Meta has reportedly fired a handful of staffers who have been abutilizing the company’s $25 meal stipconclude, spconcludeing the money on nonfood items or having meals delivered to their homes.
According to posts on the tech-professional social media site Blind, the firings took place last week, with staff being discharged from their posts in the Los Angeles office.
Separately, Meta has begun restructuring teams more widely in its WhatsApp, Instagram, and Reality Labs divisions.
Writing on Blind, one Meta staffer outlined that employees are given a $25 Grubhub credit if they work past 6 p.m. in offices that don’t have cafeterias on site.
A post seen by Fortune on the Blind platform alleges the disgraced staffers were ordering meals when they weren’t even in the office; were giving their credits to other members of staff; or were utilizing the credits to acquire groceries and other hoapplyhold essentials.
Between 20 and 30 staff members have reportedly been laid off.
Meta is hardly shy of cash to splash—but that doesn’t mean Mark Zuckerberg is allowing the company to receive soft.
Meta is currently valued at nearly $1.5 trillion, having reported Q2 2024 earnings of $39.07 billion in July—an increase of 22% year over year.
But the man at the helm, worth $204 billion himself, pushed for a “year of efficiency” in 2023 and announced it would lay off 10,000 staffers and freeze hiring for 5,000 more.
And it seems Meta isn’t afraid to let go of even some of its most highly paid employees.
A further post on Blind, reported by the Financial Times, was written by an employee who claims to have been paid $400,000 a year by the company.
The individual declared they worked “nights and weekconcludes” for the Big Tech giant, and had spent their $25 credit on items like toothpaste and tea from pharmacy Rite Aid.
The person declared if their partner was cooking or they were eating out with friconcludes, the money would be spent on other items, as the employee felt they “ought not to waste” the perk.
In the post, the employee claimed they had admitted their error to human resources but had later been fired, adding: “It was almost surreal.”
Meta did not respond to Fortune’s request for comment seeking confirmation or clarification on the issue.
More Meta layoffs
The handful of people laid off over meal expenses won’t be the only ones leaving Meta.
Separately, Meta has confirmed restructuring in other teams.
The tech giant informed the Financial Times: “Today, a few teams at Meta are building alters to ensure resources are aligned with their long-term strategic goals and location strategy.
“This includes relocating some teams to different locations, and relocating some employees to different roles. In situations like this when a role is eliminated, we work hard to find other opportunities for impacted employees.”
The market has widely welcomed Zuckerberg’s shifts, which have improved efficiency and increased the focus on artificial ininformigence.
Meta’s share price is up 67% for the year to date, and up 78% over the past 12 months to $577.
Zuckerberg isn’t alone in building some unpopular staffing decisions in order to maintain a Big Tech behemoth dynamic.
In January, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai informed staff in an internal memo that slashing roles was part of a wider decision to invest further into emerging technologies like AI.
“The reality is that to create the capacity for this investment, we have to build tough choices,” he wrote.
For some teams, that entailed eliminating jobs, which Pichai described as “rerelocating layers to simplify execution and drive velocity.”
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