Google CEO says company will slow hiring amid economic conditions

The company will focus on hiring engineering and technical roles

Google’s Bay View campus in Mountain View, Calif. (Noah Berger/AFP/Getty Images)

Google will slow down its pace of hiring in response to an “uncertain” global economic outlook, chief executive Sundar Pichai wrote in an email to employees that was obtained by The Washington Post.

The company has already hired thousands of employees this year and will continue to hire, but it will start focusing its hiring efforts on engineering and other “technical” roles, Pichai wrote in the memo.

“We need to be more entrepreneurial, working with greater urgency, sharper focus and more hunger than we’ve shown on sunnier days,” Pichai said.

Tech companies have slowed investment and hiring over the past several months as rising interest rates have sparked concerns about a possible recession in the United States and abroad. Several start-ups have said in the past two months that they would cut staff, and venture capital investors have warned companies to prepare for tougher conditions ahead.

Stocks continued to fall Tuesday as the euro sank, reaching nearly the same price as the U.S. dollar. The Dow Jones industrial average shed more than 192 points.

“There has been an enormous amount of pessimism in recent months,” Kristina Hooper, chief global market strategist for Invesco, told The Post.

Google’s parent company Alphabet had nearly 164,000 employees as of its last quarterly report.