Meta Platforms Inc has slashed 30 percent from its hiring plans for engineers this year as it fears a deep economic downturn.

The company confirmed its hiring pause in broad terms last month. The original hiring target was 10,000, now it has been reduced to around 6000-7000.

Additionally, the company seems to be leaving certain positions unfilled as it responds to attrition and performance management to remove employees who are unable to meet aggressive targets.

The company is coping with macroeconomic pressures and data privacy to its advertisement business, it is now bracing for a leaner second half of the year.

Word on the street suggests that the company is prioritizing ruthlessly and molding its executive teams to operate leaner, meaner and better.

Since the company views its position as being in a tough spot facing fierce headwinds and thus, feels the need to execute flawlessly in a fierce environment of slower growth. It expects that its teams should not expect vast influxes of new engineers and budgets.

Meta executives, who are trimming costs much of the company this year in facing slowing advertisement sales and user growth, the guidance appears to be the latest rough forecast to come from the executives.

Other tech companies are also bracing for a possible US recession by scaling back their ambitions, although the drop in stock price in Meta has been more severe than competitors such as Apple and Google.

This year, Meta already lost half of its market value, including a quarterly decline from daily users of its Facebook app.

Therefore, its stern attitude appears to arise at a tricky time spinning around two major strategies with one aimed at re-fashioning its social media products around discovery to step up its game against Tik Tok. The other is an expensive long-term bet on augmented reality and virtual reality technology.

To support its discovery push, the company is hoping to increase the graphic processing units (GPUs) by fivefold in its data centers this year. It also appears to be increasing computing power for artificial intelligence to surface popular posts across Facebook and Instagram in users’ feeds.