> That included one unnamed worker on a $400,000 salary, who said they had used their meal credits to buy household goods and groceries such as toothpaste and tea.
It's official. There are some perks that are better in relatively "shithole" countries than in Elysium. In that universe, they put allowance money on your food card that is mostly accepted by certain restaurants. But there are a few supermarkets that accept it as well and you're completely free to use the card "wherever it's accepted".
This facebook example by contrast is hilarious bean counting partnering with moronic principles.
And where is the quote from the person that bought toothpaste at the request of a homeless person? I'd like to be in the HR office for that conversation.
>Who cares? Have you seen the profit margins at these stingy-ass companies?
Should stealing be excused just because you're doing it to some wealthy entity?
The problem with the "it's OK to steal from them because they're in a position of privilege and I'm not" justification logic, is that then the poor/homeless guy around the block should also be ok to rob you or break into your car because "who cares, have you seen the fat wages those techies are raking in?"
Have Meta done a lot of nasty stuff that they should be punished for? Definitely. But that's another topic they need to be held accountable for by the law, and should never be a justification to green light stealing since two wrongs don't make a right and you don't want to live in a society where stealing is normalized as long as you think you're doing it to someone more priviledged than you.
How convenient that that line of thinking's ultimate outcome is to solidify the security of the haves goods over the have nots access to what they need. Much like taking second servings before the children have had their fill.
Funny bit is no one ever seems to want to contemplate how to defang the power laws that yield winner takes all, fostering massive inequality at the expense of the majority of the population.
That'd make being rich harder though. No one wants that.
Its not stealing they gave them the money, in the form of the voucher, they just didnt like what they were using the voucher for or the way they were using it (on the way out of the office).
> Should stealing be excused just because you're doing it to some wealthy entity?
Absolutely!
> The problem with the "it's OK to steal from them because they're in a position of privilege and I'm not" justification logic, is that then the poor/homeless guy around the block should also be ok to rob you or break into your car because "who cares, have you seen the fat wages those techies are raking in?"
False equivalence. But also, I'm absolutely ok with this.
> Have Meta done a lot of nasty stuff that they should be punished for? Definitely. But that's another topic they need to be held accountable for by the law, and should never be a justification to green light stealing since two wrongs don't make a right and you don't want to live in a society where stealing is normalized as long as you think you're doing it to someone more priviledged than you.
I'm completely fine with this world.
Hilariously, you could have made this argument a lot better by indicating perception of privilege is subjective. But you didn't—and instead only produced examples that should be ok to anyone with an ounce of morality.
It certainly counts as part of the compensation package.
That said, it's compensation employees accepted with conditions in its use, and to intentionally violate those conditions is not ethically supportable.
for comparison, in germany it is compensation and taxed as income. as far as i know almost everything an employee in germany receives is considered compensation to avoid tax loopholes. even actual free meals served in the office (not just vouchers) are assigned a monetary value and taxed. only snacks, drinks or exceptional meals (like pizza for the all-hands meeting) are exempt.
People love free stuff just as much as they love spending money I guess. There are deals even in upscale stores for brands used by people who don't know how much money and how many properties they own.
Not sure how it works in the US, but at least here, if an employer wants to provide meals to some employees and not have it seemed to be a benefit in kind (and thus liable for income tax), they have to provide them to _all_ employees (or at least all employees working at a given site).
I'd wonder if that was part of the issue here, actually; are these sorts of meal vouchers treated specially for tax in the US?
I have only worked at pretty bad startups I guess, but for me I could get paid well but if there is some strong sense of job insecurity (as there always seems to be in this world), I will never leave a certain level of survival/hoarding mode. I have savings and everything but to this day I will still only buy a car I can potentially live out of. Every day I am ready to go back to the kitchen, but until then every morsel must be collected and appreciated.
This is (depending on how extreme you are, I suppose) wise. Once you're making more than a subsistence income, one of the keys to long-term financial stability and security is to live well below your means[1].
Doing that also gives you freedom in the sense that you are no longer "trapped" in whatever job you have, because you can develop a long enough runway that you can leave a job before you've found a replacement.
[1] In my youth, I dated the daughter of one of the richest people in my city. I asked him what the key to getting rich is, and his response was "spend less than you earn". At the time, I thought it was a way to to avoid answering my question, but in the decades since I've realized that was actually the correct answer and everything else is just expanding on that.
> Meta [...] usually feeds staff for free from canteens at its larger offices, including its sprawling Silicon Valley headquarters. But those at smaller sites are given daily credits to order food through delivery services such as UberEats and Grubhub. Daily allowances include $20 for breakfast, $25 for lunch and $25 for dinner.
So probably a perk they decided was worth it or necessary for morale at some point
> So probably a perk they decided was worth it or necessary for morale at some point
I always thought that stuff (along with the snacks) was a ploy to keep employees working longer hours. Needing to get food/coffee/whatever is a transition that can allow people to decide to disengage from work. A strategically placed coffee station can prevent a longer trip to the cafeteria or a coffee shop, and free food in the cafeteria can prevent a trip offsite to a restaurant or the worker's home for a meal. Plus it can seem like a plus to the employee, because people often pay a lot more attention to money than time.
Of course it is. That doesnt mean it isnt also a perk. I am happy that my office has coffee even though it also benefits my employer with the increased productivity. Same with lunch, its a win win for the company and the employee.
> Same with lunch, its a win win for the company and the employee.
I don't think it's that simple. Sure, on some level it's a win for you (free food) and a win for them (more time spent working), but on another level you might be winning more if the perk wasn't influencing your decision-making to take the employer-preferred path.
I think it's a little more clear when thinking about employer provided dinner, like Facebook apparently provides.
I don't think it's a win for the employee if they're getting $100 worth of extra labor out of you in exchange for $25 worth of food. And not just financially, I always thought that these "perks" make it harder to disconnect and relax from work which is likely to take a toll on mental health - I know it would for me.
They buy some startup, bring them all under Meta's HR umbrella with all the rules and perks that comes with. Since these recently acquired guys are running out of random offices in random places they just give them a stipend rather than force them to all relocate to a campus with dining.
The $400k employee was probably a higher up (or key SME Meta felt they needed to put in golden handcuffs) at one of these acquired companies and was probably already on his or her way out.
At Meta, $400k would be high E4 or low E5. That’s someone earlier in their career who probably feels fairly anonymous and is used to taking all the deals they can get to live cheaply, even if they don’t need to anymore.
We use a Doordash voucher as an incentive to go hybrid and come into the office once or twice a week. Seems silly to spend all that time commuting and then you go leave for another 60-90 minutes to get lunch.
At some point it will disappear and go to a hard RTO, but for now it kind of works.
I've seen others ask how is buying toothpaste and wine is possible on a voucher, Doordash definitely does this "add groceries in the next 15 minutes!" thing once you've ordered lunch.
Unless they had one of those corporate bullshit jobs like diversity, inclusivity and sensitivity consultant, survey administrator, human resources, corporate compliance officer, task-master, etc.
If they had an engineering job that solves problems, they'll probably be OK.
Seems like a bad exchange for both the employee and the company. TBH I feel Meta could have just ended the program for these folks rather than flat out firing them.
I am almost sure that this employee in particular was not deemed especially important. If it was e.g.: an exec or some high level engineer, they would just be reprimand.
Do you imply the person didn't eat that day or what? The company compensates employees food expenses. The employee's partner made the food and thus the food can't be expended, so they bought something else at the equivalent price to compensate for what would otherwise be covered by the company.
I can't find a logic by which this is "stealing". Please clarify.
Right, so then the most optimal outcome is always buying food even if you don't need it, and perhaps even throwing the food away immediately. If your total comes out 22.00, then go ahead and buy 6 ranch dips and bring it up to 25.00.
Now, it's not stealing. Does this outcome feel more morally correct to you? I think, if you answer "no", then your logic on how this stealing works is faulty.
If I was meta I wouldnt want to employ people who are interested in stealing from me, especially when I pay them $400,000. The fact that the theft wasnt that bad or that the policy doesnt make the most sense is irrelevant. The company trusts employees to use benefits with responsibility and this dude used your logic of "leaving money on the table" even though hes being paid 400,000
>If you value these employees so much that you pay them $400k/yr
A company isn't paying you X amount of money because it "values you", they pay you that because of the market forces that force them to pay you that amount of money. They'd gladly pay you nothing and crack a whip on your back if they could get away with it.
"Valuing you" is something your family will do, but rarely a company, especially a publicly traded one.
>be careful what message you want to send.
The message was exactly the one they wanted to send: "Everyone is expendable".
Because training employees is expensive & may not be obvious how the $ could be used. In the employee side it is a small % of total comp so it doesn’t make sense for them either.
It isn’t clear that they fired the employees to send a message. From the article, it doesn’t look like Meta told other employees, “we fired people who abused the free meal service,” so I don’t know how others would get the message. Instead it was posted on Blind and picked up by news which seems like a poor way to send a message from a PR perspective.
Whether or not they intended to send a message, if I work at the facebook the blaring loud message I just received is "do not under any circumstances try to expense anything, ever."
> the blaring loud message I just received is "do not under any circumstances try to expense anything, ever."
did you not read the article?
the message was, quite reasonably, "don't take the fucking piss, if we give you food vouchers to buy your dinner, then use it for buying yourself dinner".
That's obviously not a serious question, so it doesn't deserve a response.
> if we give you food vouchers to buy your dinner, then use it for buying yourself dinner
I don't know whether there even is a "message", but if I worked for a company that just fired a bunch of people for discrepancies in really minor expense reports I would simply avoid submitting an expense report for something like a meal ever again. They're clearly looking for an excuse to fire people, and it's better to not make oneself a target.
It's an assumption, but groceries are food and I'm assuming the person just threw in toothpaste as well. And, apparently, that one dollar worth of toothpaste was too far.
Well it was a credit replacing the food that’s normally available. If the stated purpose is credit to get a meal while working there, it’s fraud to buy other stuff with the credit. I can see why an employer would want to terminate you, they have to trust you and your work.
This facebook example by contrast is hilarious bean counting partnering with moronic principles.
And where is the quote from the person that bought toothpaste at the request of a homeless person? I'd like to be in the HR office for that conversation.