and operate leaner, meaner, better exciting teams.”

Cox also listed six areas where he thinks Meta must deepen its investment, this includes; AI, messaging, metaverse products including Avatars and its virtual world Horizon worlds, thrust on Reels, monetisation, and meeting new privacy requirements.

A CNBC report last month had said, Meta is slackening the pace of hiring as an effort to mitigate its weakest revenue growth and continuing business challenges like Apple’s privacy changes and the war in Ukraine.

A Meta spokesperson told CNBC in an email that the company regularly re-evaluates its talent pipeline according to its business needs and in light of the expense guidance given for this earnings period, it is slowing its growth accordingly.

With interest rates shooting up, stocks failing and climbing uncertainties of recession, companies are cutting jobs or pulling down their original robust hiring spree.

Companies from Tesla to Amazon and Walmart are thinning on their workforce and new hiring plans as the US economy splutters.