Google has announced that will slow its pace of hiring for the rest of 2022 and told employees to “be more entrepreneurial,” Bloomberg reported. Much like Meta and other tech companies, CEO Sundar Pichai cited an “uncertain global economic outlook” for the change of pace and said that the company would consolidate operations and streamline “where investments overlap.”

Google’s pace of hiring was also torrid in the second quarter of 2022 as the company added 10,000 new employees to its 163,906 workforce, up 17 percent year over year. For the rest of 2022, however, Google will focus hiring on engineering, technical and other crucial roles.

Moving forward, we need to be more entrepreneurial, working with greater urgency, sharper focus, and more hunger than we’ve shown on sunnier days. In some cases, that means consolidating where investments overlap and streamlining processes. In other cases, that means pausing deployment and re-deploying resources to higher priority areas.

Microsoft also plans to cut a small number of jobs due to a realignment in its business groups, according to Bloomberg. Those will affect groups including consulting and partner solutions around the world. However, the company plans to continue hiring in other roles and will finish 2022 with a higher number of employees. 

Other tech firms have said that the slowing economy will affect hiring. (August 28, 2022), Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg warned employees that “one of the worst downturns [it has seen] in recent history” could affect the company, while telling managers to “move to exit” poor performers “who are unable to get on track.” Netflix, Unity, Coinbase and Paypal have all recently cut jobs as well.