What if the market goes up and stays up? Fed does or doesnt hike rates? Do you really want to play hiring catch up when everyone else has a 2 year head start?
Also, your board of directors doesn't give a shit about the reason, they only care what is being done in response.
In particular, hiring benefits don't take effect immediately, it's going to be a while before productivity is realized from the new hires. So it is very short-sighted to freeze that before an economic downturn, when you want new forms of revenue and innovation to allow you to outlast the competition and grow a business into something that will become the "next big thing".
Also, as a commentary, it makes it more clear that your stock is actually stable, because the only thing that's really changed is inflation and catch up to reality from the fed turning off the money hose.
Are you saying that because stock prices are dropping that the market has reacted to excessive headcount?
Cause I think a better explanation for that, is that in the past 2 years we've had inflation, and that was reflected in the profits of the companies for 2020-21, and now that the fed is lowering interest rates, we're expecting that inflation to stop, and so that's affecting the stock market.
This seems to have very little to do with these companies business models, and everything to do with them failing to recognize that their profit changes are readily explained by inflation/deflation. Which seems to be a better explanation of what the markets are reacting to.