facebook warns staff to decelerate significantly

Meta did not respond to Fortune‘s request for comment by the time of publication. But as user growth and ad revenue both slowed, Meta was forced to impose a hiring freeze in May across several divisions of the company to shore up earnings-and slowed the pace of hiring in its Reality Labs division, the unit tasked with building its metaverse. The announcement comes after a period of staff growth at Meta, with the company ending the first quarter of 2022 with 28% more full-time employees than it had a year earlier. “Realistically, there are probably a bunch of people at the company who shouldn’t be here,” Zuckerberg said, adding, “Part of my hope by raising expectations and having more aggressive goals, and just kind of turning up the heat a little bit, is that I think some of you might decide that this place isn’t for you, and that self-selection is OK with me.” In addition to the hiring freeze, Zuckerberg also noted the company was leaving some vacant positions at the company unfilled and “turning up the heat” on performance management to weed out staffers who are unable to meet certain KPIs. “If I had to bet, I’d say that this might be one of the worst downturns that we’ve seen in recent history,” Zuckerberg said in an audio recording heard by Reuters. Citing the market downturn and the looming recession, Zuckerberg said Meta will now only hire around 6,000 to 7,000 new engineers in 2022-a stark drop from its initial plan to hire more than 10,000.

In a weekly employee Q&A session on Thursday, the social media giant’s chief executive Mark Zuckerberg told employees that Meta is reducing its plans to hire engineers by at least 30% this year.

Facebook warns staff to decelerate significantly