Why Mark Zuckerberg sacked nearly 30 staff in Meta’s Los Angeles office

Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta has sacked a number of staff after they abused the company’s $25 (£19) meal scheme to order household goods such as toothpaste and washing powder.

Almost 30 staff in the company’s Los Angeles office were dismissed after they were found to be routinely using takeaway credits to order groceries and cosmetics, employees said.

The sackings included high-paid engineers earning six-figure salaries, according to posts on the anonymous chat app Blind.

Meta, which is currently worth $1.5 trillion, provides staff with free breakfast, lunch and dinner at its larger offices.

Those in smaller offices without staff canteens instead receive vouchers for delivery apps such as Grubhub, which they can use to order food when working at the office.

However, Meta recently discovered that some employees were using the $25 vouchers to order household items from stores that feature on the apps.

In some cases, staff were using the scheme to buy wine glasses and laundry detergent, according to the Financial Times.

Meta and other Silicon Valley companies have long offered free food in their offices, which are seen as an incentive to come into the office instead of working from home, or in the case of breakfast and dinner, to encourage longer working hours.

Staff initially received warnings about abusing the meal voucher scheme but those who continued to do so were sacked last week.

The news came as Meta also laid off a larger number of staff across WhatsApp, Instagram and its virtual reality unit on Wednesday.

The company said it was restructuring certain departments, and moving some staff to other areas.

The redundancies are not believed to be as widespread as the mass layoffs in 2022 and 2023, when Meta cut tens of thousands of staff in what Mr Zuckerberg called a driver for “efficiency”.

A Meta spokesman said: “Today, a few teams at Meta are making changes to ensure resources are aligned with their long-term strategic goals and location strategy.

“This includes moving some teams to different locations, and moving some employees to different roles. In situations like this when a role is eliminated, we work hard to find other opportunities for impacted employees.”

Meta has cut down on perks introduced to encourage staff into the office in recent years, scrapping “to-go” boxes that allowed employees to take food home, as well as benefits such as laundry services.