"Buying toothpaste with meal tickets?"... Company with 'Average Annual Salary of 500 Million Won' Fires 30 Employees

Meta, Parent Company of Instagram and Facebook
Continues Small-Scale, Gradual Restructuring

Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, has fired about 30 employees for abusing meal vouchers.

According to a report by the British Financial Times (FT) on the 17th (local time), employees working at Meta's Los Angeles (LA) office in the United States were dismissed last week after being caught purchasing personal items with company-provided meal allowances. This action was taken company-wide targeting employees of Meta subsidiaries such as Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Reality Labs. The company fired personnel involved in misconduct during the restructuring process but did not disclose the exact number of employees dismissed. The personnel action became known after the fired employees posted about it on social media.

Meta provides high-quality free meals at its Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, California, but such benefits are not available at smaller offices in other regions. Instead, employees receive vouchers worth $20 for breakfast and $25 each for lunch and dinner. Employees at smaller offices used these vouchers to order food delivery, but the dismissed employees reportedly had food delivered to their homes instead of the office or accumulated meal allowances to purchase personal items such as toothpaste, detergent, wine glasses, and acne treatment patches. Some of the fired employees had worked for less than a year. CNN Business reported that among the dismissed was Jane Manchun Wong, known as an authority in security research at Meta.

According to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), as of last year, Meta had about 67,000 employees, excluding CEO Mark Zuckerberg and others, with an average annual salary of $379,000 (about 520 million KRW). Among those fired this time was an employee earning $400,000 (about 548 million KRW) annually, who reportedly used vouchers to purchase toothpaste and other items.

Growth Beyond Expectations... The Background is 'Restructuring'

As of the most recently reported quarter-end, Meta had 70,799 full-time employees and laid off tens of thousands of employees during 2022 and 2023 following the pandemic. Although there were no large-scale layoffs in 2024, CEO Mark Zuckerberg has kept his promise to make 2023 the "year of efficiency" a "permanent" part of company operations, resulting in frequent gradual team reductions at Meta this year.

Meta has consistently reported quarterly results exceeding expectations this year. In July, Meta announced that its revenue for the second quarter of this year grew 22% year-over-year to $39.07 billion (about 52.0764 trillion KRW). Riding Meta's upward trend, Mark Zuckerberg surpassed Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to become the world's second-richest person. Zuckerberg, who owns 13% of Meta's shares, saw his net worth increase by $78 billion (about 103.9662 trillion KRW) since the beginning of the year, the largest gain among the 500 richest people on the Bloomberg index. The background to this revenue growth is attributed to system improvements through cost-cutting efforts such as restructuring in the online advertising sector.