Meta Fires Employee Making $400k per Year over a $25 Meal Voucher (opens in new tab)

For liability reasons, HR needs a reason to fire someone to avoid potential wrongful termination lawsuit. The meal vouchers just sound like it was an excuse they needed to let some people go. But it makes a good story for the interwebs.

The critical word in this headline is missing (maybe a length issue)...

> Meta Fires Employee Making $400,000 Per Year Over a $25 Meal Voucher Issue

This wasn't one $25 meal voucher, this was employees buying homegoods and pooling credit for other purposes:

> some Meta staff opted to buy items like toothpaste and wine glasses with the credit, per The Financial Times. Or they would get dinner delivered at home or pool their credit money together

> The staff who were let go routinely misused their vouchers

I wonder how explicit and clear they were about the intended purpose of these vouchers. I can see myself saying fck it and using it however I feel without thinking much since it seems insignificant, unless they make a deal of it.

That's a click bait title. What actually happend was a little less crazy:

"The staff who were let go routinely misused their vouchers, while others who misapplied them less frequently, were reprimanded but not fired."

I suspect this is a result of acquisitions. 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. Some people are happy, some are unhappy, some don't like their new overlords and don't feel bad abusing the system. That's just how it goes with these sorts of things.

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 or they were in a position of authority and encouraging/condoning abusing the system.

You don't fire someone like that over ~$100/day unless there's more to the story.

Sounds like the employees were let go for dishonestly abusing a perk. It's hard to tell from the linked article but I presume you get these meal vouchers if you are working early/late and are in the office during meal times. These bad apples were using the vouchers to have food delivered to their homes while not working, or buying non-food items. It's a clear abuse of the policy and hard to understand why someone making such a good salary would risk it for peanuts - but many of my high-earning friends are also some of the cheapest people I have ever met.

Discussion (53 points, 8 hours ago, 79 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41868090

This happens every once in a while in investment banking, and we were warned about it regularly in HR training.

Here's Matt Levine on one of the incidents: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-09-04/wells-far...

The logic is if you couldn't trust a banker to not defraud their employer by submitting dishonest meal receipts, how could you trust them with client money and confidential information. I don't disagree.

Note to myself: Do not accept any vouchers and demand a 20K raise instead.

[dupe] Earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41868090

The article doesn't mention their role but if someone is fired over $25, can we really justify that they were ever worth a $400k salary?

So we’ve reached a stage where people are outraged over a company firing employees for blatant theft.

I suspect the employee will have a good case for wrongful termination. As these vouchers are subject to income tax ultimately by the IRS vs a traditional corp expense report reimbursement.

It’ll likely depend on how the voucher was implemented.

Fine - that’s 400K less per year they have to pay now.

It takes years to build trust and one second to destroy it. If you are a fully functioning adult and basically stealing the office stapler, how low are you willing to go? It’s not even about the morality of the situation at that point, it’s about being a dishonest liar.

The one type of coworker no one gets along with is the dishonest, manipulative, penny-pinching narcissist. Fire them, and there are 10 honest people willing to replace them in this IT oversupply market, probably at lower salary. Win-win for Meta.

Dura lex sed lex

I mean, $25 may not sound like a lot. but these meal vouchers (assuming every day, 5 days a week) add up to $18,200 per year for the breakfast lunch and dinner combined.

That said, what are you going to get on doordash for $25. half a sandwich?