Goal reduces hiring plans and warns of “serious” economic crisis

Meta, which owns Facebook, has cut its plans to hire new engineers by at least 30% this year, Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg told employees on Thursday as he warned them to prepare. to a deep economic crisis.

“If I had to bet, I’d say this could be one of the worst crises we’ve seen in recent history,” Zuckerberg told workers at a weekly question-and-answer session, the audio of which was heard by Reuters.

Meta has lowered the target for hiring engineers in 2022 to about 6,000 to 7,000, down from its initial plan to hire about 10,000 new engineers, Zuckerberg said.

The company last month confirmed the breaks in hiring in general terms, but the exact numbers had not been released before.

In addition to reducing hiring, he said, the company was leaving certain positions unfilled.

The company is “turning up the heat” on performance management to weed out employees unable to meet more aggressive targets. “Realistically, there are probably a lot of people in the company who shouldn’t be here,” Zuckerberg said.

“Part of my hope in raising expectations and setting more aggressive goals, and just raising the temperature a little bit, is that I think some of you might decide that this place is not for you, and that self-selection is ok for me. “, he said.

The company must “prioritize more relentlessly” and operate “leaner” and “better executing” teams, Chief Product Officer Chris Cox wrote in a memo that appeared on the company’s internal discussion forum, Workplace, ahead of the Q&A session. and answers.

“I have to point out that we are in serious times here and the headwinds are fierce. We need to run flawlessly in a slower-growing environment where teams shouldn’t expect massive influxes of new engineers and budgets,” Cox wrote.