Big Tech Hiring Freezes Stack Up as Slowdown Looms

The market is cooling — and some tech giants are literally freezing. (Hiring, that is.)

On Tuesday, Uber and Lyft became the latest major enterprises to announce hiring freezes amid the recent market downturn that has iced public company valuations and left privately funded startups in a cash crunch.

The hiring freezes are meant to stave off layoffs, but they might not be enough if the market keeps spiraling. The S&P 500 index has fallen by nearly 20% since a recent peak in late March. And on Tuesday, social media stocks collectively lost roughly $135 billion in value after Snapchat’s parent company admitted it will miss revenue and profit forecasts.

Thousands of tech workers have already lost their jobs in the past week alone. Netflix laid off 150 workers after it reported a net loss in subscribers for the first time in a decade. PayPal cut 83 employees from its San Jose HQ. And Swedish buy-now, pay-later pioneer Klarna eliminated about 700 jobs — roughly 10% of its global workforce — following reports that the company was seeking funding at a discounted valuation.

Here are the tech juggernauts to freeze hiring so far this month:

Meta

In early May, Meta became the first tech giant to freeze hiring — an “unprecedented” step for the Facebook and Instagram parent, Insider reported. CFO David Wehner blamed an "industry-wide downturn" and said the freeze would affect nearly every team at the company.

→ click for Meta’s Org chart

Salesforce

Nearly a year after it paid nearly $28 billion to buy Slack, San Francisco-based Salesforce is slowing hiring and pausing some recruitment to conserve cash, according to Insider. The company is also dialing back off-sites and other expenses.

→ click for Salesforce’s Org chart

Twitter

Turmoil has reigned at the blue bird social media company in the wake of Elon Musk’s plans to pay $44 billion to take it private. That deal, announced in April, now looks uncertain — and at least five executives have since left the company or been pushed out. CEO Parag Agrawal said on May 12 that Twitter would freeze hiring and rescind some standing job offers.

→ click for Twitter’s Org chart

Coinbase

As the price of bitcoin crumbles, popular cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase will cool on hiring. “Heading into this year, we planned to triple the size of the company,” COO Emilie Choi wrote in a blog post on May 17. “Given current market conditions, we feel it’s prudent to slow hiring and reassess our headcount needs against our highest-priority business goals.”

→ click for Coinbase’s Org chart

Snap

The company behind Snapchat reported a bleak financial outlook earlier this week that pulled share prices down nearly 40%. CEO Evan Spiegel stopped short of a total freeze, but he’s hitting the hiring brakes. Snap will add just 500 more people this year, compared to 2,000+ over the past 12 months. “We continue to face rising inflation and interest rates, supply chain shortages and labor disruptions, platform policy changes, the impact of the war in Ukraine and more,” he wrote in an internal memo obtained by The Verge.

→ click for Snap’s Org chart

Uber

Ride-sharing giant Uber is freezing hiring across the entire business, Insider reported on May 24. CEO Dara Khosrowshahi reportedly insists that layoffs are not in the cards.

→ click for Uber’s Org chart

Lyft

The pink ride-share rival quickly followed suit on May 24. President John Zimmer sent a memo to staff saying that Lyft will slow hiring in the U.S., reduce some departmental budgets and grant new stock options to employees in response to a stock price that’s fallen by 60% so far this year, according to The Wall Street Journal.

→ click for Lyft’s Org chart

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