Good catch, thanks, updated

Totally fair points. Probably next to impossible. Wish I could find those articles, but oh well. I just don’t see this being good for future hiring at Meta at the end of the day.

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 average median 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.

I agree, this stinks of petty gotcha, which is why i dont think its a good idea, as remaining employees with devalue those perks and stop working for Meta as a result.

And yes, these are perks above all else, but remember Meta created these incentives to keep people in the office longer without having to pay them (a lot) more. A few people abusing it in order to ensure the majority of workers stay nights and weekends (at small satellite offices) is a small price. Now? “Hey, worker X, staying late tonight?” “No, going home to eat, don’t want to make a mistake on ordering Uber Eats and get fired” means you don’t get 5-40 hours per week extra time from that worker X. And you already paid for the vouchers, so you don’t save money. Also other workers won’t stay because more people leave.

Granted we are talking Mark Z here, so eating food is probably too alien for him to understand.

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.

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.

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.

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.

USMCA, like I’d you coughed while orgasming.

So I have two Chromecasts, and this sucks, didn’t really want to replace them eith boxes (once they die). What viable replacements are there?

She was able to work, for free, in her freshman summer, while going through for a finance degree. So many questions:

Where did the money come from? Who paid her tuition?

Why not go through for Co-op, where you obtain a job as part of schooling? Or why did she have to hunt for internships? Even my wife, who had unpaid internships and family to back her up during the same time, had help from the school to find it. How jank is U of Texas?

Why, pray tell, is a finance degree holder the CMO?

I mean, I’m happy for her, but how useful is her recommendations? If you don’t have a family who can pay your tuition and summer living costs, this is useless.

And ignoring how people need money in order to have shelter and food, what does she think happe s if everyone starts doing this? Should I be calling up everyone at SquareSpace and asking for a job?

But then you can’t fire them and not have to call it a re org.

It’s nice, but it comes with micromanagement. They are like fleas, though the biting is more painful.

Yeah I was wondering if it was an underhanded way to get rid of people without officially letting them go. Seems like a lot of time and money tracking people to do that though, so I really have to wonder if they’ve lost the plot, thus me leaning towards incompetence.

That all said, and to hedge my bets, I haven’t seen their Financials. Maybe the verification is using cheap labour like YouTube review systems, for instance, or maybe they are really bloated.

Hard to say, you could be right. That’s where I’m less sure. I’ve had jobs where a (not direct manager) boss thinks I do less than I do, and more than I do.

The ones who believed I did less believed they did more than me regardless of what my manager reported or actual work done. The ones who believed more consistently didn’t hand me work and I eventually would leave.

One job I had different people who disagreed about the actual amount of work I did based on if I was at my desk vs the amount of awards I had vs my lunch breaks vs my extra work projects. I’d have feedback sessions with my manager about burnout but also if I was taking too long for lunch and going home too early.

What I’m saying is I think people are terrible at assessing subordinates work.

So I’ve worked in business for 17ish years now, and the only consistent thing I can say about business leadership is they are there to have their egos stroked.

They do not care about money or other people until they look bad, and even then they don’t do anything until someone threatens to take away the group of people forced to listen to them.

Working from home hurts their ego. This method (RTO) doesn’t improve value and increases turnaround, which increases expenses if you are happy with the amount of people working for your company, as replacing people costs money.

So either Dell still needs to get rid of people, or a bunch of old fucks need someone to suck up to them in person.