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Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has announced that the company plans to reduce its 2022 hiring target from 10,000 new engineers to 6,000-7,000 as a result of the ongoing market crash. Meta had confirmed hiring pauses last month, but this is the first concrete number to be reported.

First reported by Reuters, Zuckerberg made the announcement at a weekly question and answer session with the Meta team. In addition to the hiring freeze, Zuckerberg also said the company would be leaving certain positions unfilled due to attrition, and demanding more during performance evaluations.

“Part of my hope by raising expectations and having more aggressive goals, and just kind of turning up the heat a little bit is that I think some of you might decide that this place isn’t for you, and that self-selection is OK with me,” he said.

Reflecting the market reality, Zuckerberg was ruthless in his assessment of the need to trim the fat from the Meta team. “Realistically, there are probably a bunch of people at the company who shouldn’t be here,” he said.

Zuckerberg explained his decision-making process by saying that he believes that the next few months are going to be among the worst seen in recent history. “If I had to bet, I’d say that this might be one of the worst downturns that we’ve seen in recent history,” he said.

This attitude was reflected in an internal memo written by Chief Product Officer Chris Cox, and seen by Reuters. In it, Cox wrote, “I have to underscore that we are in serious times here and the headwinds are fierce. We need to execute flawlessly in an environment of slower growth, where teams should not expect vast influxes of new engineers and budgets,”