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Meta Fires Employee Making $400,000 Per Year Over a $25 Meal Voucher Issue Other staff members were fired for the same reason, per a new report.

By Sherin Shibu Edited by Melissa Malamut

Key Takeaways

  • According to a Wednesday report from The Financial Times, Meta fired about 24 people for using a $25 dinner credit for items other than dinner.
  • Meta also started a new round of layoffs that affect teams across the company.

Meta fired about two dozen people in the company's Los Angeles office last week for misusing a $25 dinner voucher over an extended period. One employee made $400,000 per year.

Meta gives employees a $20 credit for breakfast, $25 for lunch, and $25 for dinner through Grubhub or Uber Eats. Instead of using the $25 credit to buy dinner and have it delivered to the office, some Meta staff opted to purchase 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.

Related: Meta Is Putting AI Images on Your Facebook and Instagram Feeds, With Personalized Pictures

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

The Meta employee who made $400,000 wrote on an anonymous messaging platform that being let go over the meal credit was "surreal."

Mark Zuckerberg. Photo Credit: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Meta started a new round of layoffs on Wednesday that affected teams across Instagram, WhatsApp, and Reality Labs. It's unclear how many people were affected.

Meta reported 22% revenue growth, or revenue of $39.07 billion, in its second quarter in late July. In an earnings call, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that the company was "driving good growth" and that Meta AI was "on track to be the most used AI assistant in the world by the end of the year."

Related: She Sent a Cold Email to Meta Judging Its Ray-Bans. Now She Runs the Wearables Division.

Sherin Shibu

Entrepreneur Staff

News Reporter

Sherin Shibu is a business news reporter at Entrepreneur.com. She previously worked for PCMag, Business Insider, The Messenger, and ZDNET as a reporter and copyeditor. Her areas of coverage encompass tech, business, strategy, finance, and even space. She is a Columbia University graduate.

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