Facebook parent company Meta in hiring freeze
A leaked memo from Facebook’s CFO says the freeze will last through the rest of this year.
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Facebook parent company Meta says has announced a hiring freeze, as a combination of problems including rising inflation, the war in Ukraine and Apple’s privacy changes impact the tech giant’s bottom line.
Shares in Meta are down 34.5 per cent over the past six months – wiping off more than a third of its valuation – and the company said on Thursday it would freeze the hiring of certain roles – and slow hiring overall – following an earnings report last week where it forecast a potential year-on-year revenue drop.
The hiring slowdown will hit “almost every team across the company”, according to an internal memo first reported by Insider, with mid-level and senior-level positions engineering positions set to be the most impacted. The memo said the freeze would last through the rest of the year.
Meta’s Australian office was contacted but declined to comment on the record.
It‘s understood the company is still hiring some staff in Australia despite the company-wide slowdown. Meta has an estimated headcount of more than 78,000 globally.
Meta‘s chief financial officer David Wehner said on an investor call last week that multiple macroeconomic concerns were affecting the company’s earnings.
“We experienced a further deceleration in growth following the start of the Ukraine war due to the loss of revenue in Russia as well as a reduction in advertising demand both within Europe and outside the region,” Mr Wehner said.
“We believe the war introduced further volatility into an already uncertain macroeconomic landscape for advertisers.”
Late last year Facebook said that Apple’s privacy changes, which limit the ability for advertisers to track the behaviour of iPhone users, will cost it an estimated $US10bn in revenue for 2022.
The hiring freeze comes at a difficult time for tech companies, many of which are struggling to maintain their growth rates of the past two years.
Celebrity video chat app Cameo announced on Thursday it was laying off 87 employees – about 25 per cent of its workforce – after its CEO Steven Galanis admitted he had hired too quickly, and that the company had fallen short of revenue expectations.
“I made the painful decision to let go of 87 beloved members of the Cameo Fameo,” Mr Galanis said on Twitter, adding it was “a brutal day at the office.”
Just this week Sydney-based buy now, pay later provider BizPay made about 30 per cent of its workforce redundant, blaming market conditions for the staffing cull.
Its co-founder and chief executive David Price said the job cuts were a “strategic decision”.
“Due to the uncertainty in the global markets, particularly the tech sector, and current market conditions, we’ve made the strategic decision to streamline operations and our workforce to support BizPay’s next growth phase,” Mr Price told news.com.au.
He added that new automated processes had improved efficiency requiring a “leaner and more agile workforce” to improve its competitiveness in the space.
“Unfortunately, as part of this process, we’ve had to make some reductions to our staff level to adapt to these changes.’
Originally published as Facebook parent company Meta in hiring freeze
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