Meta Won’t Be Hiring Anyone Anytime Soon — Here’s Why and When It Will Start

Meta will not be hiring anyone in the immediate future.

According to a statement from Meta's Chief Financial Officer, David Wehner, the company won't be able to take in anyone due to missed revenue targets, per Business Insider.

Meta's recruitment freeze is effective immediately and is expected to affect other teams in the coming weeks.

Meta Recruitment Freeze Details

According to Business Insider's report, Meta decided to cut back on its recruitment efforts due to the missed revenue targets. Wehner said in an internal memo that the company freezing its recruitment efforts as part of its "reprioritization" as it tackles the reasons behind the company missing its revenue targets.

This effort is evidenced by a statement from Meta's spokesperson earlier this week, saying that Meta is slowing its growth according to its business needs and in light of the expense guidance given for the current earnings period.

"We will continue to grow our workforce to ensure we focus on long-term impact," the spokesperson said.

These missed targets could be directly attributed to Meta's increased losses from its investment in the metaverse, which has worried the company's investors.

You may remember that Meta's Reality Labs' latest operating cost during the first quarter in 2022 is $1.13 billion higher than what the company spent in the same period in 2021, which was $1.83 billion.

Additionally, Meta's stock fell by 50%, negatively offsetting the growth Meta experienced in the past five years.

The last time Meta froze its recruitment efforts were during the initial onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, when the company struggled to enact processes to onboard new hires at the time, per a separate report from Business Insider.

According to the company's head of recruiting, Miranda Kalinowski, the company's engineering team would be the first to be affected by these hiring decisions, while Meta's management continues to adjust hiring targets in the company's other departments. However, both Kalinowski and Wehner confirmed that the freeze would affect almost every team in the company.

Meanwhile, Reality Labs, the cause of Meta's losses due to Zuckerberg's level of investment in them and the metaverse, won't be immediately affected.

You may remember Meta hired 10,000 workers in the European Union as an investment to build up its dream of the metaverse. The company focused on Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Poland, the Netherlands, and Ireland to find and recruit the talent needed, per the Wall Street Journal.

However, Protocol reported that a hiring crisis was occurring within Meta during the middle to late 2021, when engineers from the Bay Area were turning down offers due to them being more interested in being hired quickly, an internal memo revealed.

What Is Meta Doing about The Freeze?

Zuckerberg was previously reported to have acknowledged investors' woes regarding the company's level of investment in the metaverse, admitting that developing and building a web version of Horizon Worlds and creator monetization features in Meta's social VR app.

Horizon Worlds is an online video game developed and published by Meta for the Oculus Rift S and Oculus Quest 2, per the game's official website. This game is the metaverse Meta is aspiring to fully develop.

However, Zuckerberg assured investors that the investment placed on the metaverse is worth the reisk, saying that the products it devleoped and currently developing have yet to hit the market and scale in a meaningful way.

Zuckerberg also added that profits from these investments won't come until 2030.