Meta is bolstering perks like happy hours and company swag as it pushes staff to return to office, despite its ‘year of efficiency’::The company has revived a number of employee perks, according to Bloomberg, including branded t-shirts, laundry services, and free haircuts.
I did and still am.
Happy hours never went away. Swag also never went away. I don’t know if the writer here actually knows anyone or just overheard someone talking about that stuff and assumed it was new.
Covid did reduce the amount of stuff being bought. Freezer went away so ice cream went away. Less alcohol in the game rooms (though no shortage during happy hours), custodial stopped working on weekends (not too many people here anyway, just don’t leave food in your trash bin anymore). They cut a “health” allowance from 3k to 2k =(
Anyway, it’s easily the best decision I’ve ever made. I make twice my city’s median household income. The push for RTO blows (I’m convinced Lori/HR need to justify their existence). At first it was 3 days, now we just got told two specific days (happy hour days are going to rotate, RIP). There’s even a whole HRIS system in place for compliance tracking and all kinds of other wasted money/man hours that went into this. Makes no sense. They keep reference “the data” and “studies” but aren’t showing us what they’re saying. Nevermind that the C suite all got Exceeds Expectations after having to fire dozens of thousands of people (we still believe executive performance = company performance).
Things are coming back since our stock is back to starting with a 3. The only thing that pissed me off was how many laid off people’s positions were re-filled like 6 months later. It’s like the layoffs were just to get dilute the blood in the water that investors were looking for and hearing about a bunch of layoffs make rich people happy. Other than that, my team is amazing, my manager is awesome, work schedule is extremely flexible (single with 2 kids, I don’t know how I’d manage at any of my previous places I’ve worked). There’s the usual “cost saving” bullshit (although, there are honestly a LOT of areas that have been streamlined without any real detrimental effect, so kudos to that) but honestly that’s not Meta-specific. Meta just makes the news because it serves 1/3 of the planet.
Also, we make fun of Reality Labs for not being profitable and we don’t give a shit about Threads because it was made in a few months by a few people. Twitter isn’t really that hard to emulate.