Meta Facing Mass Employee Exodus, Will Limit Hiring in 2022

The social platform-turned-tech conglomerate enjoyed a “better-than-expected” earnings call in late April as it shared its Q1 2022 revenue, but that might be its last hurrah for a short while. Meta’s current revenue forecasts are bleak: the company expects to take a hit as Russia continues its war on Ukraine, causing both user registration and advertising demand to take a dip. There’s also Apple’s new App Tracking Transparency (ATT) feature, which limits advertisers’ ability to view an iOS user’s unique identifier (required for targeted ads). The ATT feature will allow users to toggle this visibility themselves, something Apple expects more than 60 percent of users to take advantage of. Meta expects this alone to result in a $10 billion loss for Facebook.

In light of these anticipated financial difficulties, Meta has said it’s slowing hiring to cut costs. It’s already stopped hiring any entry-level engineers over the last few weeks, but now it’s pumping the brakes on “some mid- to senior-level positions.” Funny coincidence, though: Meta has also experienced a “mass employee exodus” in recent weeks.

Meta’s workforce (77,800 strong as of late March) seems to be hemorrhaging workers as people across various lines of business are choosing to ditch the company. But Zuckerberg insists this is a good thing, not a red flag: “I don’t think this sort of volatility … is always that unhealthy for making sure you have the right people,” he told Business Insider a couple weeks ago. Zuckerberg went on to say many now-former employees likely only stayed at the company up until recently because it was a stable job during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, and that they probably “didn’t care that much” about Facebook-slash-Meta’s actual goals. As Meta pivots toward building out its vision of the metaverse, Zuckerberg appears comfortable with keeping only the employees who are down for a riskier endeavor.

Alternatively, those who don’t stand for Meta’s mission and values are worried their experience working for the company will leave a “black mark” on their resumes. Meta has reportedly had to bolster its compensation packages for new employees who are concerned about how the company will impact their image. If Meta is actually putting a pause on hiring, though, this isn’t something it will have to worry about for a while.

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