Meta Platforms Inc. has been cutting jobs in various divisions, including letting 24 go from Instagram and Facebook for abusing the company’s $25 meal credit system.
In the latter case, it’s reported that the transgressors had not been spending their lunch credits on food, but were buying household items such as toothpaste, laundry detergent and wine glasses. This is a rather strange move by Meta, considering one of the employees who was canned was reportedly making $400,000 a year.
One of the staff who lost their job wrote on the messaging platform Blind, “On days where I would not be eating at the office, like if my husband was cooking or if I was grabbing dinner with friends, I figured I ought not to waste the dinner credit.” Another called the human resources department investigation and subsequent axing of staff “surreal.”
Someone familiar with the matter said the offenders had been told to stop spending their credits on items other than food, and though they did, they were apparently still fired. This is perhaps more understandable in light of the fact that Meta has recently made wider job cuts at Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Reality Labs, the virtual reality side of the company, all in line with Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg’s plan to make 2023 the “year of efficiency.”
Jane Manchun Wong, a software engineer who made the Forbes 30 under 30 list in 2022, was one of the staff who fell victim this week to Meta’s latest employee purge. “I’m still trying to process this but I’m informed that my role at Meta has been impacted,” she wrote on Threads. “Thank you to everyone, especially my Threads and Instagram teammates, for my wild journey at Meta.”
Meta hasn’t made a public announcement about layoffs, although a company spokesperson told The Verge that the changes are part of a “long-term strategic goals and location strategy.”
Meta has certainly shrunk over the last few years, laying off many thousands of staff in 2022 and 2023 as the company refocused on its core objectives.