- Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has again extended a hiring freeze in place for months.
- The freeze is set to be stretched yet again next year if there is "a continued economic downturn."
- Facebook is broadly looking to reduce spending for 2023 after enacting a mass layoff on Wednesday.
There is no set end to Facebook's ongoing hiring freeze as the company looks to cut costs.
Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in his Wednesday morning note to employees regarding layoffs that a current hiring freeze at Facebook would extend through March of next year at least. The freeze is taking place amid layoffs that impact more than 11,000 employees, or 13% of its workforce.
Zuckerberg noted he will "watch our business performance, operational efficiency, and other macroeconomic factors to determine whether and how much we should resume hiring at that point." He did not say that the company would lift the freeze at any time.
"This will give us the ability to control our cost structure in the event of a continued economic downturn," Zuckerberg added in the note.
The first broad freeze in hiring at Facebook, which last year changed its name to Meta, came in early May, when it stopped hiring nearly all levels of engineers, as Insider reported. The company hired aggressively for almost two years prior and suddenly saw for the first time a slowdown of user and revenue growth.
The freeze was extended in September as the company did not see growth trends improve. It started to impose a new work mandate of "increased intensity" should employees wish to keep their jobs amid a new focus on performance and worker reviews, as Insider reported.
Now, the company is looking to cut costs even beyond a hiring freeze and layoffs, especially after a disappointing third quarter that sent shares plummeting to a seven-year low. In a call with employees after the results, Zuckerberg told his staff "investors are demanding more action" from the company, without specifying what that action was, as Insider reported.
In his Wednesday note, Zuckerberg said he wanted to put Facebook "on a path to achieve a more efficient cost structure than we outlined to investors recently." The company is looking at infrastructure costs, closing offices, and even moving to a "desk sharing" model for employees, Zuckerberg said.
In a separate filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Facebook said it was reducing its expense outlook to a range of $94 to $100 billion for the whole of 2023, down from a previous plan of $96 to $101 billion. Most of that reduction will come from cuts to capital expenditures, the company added, with the 2023 spending outlook there reduced to $34 to $37 billion, down from $34 to $39 billion.
Are you a Facebook/Meta employee or someone else with insight to share? Contact Kali Hays at [email protected], on secure messaging app Signal at 949-280-0267, or through Twitter DM at @hayskali. Reach out using a non-work device.
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