Meta freeze the hiring for some engineering positions, the company also recently suspended hiring low-level recruiters and data scientists. Meta’s leaders have in recent days started telling specific teams that they won’t be able to hire new engineers or receive internal transfers. It’s a sign that those specific products don’t make money or aren’t strategically important enough to keep investing in while Meta’s stock price is down 43% this year. Product teams already impacted by an engineering freeze including Facebook Dating and Gaming, Messenger Kids, the Commerce team, and the Remote Presence team created during the pandemic to build video and audio calling features to better compete with Zoom.
Meta has been hurt by a combination of the rise of TikTok, a broader sell-off in tech stocks, and Apple’s ad tracking changes that are costing the company billions of dollars in lost ad revenue, Zuckerberg told employees last week. At the same time, he tried to assure them that the company, with its rich balance sheet and billions of dollars in quarterly profit, is in a strong place to navigate what many on Wall Street believe could be a protracted downturn in the stock market.
“Whenever we bring growth targets down, I think that you always hear a bunch of speculation around like, “Okay, are we in trouble? Or is something more dramatic going to happen?’” Zuckerberg said during the internal all-hands meeting. “And look, obviously if everything was going exactly the way we planned we wouldn’t be changing this. But I do want to be clear that we’re in a very strong position and have a very healthy business, and we’re still growing quickly.”
