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A growing number of companies are freezing or slowing hiring. Here are the firms making changes, from Meta to Wayfair.

Mary Meisenzahl   

A growing number of companies are freezing or slowing hiring. Here are the firms making changes, from Meta to Wayfair.
  • Companies that experienced major growth over the last few years are tightening their belts.
  • Executives referenced economic shifts in their messaging.

Tech and e-commerce companies are slowing down after the explosive growth of the last few years.

Businesses like Wayfair, Meta, and DoorDash grew spending and hired throughout the pandemic, but now they're taking a step back. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq are both down since the start of the year, inflation is at historic levels, and interest rates are increasing, all leading to a shift in the economy.

Here are some prominent companies freezing or slowing hiring:

Wayfair

Wayfair said it will freeze hiring in corporate roles for 90 days, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday. The move is in response to "a great deal of uncertainty in the overall economy," a spokesperson told Bloomberg.

The online furniture retailer saw business spike by 55% in 2020 as shoppers stuck at home bought new furniture and decor. Then sales slowed down, and the company was plagued by supply chain issues delaying orders by months.

Wayfair has nearly 17,000 employees.

Meta

Facebook parent Meta paused hiring on many roles for the rest of 2022, according to an internal memo obtained by Insider. The social media giant will also reduce hiring goals across other divisions of the company, a rarity after it announced a 10,000-person hiring spree in 2021 to build the metaverse.

A Meta spokesperson told Insider that the company "regularly re-evaluates" its hiring strategy.

In February, Facebook reported a decline in users for the first time ever, and stock prices quickly plummeted 22%.

Uber

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi announced to workers that the company will slow spending across the business, according to an internal email obtained by CNBC.

Uber will treat hiring as a "privilege" while slashing spending on marketing and incentives in response to a "seismic shift" in the market.

"This next period will be different, and it will require a different approach," Khosrowshahi wrote in the email.

DoorDash

DoorDash CEO Tony Xu told workers in April that the company will slow down hiring in the rest of 2022. This year, the delivery service plans to grow its numbers by 10% to 15%, Xu said, a major slowdown after more than doubling in size in 2021.

Like other tech companies, DoorDash saw an explosion of growth early in the pandemic as demand for delivery skyrocketed, but that growth hasn't continued as food prices increase and customers have more options for delivery and dine in.

Coinbase

Coinbase is slowing hiring plans, president and COO Emilie Choi shared in a public note. At the beginning of 2022, Coinbase planned to triple its size this year, but now "we feel it's prudent to slow hiring and reassess our headcount," Choi wrote.

Coinbase is the largest cryptocurrency exchange, and the news comes after a significant downturn across the crypto market. Bitcoin's value has halved in the last six months, and other coins have followed. Coinbase shares are down 75% and it says it is losing users.

Twitter

Twitter is pausing most hiring and possibly rescinding some job offers, the tech company confirmed to Insider. CEO Parag Agrawal said the company isn't planning layoffs, but has failed to meet audience and profit goals.

Twitter and Elon Musk previously agreed to a deal where Musk would buy the website for $44 billion, but the deal is on hold while Musk says he needs proof about the number of bot accounts on the social media platform.

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