Meta fires staffers for using $25 meal credits on household goods
Meta fires staffers for using $25 meal credits on household goods
Some workers pooled their money or had meals delivered to their homes.
Gotta get creative with your layoffs when you already did massive layoffs but still need to please wall street.
I don't think Meta thought this through, unless the staff already know you can be fired for small things like this. Sure, they stretched what you are supposed to spend money on, broke the rules, fine. Fuck around, find out, not something i do professionally. But it's $25. You're a 1.5$ trillion company. It comes off as petty.
If I was still working at Meta, I'd be job hunting. And maybe that's what they want. Maybe they need to downsize some more.
But eventually Meta will have the minimum amount of staff and need to grow again or necessary people will leave, and when they try to hire people they may find this article and demand more money to make up for the pettiness or they won't apply, because no one likes to be under a microscope.
And maybe that’s what they want
It's absolutely what they want. I think they're trying to cull their workforce, and cracking down on random policies in this way is intended to get people to leave w/o having to pay out severance packages.
they may find this article and demand more money
I highly doubt that. People will continue to apply to Meta because it's a prestigious job and pays remarkably well. Unfortunately, Meta will get away with this, and it's honestly disgusting to me.
100% agree on your first point.
I would caution your second point. A few years ago, news articles pointed out Meta had to pay people more compared to other similar companies due to people not wanting to work there. Sadly Google search isn't showing me those older articles.
A few websites are saying Meta's
averagemedian pay is 379k (Zuckerberg takes a $1 so he isn't driving that number) vs Google at $315k vs Microsoft $193k vs Nvidia 267k. That's a lot of difference. So running a company like a pedant has a real dollar difference, especially for workers who can demand it. Meta lost a lot of money on the Metaverse and they are spending to catch up AI, meaning they already have to be competitive for employees compared to other companies. Add in the perks are a trap to get fired, and your costs just keep going up. Perks are typically offered in lieu of higher costs and in this case incentive people to work longer in an office. Now they leave for food or go home and you have lost those benefits.Definitely seems like they want the layoff from my position in the industry.
The tech megagiants are massively reallocating their budgets from "paying people for new product development" to datacenter build-outs, under the belief that AI will fundamentally restructure all knowledge work into property you can own and extract rent from.
Unfortunately the industry is completely non union and a good chunk of employees are on H1B or TN visas where they will get deported if they get fired. That really puts a damper on wanting to rock the boat.
Expect things to get less stable and shittier over time as this trend continues.
I’m just trying to understand how UberEats is a good way to feed an office. Are we talking about 3 people in a WeWork space somewhere? I can’t imagine 250 UberEats orders all arriving somewhere at once and getting to the right people. Or even 25.
Oh, it's terrible. The entire policy is Bananas. And you can't pool funds? So if it is 3 people, $75 worth of pizza will feed them for a long time. But they got fired for pooling them.
How much time were the Accountants spending verifying this? Or did workers just receive vouchers? If a handful of people were abusing it, how did they notice? No refunds on vouchers, so you'd assume an amount of late nights and then refill as needed. It was already budgeted, so it's a sunk cost.
Also in some places I've worked, $25 after the delivery costs isn't that much food either. I'd be ignoring that perk forever if I still worked there, too much red tape.
Your fine with people violating your trust? Because that's what you're advocating.
If people are going to show they're willing to scam the company and steal from it, why would you keep them around.
Sorry, I would have a zero tolerance policy on theft. I've seen it first hand in a small business and in a massive retailer, not cool.
Really depends on how valuable all of the staff are. I too have seen theft of small and large offices I've worked in. Personally didn't buy pens until I started working from home. I also did the accounting and budgeting for office supplies and products from the product line (beer), which sometimes had free samples taken from it. Executives loved to grab samples daily. We ensured this was added to employees paychecks as a perk for tax purposes, but not down to the individual beer. We also had talks with anyone who took over their fair share.
The cost always came down to pennies per person. Their value as a worker was typically more valuable then micromanaging them and creating an environment where they were punished. Average employee made more for the company daily then what they took home. If they knew it was fine within some limits (which most did and I would argue these Meta workers were within given their pay/value of the company), it's actually better to just ignore it.
Now the remaining employees and future employees know any mistake could cost them their job, with no major warning, just 2 strikes and your out.
When you take this personally ("violating your trust"), you end up creating a shitty place to work to soothe your ego.
people violating your trust?
Implying any of us are equivalent to a $1.5 trillion social media monopoly that has more political and social power than any other organization on the planet. Sure Jan, any one of us is exactly like that.
Shut the fuck up lmaooooo they already expect the employees to spend $25 per day, meal or not.
There’s no maliciousness from employees at that point, only real people trying to meet their needs so that they can keep working. FOR YOU!
Corps keep squeezing labor more and more, time to squeeze back a piddling little bit
Have you worked for a corpo?
"Trust" lol
I would just give them the voucher if they are in the office and let them decide what to do with it.
I would just convince everyone at the company to use their full credit every single day from now on. Give the food to a homeless person or something.
Fired for illegally feeding the homeless.
Staff are given daily allowances of $20 for breakfast, $25 for lunch, and $25 for dinner, with meal credits issued in $25 increments.
Hot damn this is absolutely wild. Even if you only look at lunch, that’s ~$6k/person. If you add in breakfast and dinner that’s ~$17k/person.
including acne pads, wine glasses, and laundry detergent.
My first thought is that this entire article reads like a camouflaged press release from Meta.
The source for the article seems to be an anonymous, internal leak, but those “leaks” are often from the company itself as a way to send a message while maintaining plausible deniability.
My second thought is that they are grouping together wildly different types of infractions without saying how many people were guilty of each one. It’s possible that one person was committing outright fraud while everyone else was just accused of a minor technicality.
Finally, the accusation of “pooling” funds seems like a big tell. That’s what you should want the employees to do to save the company money. Without specific details about why that was wrong this sounds more like a gotcha than a legitimate reason to fire someone.
All of these together make this article seem like a way of scaring employees into resigning so they can cut the workforce without being subject to WARN act requirements.
I work in a Meta office nearby, it's the talk of the town, many people think it's true.
The only thing that I could imagine would make the pooling look really bad is if one or more people are not going to use their credit and so they “pool” it in with someone else who does want to use it, and the latter employee now has a $50/$75/etc. credit.
But honestly why is that bad? I’m vegan and I work at a bakery. When we get to eat products that I don’t eat, I pass my portion to my coworkers, because obviously. When we made alcohol out of our leftover bread, my observant Muslim coworkers gave us their bottles.
The employees are happier and we actually talk about and get to know the products more (which is the whole point)
Some decent bootlicking in here...
"Leadership" gets strippers and nobody cares lol
I'm reminded of a video from Gary Vee where he had a small moment of reality: Some guy was complaining his employee quit 3 weeks after starting because they were all lazy. Also note it was always his only employee.
Gary asks him how much they paid the employee (min wage) and if he demanded they work over 40 hours (yes and no ot), then pointed out the guy was walking home with all the money and expecting someone to work hard with no return.
The entire audience was confused. Now they are in these comments.
These grifters get super cagey when you point basic math... Capitalism for me, but no for thee🤡
It's crazy to see people justify this. I wonder how they'd feel getting microscoped at work until fired. There's always a cause if your scummy enough.
Don't get me wrong purely from "regulatory" perspetive this wagie done fucked up...
But sufficient slaving experience, I can tell you that this reason is a pretext lol
It seems bootlickers can't tell the difference and appreciate the nuance of what happened here. No wonder we got this shiti "employment experience" peasants are their own worst enemies.
I also get about 25$ a day for meals. They accumulate over the month. At the end of the month I just buy shit from the market with them including alcohol and cleaning products and what not. They dont fucking care!!
I also get about 25$ a day for meals.
That's crazy though. $25 a day in meals for 1 person is genuine luxury.
Until they need an excuse to fire someone
So they got all mad that some employees decided to pack lunch and use the credits for regular supplies
No, they pretended to get mad so they had an excuse to cut their workforce without having it labeled a layoff.
Disciplining labor publicly so they don't get any ideas about comfort in their collective power... You just gotta love it - OR WE'LL FUCKING FIRE YOU!
If it was made clear that it was only to be used for food and to only use while you were at the office, then fine. Harsh, but whatever.
The severity of punishment does not match the severity of violating the policy. We've already figured this idea out in real life and across numerous genres of fiction that at this point is a common trope. It's literally a sci-fi trope at this point of the paradise planet that everyone loves but the biggest flaw is that any infraction against the law however minor is tje death penalty. The concept of fair punishments is literally baked into the constitution through the bill of rights with the 8th amendment, no cruel and unusual punishments, no excessive bail or excessive fines.
Can i have that $400k job?
Right? I promise not to scheme on $10 worth of toothpaste.
Honestly, I would refuse if offered, because I'm not selling myself to Meta for any price.
And I'm not making anywhere near $400k, but I do have a comfortable salary with a company I don't hate and a team I like.
I'll do it - only gotta fake it for a year and then I can buy a house!
Sorry, trying to scam your employer isn't smart. Food vouchers, not couch vouchers.
Exactly. Force them to do layoffs, don't give them an easy out to fire you for misconduct.
That said, Meta could absolutely have just ended the program for people who abused the policy. But it seems their intent is to reduce headcount as cheaply as possible, so that's why they went this direction.
Stop licking corporate boots.
Yeah, that's how that works: when you abuse a perk for meals in the office by using it for other stuff, you're rolling the dice, aren't you?
When meta abuses entire countries and skirts regulations... i think a fucking $25 meal card is just petty bullshit.
Being fired means 6 months of unemployment. Fuck meta. Time for a vacation.
It’s hardly like getting fired is a ticket to a 6 month vacation. Misuse of funds like this is tantamount to theft and probably grounds to disqualify you from unemployment benefits. And anyway for these highly paid workers, unemployment is a tiny fraction of what they are accustomed to making. It’s a tough job market out there and Meta laid off another 9,000 this week so it’s a smart move to start job hunting the second you’re unemployed. I know people who have not found work after 1 year. A vacation? Shyeah no.
Exactly. I lost my job during COVID and fortunately the unemployment office found that my "contract position" was actually an illegal "full-time position" and I qualified for benefits. But the benefits were a fraction of my regular salary, even with the increased COVID-era unemployment benefits. It was enough to live on (I was already frugal), but I was certainly motivated to find new work.
I was "fired" because "my job had been eliminated." Had I been fired for misconduct, I wouldn't have gotten any unemployment benefits.
Meta is doing it this way to cut workforce without having to pay severance or unemployment, not because they really care about that $25.
My state would pay them $4400/m for 6 months, assuming they meet the minimum requirements of applying to jobs. And, since it’s a rough market out there, 6 months isn’t really unreasonable.
I'm getting unemployment right now. It's 1/6th of my former pay, zero benefits. Oh, and the max benefit is a total of 2 weeks of former pay.
I got 1100/week, for up to 6 months 🤷
If they were fired for cause such mis using company funds... No UI