The big tech big freeze
Yesterday Google announced a hiring freeze, with the search engine giant putting a pause on all hiring for 2 weeks as the company reviews their "headcount needs".
That announcement adds Google's name to the growing list of tech companies that have announced hiring freezes or slowdowns. Earlier this week Apple announced its intentions to slow hiring into 2023, while Meta announced a halt of hiring on some of its key engineering roles a few weeks ago and Microsoft is pulling a number of open jobs in the company's cloud and security divisions.
Not-quite-so-big-tech companies Twitter and SNAP are also feeling the squeeze, with both reporting slowing sales and ad revenue this morning.
Even if only short-lived, the announcements end a decade of almost non-stop hiring for much of big tech. A decade ago Google employed just 32,000 people. Today its parent company has more than 156,000. In the same time frame Facebook went from 3,200 employees to more than 71,000Metamates, while Apple and Microsoft both added more than 90,000. How long it takes to thaw out the freeze is likely to depend on if — or perhaps when — the US economy falls into a recession.
