Meta to cut headcount, slash budgets across teams

U.S-based Meta Platform’s chief executive and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg reportedly warned employees of a potential hiring freeze and restructuring within the company. 

He made the announcement during a Q&A session as he attempts to slash costs and make a hard pivot to prioritizing the metaverse, according to a report published on Bloomberg.

According to the report, Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, plans to shrink budgets widely within the company. Zuckerberg added that the company would "reduce budgets across most teams, even teams that are growing, and that individual teams will sort out how to handle headcount changes — whether that means not filling roles that employees depart, shifting people to other teams".

The company has been bullish on the Metaverse - a virtual-reality space in which users can interact with a computer-generated environment and other users - and technologies like augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), among others in recent months.

The report hinted that at the moment, the company has also decided to freeze hiring for certain engineering roles, recruiters and low-level data scientists.

Back in July, Zuckerberg signaled during a conference call with analysts that the company was approaching one of the “worst downturns that we’ve seen in recent history” and would slow hiring. “Our plan is to steadily reduce headcount growth over the next year. Many teams are going to shrink so we can shift energy to other areas, and I wanted to give our leaders the ability to decide within their teams where to double down, where to backfill attrition, and where to restructure teams while minimizing thrash to the long-term initiatives,” he said.

Not just Meta, other U.S-based tech majors, including Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and others announced putting a freeze on their hiring and cutting down on their new investment plans.  

In July, Apple announced that it is 'slowing down on hiring in 2023 to cope with a potential economic downturn'. In July, Apple announced that it is 'slowing down on hiring in 2023 to cope with a potential economic downturn' and in August it was reported that the Cupertino-tech company laid off over 100 of its contract-based recruiters, as part of a push to control hiring and spending..

Google CEO Sundar Pichai, in a memo to employees, said that the tech major will pause the hiring process for the rest of the year. The Google executive said that the company will re-deploy resources to higher priority areas and pause ongoing projects during this period, with a warning that “scarcity breeds clarity...”    

Other tech majors including Salesforce, Netflix, Snap, Twitter, Intel, Lyft, Spotify and Uber, have also recently paused hiring in the midst of cost-cutting pressure and rising inflation, coupled with a looming bear market and rising interest rates.