Facebook, Amazon, Uber and other US tech companies put the brakes on hiring

Several US tech companies, such as Facebook, Uber, Amazon and Twitter, are slowing their hiring as the industry, which has had good results in the pandemic, is going through a difficult period.

On the sidelines of the publication of the quarterly results of the groups listed on Wall Street, several announcements were made.

During a phone call with analysts in late April, David Wehner, chief financial officer of Meta, the parent company of Facebook, referred to an “adjustment” in hiring targets.

“We periodically reassess our talent pool based on our business needs,” a Meta spokesperson told AFP.

“We’re holding back growth [das contratações] according to our cost forecasts, communicated in our latest results”, he added, specifying that the long-term objective is still to increase the group’s workforce, which employed 77,805 people at the end of March, 28% more than there has been. one year.

Another tech giant and the second-largest US employer behind Walmart, Amazon, suggested it would not hire more staff immediately. The company had 1.6 million employees at the end of 2021, more than double the number in 2019.

“When the variant [ômicron] declined in the second half of the first quarter, and employees came back from vacation, we quickly went from understaffed to overstaffed,” said group CFO Brian Olsavsky.

Amid Elon Musk’s announcements about a possible purchase of Twitter, the social network decided to suspend non-essential hiring.

As for Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, he wrote in an email to company employees published by CNBC that new hires should be “treated as a privilege”.

Inflation

The reasons for these job freezes vary from company to company. Facebook, for example, points to the impact on its ad revenue of Apple’s new rules on data sharing.

Meanwhile, Twitter is mired in a wave of uncertainty following Musk’s decision to buy the company, and Uber is suffering heavy losses from its investments in several startups in shaky financial health.

But there are also common factors, such as the end of the confinement economy and the progressive lifting of health restrictions.

“Many tech companies have responded to the growing demand for digital services by contracting and expanding their businesses over the past couple of years,” said Terry Kramer, an adjunct professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Business, citing the emblematic case of video conferencing platform Zoom. .

“A lot of what we’re seeing right now is a phase of technology maturity where these companies can’t and don’t need to keep growing at the same rate,” continues Kramer.

Another factor that weighs on the sector is the continuous and high inflation. Rising prices put pressure on the US central bank (Fed) to raise interest rates, making it difficult for companies to borrow, a situation especially unfavorable for technology companies.

“Many who opted for a growth strategy, not expecting short-term profits, thought they could continue to make money in the stock market or through private investors,” explains economic forecaster Daniil Manaenkov of the University of Michigan.