Meta is freezing hiring for some engineering roles and has stopped hiring recruiters and low-level data scientists.
While the hiring freeze has made staff fear they might be laid off, the Meta CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, has downplayed layoff. In an internal meeting on Thursday, he said that job cuts aren’t being planned.
According to Zuckerberg, “I can’t sit here and make a permanent ongoing promise that as things shift that we won’t have to reconsider that. But what I can tell you is that as of where we sit today, our expectation is not that we’re going to have to do that. And instead, basically what we’re doing is we’re dialing growth to the levels that we think are going to be manageable over time.”
For the dialing, Meta’s leaders have recently begun telling specific teams that they can’t hire new engineers or accept internal transfers.
This is a signal that the specific products don’t make enough profit, or they aren’t strategically crucial enough to keep investing flowing as Meta’s stock price falls 43% in 2022.
Also, product teams have been affected by an engineering freeze, including Messenger Kids, Facebook Dating and Gaming, the Commerce team, and the Remote Presence team established in the pandemic to create audio and video calling features to compete better with Zoom.
A Meta spokesperson, Joe Osborne, confirmed the engineer hiring downplay for the specific teams. He said the firm is still employing AI and machine learning roles.
“As we alluded to in our recent earnings, we’re evaluating key priorities across the company and putting energy behind them especially as they relate to our core business and Reality Labs,” Osborne disclosed in an interview.
As reported by Reuters, Inside Reality Labs CTO Andrew Bosworth revealed that some projects would be deprioritized for others.
Staff won’t be taken out of the department, which has more than 17,000 people. At the same time, changes in the specific team haven’t yet been communicated internally.
Last week, Zuckerberg told staff that Meta is hurt by the rise of TikTok and Apple’s ad tracking changes, which are costing the firm billions of dollars in lost advert revenue.
However, the Meta CEO has assured that the firm is in a strong stance to navigate what several people on Wall Street think can be a stock market protracted downturn.
Zuckerberg believes that Meta will continue to be in a great position while offering a healthy business for all.
Photo by Muhammad Asyfaul on Unsplash