Google Parent the alphabet Will slow the pace of hiring and investments until 2023, CEO Sundar Pichai He said in an email to employees on Tuesday.

Pichai wrote in the memo, seen by CNBC, “Like all businesses, we are not immune to economic headwinds. We need to be more entrepreneurial with greater urgency, sharper focus, and more hunger than we showed on sunny days.” .

He began by acknowledging that “the uncertain global economic outlook was our top priority.”

Shares of Alphabet are down 21% so far this year, falling along with the rest of the tech industry as investors rotate out of the stocks that have led the bull market in the past decade. The a company miss Analysts’ estimates for the first quarter, Chief Financial Officer Ruth Porat warned Another difficult period could await us.

Growth in the first quarter slowed to 23% from a year earlier, down from 34% growth in the first three months of 2021, when the economy was opening up from the pandemic. However, Pichai said in the letter that the company hired 10,000 employees in the second quarter.

“Because of the progress in hiring made so far this year, we will slow the pace of hiring for the rest of the year, while continuing to support our most important opportunity,” he wrote. “For the 2022 and 2023 budgets, the company will focus on staffing in engineering, technical, and other critical roles.”

A Google spokesperson declined to comment.

Google, which has historically invested heavily in research and development, will also be more specific about where it spends money during this period of economic uncertainty.

“In some cases, it means consolidation where investments overlap and operations are simplified,” Pichai wrote. In other cases, he said, it would mean “stopping development and reallocating resources to areas of higher priority.”

Pichai ended the memo by telling the staff that “rarity breeds clarity” and emphasizing, “I am excited to rise to this moment again.”

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