Facebook’s Meta to freeze hiring and restructure further: Report

“We want to plan somewhat conservatively,” Meta CEO 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 reported, citing Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg’s communication with employees.

Several tech companies have been forced to slash their workforces in recent months as advertisers cut spending to prepare for a looming recession.

“I was hoping the economy would have stabilized more clearly now, but from what we’re seeing, it doesn’t look like it has yet, so we want to plan somewhat conservatively,” Zuckerberg told employees during a weekly Q&A session. Answers, Bloomberg. News said in its report 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 Thursday that Meta would cut budgets across most teams and that individual teams will have to figure out how to handle personnel changes, the report added.

Meta declined to comment on the Bloomberg news report. The company referred to Zuckerberg’s warning about a headcount reduction over the next year in its second-quarter earnings call.

The company had confirmed the hiring freeze in broad terms in May, but exact numbers have not been previously reported.

layoffs in technology

Technology companies, cryptocurrency exchanges and financial firms are shedding jobs and slowing down 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 difficult second half of the year, growth in the world’s largest economy, the US, contracted for the second consecutive quarter, while business growth in the eurozone slowed sharply in June due to rising cost of living.

Tech giants Apple, Twitter and Amazon recently announced hiring freezes, citing uncertain economic times.

Meanwhile, cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase and streaming service Netflix also said earlier this year that they would be laying off hundreds of employees.

Electric car maker Tesla plans to lay off about 10 percent of its salaried staff.

“I have a bad feeling about the economy,” company CEO Elon Musk said in emails seen by Reuters.