Not sure if one would have thought to hear something like this, but Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc. will be slowing down their highly rampant hiring drive in a bid to cut costs, after disappointing Q1 2022 sales numbers.
Meta has been a hiring powerhouse since 2018, with their workforce total standing at 77,800. However, as Business Insider reports, they will be going on a hiring freeze, or in some cases just a slowdown, in response to a tight budget for the next quarter.
Explaining the move, a Meta spokesperson said “We regularly re-evaluate our talent pipeline according to our business needs and in light of the expense guidance given for this earnings period, we are slowing its growth accordingly. However, we will continue to grow our workforce to ensure we focus on long term impact.”
Meta had already slowed down hiring of freshly-graduated engineers for low level jobs. With the platform logging disappointing quarters consistently, they will now be putting in place a bottleneck on mid and high level jobs as well.
Meta seems to have overshot it’s hiring goal for Q1 2022, with 5,800 fresh faces being brought onto the work force just within the last quarter.
It is an easy assumption that global geopolitical conflict has been affecting sales everywhere, and Meta has not been exempt from the supply chain guillotine. Meta has also been facing tough competition from other social media platforms (The rare ones they haven’t acquired yet) like Tiktok, who’s fundamental principle of content consumption is a lot more casual, faster and interactive than the platforms run by Meta. Their subpar approach to user privacy has also been a factor influencing their sales numbers.
The ones who hold positions in Meta as of now reportedly do not need to be worried, as Meta has not yet announced any plans for layoffs in the near future. The report also accompanied a share price boost of 5%.
