Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announces hiring freeze, warns of downsizing: report

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Thursday reportedly announced that the firm would impose a hiring freeze and begin shrinking its personnel roster for the first time.

An eyewitness present at the company's weekly Q&A session told Bloomberg that the Facebook founder largely blamed the uncertain economic future for the decision.

"I had hoped the economy would have more clearly stabilized by now," Zuckerberg said. "But from what we're seeing it doesn't yet seem like it has, so we want to plan somewhat conservatively."

"[W]e want to make sure we're not adding people to teams where we don't expect to have roles next year," he said of the hiring freeze. Meta had more than 83,500 employees as of June 30 of this year, per the outlet.

The restructuring will mark the first significant budget cut since Facebook's 2004 founding. Zuckerberg noted that the firm would take a decentralized approach to the headcount reductions.

While it plans to make cuts across all teams, the firm will do so via various methods, including leaving vacant positions held by deported employees and shifting personnel across teams. It could also "manage out people who aren't succeeding," Bloomberg noted.