Meta Hiring Freeze

Background

Meta is the parent company of Facebook. The hiring plans of Meta have been slashed by at least 30% in the current year. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has informed the employees of Meta that the company is preparing for a period of deep uncertainty. The fear of a recession and economic turmoil has cast a dark shadow over the hiring of new employees. Resource utilization and attrition continues to be a critical factor for Meta. The hiring target has been reduced by Meta to about 7,000 in the current year. The initial plan for Meta was to hire an amazing 12,000 employees in the current year. Salary hikes and promotions are also like to take a hit in the current year for Meta. Meta is also relieving employees of their duties who are unable to meet their goals. Performance management has been fine-tuned to make sure guidelines are adhered to strictly. With people concerned with data privacy, now is indeed not one of the best time in Meta.

Meta Performance Management

Mark Zuckerberg has said that there are a lot of people in Meta who should not be there. What this means is the organization will not start finding out the bottom level performers in the company. Setting up a higher benchmark for performance is one way that Mark Zuckerberg hopes to achieve this goal. A series of aggressive goals is expected to turn up the heat of performance optimization and motivation among the employees of Meta. Meta owns the products Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp among its most popular offerings. The vision of Meta is now to be more ruthless to be efficient economically in these uncertain times. Budgetary constraints and resource scarcity will thus continue to be the new normal for Meta with the hiring freeze in place. Meta informed they would not be able to offer any full time offers to current interns until at least the end of the current year. Meta also aims to keep the overall number of job offers at a minimal. Let’s learn more from this report.

Facebook hiring freeze and active app users

The number of active users in Meta continues to decline. Faced by intense scrutiny for selling user data to advertisers and analytical firms, Facebook had lost the ethical battle to keep user’s trust. People today post less in Facebook than they used to do 5 years back. Lesser posting means lesser content for users to consume. This is directly affecting the core of Meta’s business model. Without user content, their business model vaporizes into thin air. Analytics show new users are preferring platforms like TikTok over Meta products. The creepiness of the advertisements and suggested posts by Meta algorithms is too intense for humans. No one wants to see the advertisement for a bug spray all over their feed minutes after they were talking to their neighbor over some infestation. How Meta captures these user data from our voices even without us searching on the internet is a cause of intense privacy concern for many today.

Meta looking at Reels as last resort

The algorithm of TikTok which focuses on content discovery has proved to be far more acceptable to users rather than the algorithm by Meta which focuses on user based content. If someone likes a video of shooting in Facebook, the person’s entire feed will continue to be enriched by videos of violence. This in term leads to more violence. There has been instances around the world where Facebook’s algorithm has been weaponized. Clearly a social media company as large as Meta has some ethical responsibility, and TikTok has resolved that problem. TikTok’s algorithm has so far proven to be resilient to the types of hate mongering that Facebook has often been used for. It is also evident that Meta is not ready to take on TikTok just yet. Facebook Reels which is aimed to compete with TikTok is planned to use similar discovery algorithms like TikTok, but Facebook is lacking the hardware that it needs. Hence Meta is planning to keep increasing the number of Graphic Processing Units it currently has to help power content discovery using AI. Facebook Reels has seen an increase in user engagement over the years.

“The version of Facebook that exists today is tearing our societies apart and causing ethnic violence around the world,” says former Facebook employee France Haugen. She points to Myanmar, where the military used Facebook to launch a genocide. https://t.co/WU4IumjHkO pic.twitter.com/cy9Ed9MgbH
— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) October 3, 2021

Facebook Reels ads raise data privacy concern

Meta will prioritize increasing its revenue from Facebook Reels by selling advertisements now. This highlights the reality that if a product is free, you are the end product. TikTok will undoubtedly come out as a winner again because the Facebook Ad algorithms are extremely poor and keep showing irrelevant advertisement. It is highly uncertain how far the content discovery infrastructure of Meta will improve it’s user experience. With poor experience will come poor financial profitability and in turn result in more employee performance management pressure.

Meta Hiring Freeze Facebook Data Privacy Poor Performance Stock Employee Management — Meta Hiring Freeze fueled by dismal Facebook growth

There is a certain line of user acceptance and algorithmic user feed generation that Facebook does not seem to realize. Just because something can be done using expert computer engineers and state of the art technologies does not mean it has to be done. A dedicated team of ethics and social impact should approve any such changes to the app and algorithm before rolling them out to the broader public. Facebook Reels continue to be a major part of the content discovery engine for Meta, but only time will tell how much user will love it more than what drove them away from Facebook in the first place. Cambria also helps sustain Meta in the mixed-reality segment.

Meta Hiring Freeze Exceptions

Even though the Meta hiring freeze continues, a Meta spokesperson mentioned that hiring for Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence roles are continuing as normal. Meta has clear vision on products to develop using ML and AI at Reality Labs and hence there is no change to investment and hiring in these segments. There are reprioritization of projects going on in the metaverse space that Meta is betting heavily on, and these projects form a major part of the near future vision of Meta. Restructuring is the focus due to reprioritizing now. Based on skills and priority of the tasks employees will be reassigned to new responsibilities. A rapid fall of Meta stock due to sell off will not change the vision how Meta focuses on handling its metaverse plans. With the right decisions, Meta can comeback even stronger. Meta has the financials to take a hit like what we are seeing now, and recover stronger with a robust vision and a talented pool of engineers working hard.

Meta Hiring Freeze Reddit

The discussions among users in Reddit are trending on the Meta hiring freeze. Here are couple of most popular discussions on the hiring freeze. The global hiring pause is being discussed for example here for different grades.

Meta Global hiring pause from leetcode

Meta has also informed managers to identify people who can be laid off. So make sure to be in sync with your manager’s expectations and deliver stellar performances unless you want to get laid off. Have discussions and learn what more is expected from you.

Meta reportedly tells managers to identify people for layoffs from technology

Meta has slowed down their hiring in a severe cost-cutting measure triggered huge discussions in this Reddit post. The Meta stock and earnings has come under severe scrutiny in recent times. A major factor of that is due to the government push on ethical practices and testimonies which did not help in good press for Facebook.

Facebook Parent Meta Slows Hiring in Cost-Cutting Push from stocks

The Meta hiring freeze continues to flood Reddit and it is insightful to read the comments from people coming from various backgrounds and aspirations. For many, Meta had been a road to a bright future, but which will no longer be the case now.

Meta hiring freeze from stocks

Candidates who wanted join Meta are confused. What are you doing during this freeze period? Comment and ask me and my fellow blog readers. How is the Meta hiring freeze affecting your career aspirations? Do you have a backup plan for joining another company like Alphabet, Google, or Amazon?

Should I wait out the hiring freeze at Meta, or proceed with offers elsewhere? from UXResearch

Starting with the international crisis owing to hate algorithms fueling violence in countries like Malaysia and Nigeria, to analytical firms like Cambridge Analytica misusing Facebook user data for shady purposes other than advertising - Meta is facing testing times the last few years. Can Meta come out of this tainted image? Big corporations like Meta can handle such uncertain scenarios better than smaller peers. However with the discussions happening like above in the social platform among the employees of Meta and Meta aspirants who wanted to be a part of the organization, it appears the goodwill and employee focused policies of Meta is also taking a hit. I will be closely monitoring how the situation turns out. We are all eventually at the end of the day working hard for a better economy and brighter future for all of us. And Meta is not outside the global ecosystem. It is hopefully only a matter of time we all get to love Meta for what it used to be, and what it is going to become in the future. Are you preparing for Meta interview? Try and see if you can answer the Meta interview questions below.

Coding Question 1

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Insight Crunch

Meta Hiring Freeze

Background

Meta Performance Management

Facebook hiring freeze and active app users

Meta looking at Reels as last resort

Facebook Reels ads raise data privacy concern

Meta Hiring Freeze Exceptions

Meta Hiring Freeze Reddit

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Author: Rahul Bhattacharya

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Background

Meta Performance Management

Facebook hiring freeze and active app users

Meta looking at Reels as last resort

Facebook Reels ads raise data privacy concern

Meta Hiring Freeze Exceptions

Meta Hiring Freeze Reddit

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Related

Author: Rahul Bhattacharya

1 thought on “Meta Hiring Freeze”

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