According to the verge, the technology media, meta is shrinking its front and withdrawing its investment in some products, including the multiple teams set up to compete with zoom and establish shopping functions at the early stage of the COVID-19 In addition to freezing the recruitment of some engineering positions, the company recently suspended the recruitment of personnel and low-level data scientists.
Although the suspension of recruitment has led many employees to worry about layoffs, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said at an internal staff meeting on Thursday that the layoff plan does not exist. According to a recording of the meeting obtained by the verge, Zuckerberg said
I can't make a permanent commitment, but as things change, we don't have to reconsider this issue at this stage. But what I can tell you is that our hope is not that we have to do so, but that we will adjust the growth rate to a controllable level over time.
In recent days, meta leaders have begun to tell specific teams that they will not be able to hire new engineers or accept internal transfers. This is a sign that these specific products are not profitable or strategically important enough to continue to invest, and meta's share price has fallen 43% this year.
The product teams that have been affected by the project freeze include Facebook dating and games, Messenger kids, commerce teams, and the remote presence team created during the pandemic to establish video and audio call functions to better compete with zoom.
Meta spokesman Joe Osborne confirmed the withdrawal of the recruitment of engineers for specific teams and said the company was still actively recruiting machine learning and artificial intelligence positions. In a statement shared with the verge, he said: "as implied in our recent earnings, we are assessing the key priorities of the whole company and focusing on them, especially those related to our core business and Reality Laboratory".
Inside reality labs is responsible for manufacturing the metauniverse software and hardware on which Zuckerberg bet the company's future. Chief technology officer Andrew Bosworth recently told employees that some projects will be de prioritized and supported others, which was first reported by Reuters. Employees will not be transferred out of the Department. The total number of employees in the Department has exceeded 17000, and the specific team changes have not been reported internally.