‘We want to plan somewhat conservatively,’ Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg’s communication with employees according to Bloomberg News.
Facebook-parent Meta Platforms will freeze hiring and further restructure amid an uncertain macroeconomic situation, Bloomberg News has reported, quoting Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg’s communication with employees.
Several tech companies have been forced to slash headcount in recent months as advertisers trim spending to prepare for a looming recession.
“I had hoped the economy would have more clearly stabilized by now, but from what we’re seeing it doesn’t yet seem like it has, so we want to plan somewhat conservatively,” Zuckerberg told employees during a weekly Q&A session, Bloomberg News said in its report on Thursday.
The social media company had cut plans to hire engineers by at least 30 percent this year, the Reuters news agency reported in June.
Zuckerberg also said on Thursday that Meta would reduce budgets across most teams and that individual teams will have to resolve how to handle headcount changes, the report added.
Meta declined to comment on the Bloomberg news report. The company referred to Zuckerberg’s warning of a reduction in headcount over the next year in the second-quarter earnings call.
The company had confirmed hiring freezes in broad terms in May, but exact figures have not previously been reported.
Layoffs in tech
Technology companies, crypto exchanges and financial firms are cutting jobs and slowing hiring as global economic growth slows due to higher interest rates, red-hot inflation and an energy crisis in Europe.
In a sign of a tough second half of the year, growth in the world’s largest economy, the US, shrank for the second straight quarter, while in the eurozone business growth slowed sharply in June due to the rising cost of living.
Tech giants Apple, Twitter, and Amazon all recently announced hiring freezes, citing uncertain economic times.
Meanwhile, crypto exchange site Coinbase and streaming service Netflix also said earlier this year that they would lay off hundreds of employees.
Electric carmaker Tesla plans to let go roughly 10 percent of its salaried staff.
“I have a super bad feeling about the economy,” the company’s CEO Elon Musk said in emails seen by Reuters.
