Microsoft will slow down its hiring for its Windows, Office and Teams chat and conferencing software group in an effort to realign staffing priorities.
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Slowdown Not Company-Wide
From now on new hires will have to be approved by Executive Vice President Rajesh Jha and his leadership team.
A spokesperson said that the groups earlier mentioned have expanded recently and the company wants to make sure it’s making the right hires in the right places.
They clarified that the slowed pace of hiring is not happening companywide and overall the company will continue to hire.
Microsoft will continue to grow headcount in the year ahead and it will add additional focus to where those resources go (the hired employees).
The spokesperson said that this kind of vigilance is typical in periods of economic volatility.
Microsoft’s share prices are down this year, from around $330 at the beginning of January to around $265 today.
Peers Take Similar Steps
Other big tech companies have also suspended hiring as fears of an economic recession escalate
Chipmaker Nvidia Corp said that it will decelerate hiring in the second half of fiscal 2023 as a way “to focus our budget on taking care of existing employees as inflation persists.”
Facebook will initiate a hiring freeze through the rest of this year.
Amazon is also cutting hiring targets.
Startups Forced To Lay Off En Masse
Uber has put in place a broad hiring freeze.
While the big companies can afford to simply slow down their hiring pace, smaller companies and startups have had to lay off a significant number of employees.
Several of those layoffs took place on video calls because workers are largely still remote.