Zuck the Pessimist: Facebook Freezes Hiring, Warns of Downsizing Amid Economic Slump

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg gave a gloomy forecast to his employees this week, warning that layoffs may be coming due to worsening economic conditions, while also announcing a freeze on new hiring at the company.

Per Bloomberg, the Facebook (now known as Meta) founder announced the news during a weekly Q&A with employees.

The plans, which include proposals to make sweeping cuts to headcounts across the company, represent the first budget cuts in Facebook’s nearly two-decade history, which coincided with an era of rapid growth across the economy.

“I had hoped the economy would have more clearly stabilized by now, but from what we’re seeing it doesn’t yet seem like it has, so we want to plan somewhat conservatively,” said Zuckerberg, according to reports.

“For the first 18 years of the company, we basically grew quickly basically every year, and then more recently our revenue has been flat to slightly down for the first time,” said the Facebook founder.

Some teams, said Zuckerberg, would “manage out people who aren’t succeeding,” while in other cases, departing employees would not be replaced.

Zuckerberg has been warning since July, amid a revenue slump at Facebook, that teams may “shrink” going forward. With the economic outlook increasingly gloomy, and the federal reserve continuing to hike interest rates, it looks like the Meta CEO was not making empty warnings.

Facebook’s woes reflect a wider economic downturn that has affected all tech companies. Amazon, for example, recently had to walk back an expected pay rise for corporate employees, blaming a computer glitch for miscalculating pay levels. In an email Amazon warned managers that they may need to have “uncomfortable” conversations with employees.

Tech stocks continue to suffer amid the downtown, having just come out of their worst two-week stretch since the mini-crash triggered by start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. He is the author of #DELETED: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal The Election.