10 ms·

Facebook is giving $1k to every employee

194 points by theBashShell 7y ago

maybeiambatman 7y ago
Damn, say what you will about FB, that's a gesture and a half.
- MegaButts 7y ago
  Why? It's a fraction of a percent of most employees' annual pay, which presumably they are still receiving. If anything, it's like giving everyone a tiny bonus for some PR. At least that's how I read it. If they gave that money to contractors, that would actually be a gesture of good will. Honestly I feel like they'd be better off only giving it to contractors and ignoring their employees, who are already extremely well-paid.
  - kjakm 7y ago
    If you read the article you will see they are also giving every essentially a full bonus irrespective of performance. Depending on individual agreements that could be a significant sum so it's definitely not a fraction of a percent of anybody's annual pay.
    - MegaButts 7y ago
      Facebook has always given out bonuses, that's not news. The news is giving every employee $1000, and I'm saying that's a horrible decision on Facebook's part and they should be shamed for it. They should use that money to help those in need, or just not do anything at all. Facebook has always been known for its unethical decisions, but this is just dumb - unless their goal is to get some incredibly superficial PR for what is a very small amount of money to them (tens of millions is a rounding error compared to their quarterly revenue).
      - kjakm 7y ago
        You've failed to comprehend the article and now you've failed to comprehend my comment. Facebook isn't simply 'giving bonuses'. Bonuses are based on performance. It's rare at a company that you will get 100% of your performance bonus. In this case Facebook is giving everyone a high performance score (and therefore a high % of their bonus) regardless of how well they performed. For perspective: someone on a $100k salary with a 10% bonus might normally expect $4-8k bonus. Not it'll be $9-10k. Depending on how high the salaries are and how large the bonus %'s are the difference could be quite a lot.
  - throwlaplace 7y ago
    pleasing cynics is like pissing outside on a windy day when you have to go - damned if you do and damned if you don't. read the article - they're giving out 1k to each of the 45k employees. i'm sorry for the contractors (i don't know if it includes them) but that's still a small city's worth of people. they're also guaranteeing bonuses for the next two quarters for all of those people. i don't care about fb but the move definitely clears the bar for nice gesture even if it's not nobel peace prize worthy. like how about we just rejoice in one small nice thing instead of taking meaningless cynical potshots?
    - MegaButts 7y ago
      I'm cynical because I still don't see how this is helpful. It's giving more money to people that already have money, instead of spreading it around to people that don't have money. Facebook employees are about the least economically vulnerable population you can find, apart from people who inherited their wealth. Why not actually do something useful with the money, like donate it to a charity in need that's trying to help those suffering from the epidemic? Yes - I genuinely think this is a bad move, as in they should have not done it at all. As someone who does make a stupid amount of money, I wouldn't care about an extra $1k, but I know people that would. This is just trickle down economics.
      - kiba 7y ago
        Not everybody at the company is a six figure software engineer.
        MegaButts 7y ago
        Sure, but the vast majority are. This is basically targeting the group that includes mostly engineers to give them more money, instead of giving the money to content moderators or other lowly paid employees. Again, this is basically the worst use of the money Facebook could have considered for anything with a remotely philanthropic angle. It reeks of a PR grab to me, and even if not it's just a horrible decision if their goal is to help those in need.
Hamuko 7y ago
>It’s not clear if Facebook will also give a bonus to contractors who are content moderators. Let me guess: it doesn't. Have Facebook contractors been given the right to work from home yet?
- andygcook 7y ago
  By definition, don't all contractors have to generally not work from an office? Otherwise it's very easy to deem them full-time employees and they are entitled to benefits. Not sure of Facebook's specific situation or what roles they are contracting, but I'd imagine most of them aren't at HQ.
  - standardUser 7y ago
    "By definition, don't all contractors have to generally not work from an office?" At Facebook or in general? I don't know FB's specific policies but in general, no, being a contractor does not automatically imply that you can work remotely.
  - Hamuko 7y ago
    https://theintercept.com/2020/03/12/coronavirus-facebook-contractors/ https://theintercept.com/2020/03/12/coronavirus-facebook-con... This was in the news last week. Pretty sure I picked it up from Hacker News.
  - jabroni_salad 7y ago
    They're just permatempts. Every company has them these days. The content moderators specifically work out of an Accenture office and aren't really contracted to facebook. They are Accenture's w-2 employees.
    - tathougies 7y ago
      > They are Accenture's w-2 employees. Then Accenture should be giving them allowance to work from home, not facebook.
  - xyzzyz 7y ago
regnerba 7y ago
But why? Aren't most of their employees going to still be making their salary anyways? What do they need the extra money for? The people in the economy that really need the money are not the people working at Facebook. I mean, congrats to Facebook employees, I just don't understand why.
- izzydata 7y ago
  Maybe they think all their employees will spend an extra $1000 they wouldn't have otherwise. Some of it might be spent keeping local business running for a week? I don't know.
  - pmiller2 7y ago
    I don’t work at FB, but I’ve definitely spent a few hundred these past couple of weeks preparing for the current situation.
  - buboard 7y ago
    arent local businesses closing?
    - kjakm 7y ago
      Not sure about the Bay Area but a lot of restaurants are switching to delivery only (inc. the kind of places that never did delivery in the first place) so this money could go to them. Money can also be spent buying things in advance - for example concert tickets for late in the year. This will help performers/venues remain afloat in the meantime. Also - for local businesses that weather the storm, these people now have an extra $1k + extra bonus that they can spend to help get them back to black sooner.
    - Supermancho 7y ago
      Yes. In washington and california, which isn't surprising. Some businesses can't cope with the shutdown, some were barely getting by and have just pulled the trigger (eg The Stranger in Washington State, bakeries, restaurants, gyms, etc) to close or drastically reduce services. This will get more common, as the MONTHS drag on.
buboard 7y ago
this sounds tone-deaf. Much better to give that money to employees other companies who actually need it.
- tudelo 7y ago
  You want... Facebook... To give 1000 dollars... To every employee of some other unnamed company...
  - buboard 7y ago
    this could be e.g. in the form of food delivery vouchers etc, speficically aimed to keep small businesses running
    - chillacy 7y ago
      They're doing something like that here: https://www.facebook.com/business/boost/grants https://www.facebook.com/business/boost/grants
shartshooter 7y ago
the median compensation for a Facebook employee is $228,651 It’s not clear if Facebook will also give a bonus to contractors who are content moderators Kudos to Facebook for trying to help their team weather the storm. Hopefully the folks who need it most get the bonuses as well.
- cjhopman 7y ago
  It may be tough for a company to provide bonuses directly to contractors (especially those that are earmarked for buying equipment to wfh). FB has said that they have agreements with all the contracting companies that they work with that even as people stay home they will continue to get paid their normal pay (even if they can do nearly no work from home, e.g. including food service contractors). They haven't said what that means, but you can be sure that pay isn't coming out of the contracting companies pockets.
333c 7y ago
> It’s not clear if Facebook will also give a bonus to contractors who are content moderators. It seems like they are the most at-risk, considering they are not paid as much as all the developers.
- throw7337 7y ago
  I work with some of them in Greece. They have monthly contract extensions and are paid by day, no sick leave. Most offices have skeleton crew now. Technically it is not fb, but agency who employs them.
  - 333c 7y ago
    > Technically it is not fb, but agency who employs them. And that's part of the problem, IMO. It enables Facebook to say "we're giving these protections to all our employees" which is technically correct but leaves out many people who labor for Facebook.
danpalmer 7y ago
Meanwhile Facebook relies heavily on contractors for catering, security, cleaning, and content moderation. The first 3 of these will be severely cut back during the virus as offices are closed.
- dan15 7y ago
  > The first 3 of these will be severely cut back during the virus as offices are closed. Facebook are still paying all contractors their regular pay, even if they're not needed at the moment: > Facebook will pay contingent workers that cannot work due to reduced staffing requirements during voluntary work from home, when we close an office, when we choose to send an employee home, or when they are sick https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/06/facebook-commits-to-paying-contingent-workers-affected-by-corporate-coronavirus-response/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/06/facebook-commits-to-paying...
fallmonkey 7y ago
The title misses the other, and more impactful/unprecedented change of giving everyone "exceeds" rating and skipping perf review for them (except for those high performers who will get separate review). That does far more than $1000 to relieve everyone and make it fair for those who have to take care of others in the family during such time.
- CydeWeys 7y ago
  Yeah, this change is easily worth something on the order of $20k this year and then $10k per year for the three following years for every engineer who wouldn't have otherwise achieved this rating. It's huge. Interestingly, I assume they're doing this because it means they can skip the performance cycle entirely. That's a good way to save process. It's gonna harm some people who were on track to do better than exceeds, though. (On average it should help people.)
  - dan15 7y ago
    > It's gonna harm some people who were on track to do better than exceeds, though. There's no news about this yet, but I've heard that people that are on track to do better than exceeds will likely still have a review so that they don't miss out.
0x8BADF00D 7y ago
This will not do anything substantial. When monetizing the debt, the Fed should instead helicopter money to everyone. Everyone can then be a millionaire like in the Weimar Republic.
WoefullyInept 7y ago
It might be a gesture at a company like Amazon where they employ many low paid workers, but at FB a high proportion of workers will see this as a 0.2-1% bonus. The 'exceeds' performance review will have a much bigger impact on income.
- packetslave 7y ago
  The 'exceeds' performance review will have a much bigger impact on income. Not until mid-September bonus payout, though.
  - disgruntledphd2 7y ago
    Exceeds bonus: great! Not having to write perf reviews: priceless!
- cjhopman 7y ago
  I suspect that for many employees, the important thing isn't even the income aspect of the 'exceeds' rating, it's the fact that they don't need to be stressed about maintaining high performance when they are dealing with a lot of challenges related to newly working from home and being near quarantined and possibly having kids doing kid things all day.
nodesocket 7y ago
> as the median compensation for a Facebook employee is $228,651 Meanwhile in silicon valley people making an average of $228k a year get a $1,000 for no reason. They are on salary already and $1,000 doesn’t move the needle for them. This is absurd.
- pathartl 7y ago
  Median != average
- pbhjpbhj 7y ago
  I thought FB was global, and doubt that all of their staff make that much? If it doesn't help, what have we lost, other companies are doing nothing, it seems. https://about.fb.com/company-info/ https://about.fb.com/company-info/ says 85 locations around the World.
- cjhopman 7y ago
  I don't understand what sort of person jumps to this response. Would you be similarly negative if FB decided to give their employees 6 months of parental leave?
hmate9 7y ago
Not sure why there are so many negative comments. This is a win and sets a great example that hopefully other companies can follow. Yes, software engineers at FB have probably no (or very little) problem working from home and get their $200k salary, but this is a win regardless.
- Retric 7y ago
  > Not sure why there are so many negative comments It’s seen as rearranging deck chairs on the titanic. the median compensation for a Facebook employee is $228,651 That’s not a group facing huge financial issues which 1k is going to do much about. I am not saying it is a poor use of 45 million dollars, but I can see people viewing this as meaningless.
  - tudelo 7y ago
    Eh, imagine Facebook hired remote workers. I bet they would be fine giving them 1k upfront for tech setup
    - Retric 7y ago
      I suspect it was to offset the costs of setting up a home office. And in that context it seems like a completely reasonable thing to do.
subsaharancoder 7y ago
Bonuses just got issued at most if not all SV companies, I work at Uber and ours checked in 3/13, so more money is the last thing SV techies need at this time. The funds should have been directed to orgs supporting freelancers etc
- cjhopman 7y ago
  What does one have to do with the other?
packetslave 7y ago
Facebook is giving $1k to every employee And $100 million in cash grants and ad credits to small businesses in 30 countries. https://www.facebook.com/business/boost/grants https://www.facebook.com/business/boost/grants #idontspeakforfb
throwaway713 7y ago
I don’t know what the deal is, but I feel like the cynicism on HN has just constantly ramped up over the past couple of years. I actively feel worse after reading the comments on a lot of articles posted on here, and it’s just not an enjoyable experience. There was another article posted recently about a CEO raising the minimum salary of all of his employees to $70,000 and cutting his personal costs to afford it, and even with this gesture there were many negative comments and conspiracy theories about it.
- hombre_fatal 7y ago
  HN comments remind me of how monkeys would rather have nothing than see another monkey get more than them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meiU6TxysCg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meiU6TxysCg
  - ryandrake 7y ago
    People are not always rational utility maximizers. See the Ultimatum Game[1]. There are always people who would rather get nothing than get a small amount when they know the other person would get more. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimatum_game https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimatum_game
    - lukifer 7y ago
      Assuming a game is played more than once (a safe assumption for human social behavior), I think an occasional Defect / Nobody Gets Anything is quite rational: it's a credible deterrent to disincentivize a grossly unfair distribution.
- tenebrisalietum 7y ago
  The number of non-tech articles with social/political slant on HN is increasing.
- CydeWeys 7y ago
  Seriously, I don't know why people are trying so hard to find the negative here in a thousand bucks bonus to all employees. The top ranked comment in this entire thread is currently "But why? [...] What do they need the extra money for?" Talk about crab mentality. If your employer gives you extra money, you take it! Good on Facebook for redistributing some vanishingly tiny fraction of their cash to their employees in this time of crisis.
vuln 7y ago
What if Facebook gave a $1,000 to every user... Now that would be news...
- jefftk 7y ago
  FB has ~2.5B MAUs, so you're talking ~$2.5T. Facebook is worth about $0.5B, but they'd be worth much less than that if they tried to turn the business into cash to distribute. FB doesn't have anywhere near the money you're talking about.
- SheinhardtWigCo 7y ago
  Yes, botnet operators would love that.
  - vuln 7y ago
    Require a photo ID and tax documents.
    - rkho 7y ago
      And then the headline becomes "Facebook wants to harvest your ID and tax documents"
sabujp 7y ago
Google is being flexible about letting employees not use their PTO while school is out, which IMO is a far better thing to give.
jedberg 7y ago
If Facebook actually wanted to help, they would instead give every employee a $1,000 donation budget. Pick a charity and Facebook will donate on your behalf. Why give an extra $1,000 to someone who is still making their salary? Or you know at least cut it off at people making over $100,000 or something.
seattle_spring 7y ago
The much bigger news here is that they're suspending performance reviews for this half and giving everyone an "exceeds expectation" rating. This is huge for working parents who are having to give up family responsibilities just to grind for their employer.
- oaiey 7y ago
  To the point. It removes the pressure when pressure is everywhere else. I hate defending FB, but these measures are really good.
  - edanm 7y ago
    To be fair, even though a lot of people rightly or wrongly criticize Facebook, I don't think most of the criticism has been about their treatment of employees. I'm pretty sure it's always been pretty great.
- dan15 7y ago
  The other thing that wasn't really covered is that contractors are getting paid even if they're unable to work (for example, people that work in security and culinary teams that aren't required because the offices are closed). That's one of the best things IMO.
sciurus 7y ago
My employer, Mozilla, is reimbursing employees up to $1,000 towards equipment for working from home [0], childcare, etc. The guidance has been for employees to be reasonable and for those approving expenses to be flexible. [0] The roughly half of the company that works from home already got to expense setting up their home office when they were hired, so this mainly helps the people who were working from a company office.
throwawaymanbot 7y ago
wow... people who are already well paid... meanwhile the people they rape data off get nothing. (and lets face it will need help a lot more) Typical Zuck logic.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
hemantv 7y ago
Man, not fan of company toward public. But these acts are changing my view and their work to improve mis-spread of information. I feel like they are becoming a new company (growth from teenage years I guess).
qihqi 7y ago
Shopify did the same. Supposedly to help employees to buy stuff they need for working from home. It's really a pair of decent monitors + a good usb hub.
- Traster 7y ago
  That seems oddly tax inefficient. If you're buying equipment for work it should be expensed through the business. You shouldn't be paying income tax on it.
voz_ 7y ago
Proud to work here. Confused by the all downvotes.
huangc10 7y ago
fwiw, after taxes, looking at $600-$800 depending on tax category.
starpilot 7y ago
Are the contractors who serve food or drive the employee shuttles also receiving this?
- cjhopman 7y ago
  Probably not (possibly giving bonuses skirts the contractor-employee line, idk). But they are still getting paid even if they are sitting at home all day when the cafeteria shuts down and the shuttles stop running.
m0zg 7y ago
Leaked video of Zuck making the decision: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYHO7FRsQAA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYHO7FRsQAA
GoodJokes 7y ago
Must be nice.
allenrb 7y ago
Disclaimer: Former FB engineering employee. I have rarely seen a greater bunch of whining here. Don’t like FB as a business? Fine, I don’t really either. But they take care of their people. If there must be an outpouring of whining, maybe direct it at those other companies that also have cash on hand and aren’t giving some of it to employees?
xbeta 7y ago
How about giving out some masks which are more effective than just money? We can't even find any masks to buy in the Bay Area, and we are at risk.
- some_random 7y ago
  Is it possible that some FB employees have problems that can be solved with cash, but not with N95 filters? And where is FB going to get these mask, and how would they distribute them to their employees working from home?
throw_away_45 7y ago
I work for FB and wanted to shed some more light on this Several employees are pledging to donate that to charities, including me. Internally, employees are mobilizing to help others in need, via fundraising and other causes. It's a beautiful sight. FB is giving away around $100 million to 30K small businesses. Zuckerberg has pledged to match up to $20 million in donations. And he's pledged money via his philanthropic arm to fight COVID-19. Stop complaining and start doing. What did you do today to help others ?

194 points by theBashShell 7y ago

maybeiambatman 7y ago

Damn, say what you will about FB, that's a gesture and a half.

MegaButts 7y ago
Why? It's a fraction of a percent of most employees' annual pay, which presumably they are still receiving. If anything, it's like giving everyone a tiny bonus for some PR. At least that's how I read it. If they gave that money to contractors, that would actually be a gesture of good will. Honestly I feel like they'd be better off only giving it to contractors and ignoring their employees, who are already extremely well-paid.
- kjakm 7y ago
  If you read the article you will see they are also giving every essentially a full bonus irrespective of performance. Depending on individual agreements that could be a significant sum so it's definitely not a fraction of a percent of anybody's annual pay.
  - MegaButts 7y ago
    Facebook has always given out bonuses, that's not news. The news is giving every employee $1000, and I'm saying that's a horrible decision on Facebook's part and they should be shamed for it. They should use that money to help those in need, or just not do anything at all. Facebook has always been known for its unethical decisions, but this is just dumb - unless their goal is to get some incredibly superficial PR for what is a very small amount of money to them (tens of millions is a rounding error compared to their quarterly revenue).
    - kjakm 7y ago
      You've failed to comprehend the article and now you've failed to comprehend my comment. Facebook isn't simply 'giving bonuses'. Bonuses are based on performance. It's rare at a company that you will get 100% of your performance bonus. In this case Facebook is giving everyone a high performance score (and therefore a high % of their bonus) regardless of how well they performed. For perspective: someone on a $100k salary with a 10% bonus might normally expect $4-8k bonus. Not it'll be $9-10k. Depending on how high the salaries are and how large the bonus %'s are the difference could be quite a lot.
- throwlaplace 7y ago
  pleasing cynics is like pissing outside on a windy day when you have to go - damned if you do and damned if you don't. read the article - they're giving out 1k to each of the 45k employees. i'm sorry for the contractors (i don't know if it includes them) but that's still a small city's worth of people. they're also guaranteeing bonuses for the next two quarters for all of those people. i don't care about fb but the move definitely clears the bar for nice gesture even if it's not nobel peace prize worthy. like how about we just rejoice in one small nice thing instead of taking meaningless cynical potshots?
  - MegaButts 7y ago
    I'm cynical because I still don't see how this is helpful. It's giving more money to people that already have money, instead of spreading it around to people that don't have money. Facebook employees are about the least economically vulnerable population you can find, apart from people who inherited their wealth. Why not actually do something useful with the money, like donate it to a charity in need that's trying to help those suffering from the epidemic? Yes - I genuinely think this is a bad move, as in they should have not done it at all. As someone who does make a stupid amount of money, I wouldn't care about an extra $1k, but I know people that would. This is just trickle down economics.
    - kiba 7y ago
      Not everybody at the company is a six figure software engineer.
      - MegaButts 7y ago
        Sure, but the vast majority are. This is basically targeting the group that includes mostly engineers to give them more money, instead of giving the money to content moderators or other lowly paid employees. Again, this is basically the worst use of the money Facebook could have considered for anything with a remotely philanthropic angle. It reeks of a PR grab to me, and even if not it's just a horrible decision if their goal is to help those in need.

Hamuko 7y ago

>It’s not clear if Facebook will also give a bonus to contractors who are content moderators. Let me guess: it doesn't. Have Facebook contractors been given the right to work from home yet?

andygcook 7y ago
By definition, don't all contractors have to generally not work from an office? Otherwise it's very easy to deem them full-time employees and they are entitled to benefits. Not sure of Facebook's specific situation or what roles they are contracting, but I'd imagine most of them aren't at HQ.
- standardUser 7y ago
  "By definition, don't all contractors have to generally not work from an office?" At Facebook or in general? I don't know FB's specific policies but in general, no, being a contractor does not automatically imply that you can work remotely.
- Hamuko 7y ago
  https://theintercept.com/2020/03/12/coronavirus-facebook-contractors/ https://theintercept.com/2020/03/12/coronavirus-facebook-con... This was in the news last week. Pretty sure I picked it up from Hacker News.
- jabroni_salad 7y ago
  They're just permatempts. Every company has them these days. The content moderators specifically work out of an Accenture office and aren't really contracted to facebook. They are Accenture's w-2 employees.
  - tathougies 7y ago
    > They are Accenture's w-2 employees. Then Accenture should be giving them allowance to work from home, not facebook.
- xyzzyz 7y ago

regnerba 7y ago

But why? Aren't most of their employees going to still be making their salary anyways? What do they need the extra money for? The people in the economy that really need the money are not the people working at Facebook. I mean, congrats to Facebook employees, I just don't understand why.

izzydata 7y ago
Maybe they think all their employees will spend an extra $1000 they wouldn't have otherwise. Some of it might be spent keeping local business running for a week? I don't know.
- pmiller2 7y ago
  I don’t work at FB, but I’ve definitely spent a few hundred these past couple of weeks preparing for the current situation.
- buboard 7y ago
  arent local businesses closing?
  - kjakm 7y ago
    Not sure about the Bay Area but a lot of restaurants are switching to delivery only (inc. the kind of places that never did delivery in the first place) so this money could go to them. Money can also be spent buying things in advance - for example concert tickets for late in the year. This will help performers/venues remain afloat in the meantime. Also - for local businesses that weather the storm, these people now have an extra $1k + extra bonus that they can spend to help get them back to black sooner.
  - Supermancho 7y ago
    Yes. In washington and california, which isn't surprising. Some businesses can't cope with the shutdown, some were barely getting by and have just pulled the trigger (eg The Stranger in Washington State, bakeries, restaurants, gyms, etc) to close or drastically reduce services. This will get more common, as the MONTHS drag on.

buboard 7y ago

this sounds tone-deaf. Much better to give that money to employees other companies who actually need it.

tudelo 7y ago
You want... Facebook... To give 1000 dollars... To every employee of some other unnamed company...
- buboard 7y ago
  this could be e.g. in the form of food delivery vouchers etc, speficically aimed to keep small businesses running
  - chillacy 7y ago
    They're doing something like that here: https://www.facebook.com/business/boost/grants https://www.facebook.com/business/boost/grants

shartshooter 7y ago

the median compensation for a Facebook employee is $228,651 It’s not clear if Facebook will also give a bonus to contractors who are content moderators Kudos to Facebook for trying to help their team weather the storm. Hopefully the folks who need it most get the bonuses as well.

cjhopman 7y ago
It may be tough for a company to provide bonuses directly to contractors (especially those that are earmarked for buying equipment to wfh). FB has said that they have agreements with all the contracting companies that they work with that even as people stay home they will continue to get paid their normal pay (even if they can do nearly no work from home, e.g. including food service contractors). They haven't said what that means, but you can be sure that pay isn't coming out of the contracting companies pockets.

333c 7y ago

> It’s not clear if Facebook will also give a bonus to contractors who are content moderators. It seems like they are the most at-risk, considering they are not paid as much as all the developers.

throw7337 7y ago
I work with some of them in Greece. They have monthly contract extensions and are paid by day, no sick leave. Most offices have skeleton crew now. Technically it is not fb, but agency who employs them.
- 333c 7y ago
  > Technically it is not fb, but agency who employs them. And that's part of the problem, IMO. It enables Facebook to say "we're giving these protections to all our employees" which is technically correct but leaves out many people who labor for Facebook.

danpalmer 7y ago

Meanwhile Facebook relies heavily on contractors for catering, security, cleaning, and content moderation. The first 3 of these will be severely cut back during the virus as offices are closed.

dan15 7y ago
> The first 3 of these will be severely cut back during the virus as offices are closed. Facebook are still paying all contractors their regular pay, even if they're not needed at the moment: > Facebook will pay contingent workers that cannot work due to reduced staffing requirements during voluntary work from home, when we close an office, when we choose to send an employee home, or when they are sick https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/06/facebook-commits-to-paying-contingent-workers-affected-by-corporate-coronavirus-response/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/06/facebook-commits-to-paying...

fallmonkey 7y ago

The title misses the other, and more impactful/unprecedented change of giving everyone "exceeds" rating and skipping perf review for them (except for those high performers who will get separate review). That does far more than $1000 to relieve everyone and make it fair for those who have to take care of others in the family during such time.

CydeWeys 7y ago
Yeah, this change is easily worth something on the order of $20k this year and then $10k per year for the three following years for every engineer who wouldn't have otherwise achieved this rating. It's huge. Interestingly, I assume they're doing this because it means they can skip the performance cycle entirely. That's a good way to save process. It's gonna harm some people who were on track to do better than exceeds, though. (On average it should help people.)
- dan15 7y ago
  > It's gonna harm some people who were on track to do better than exceeds, though. There's no news about this yet, but I've heard that people that are on track to do better than exceeds will likely still have a review so that they don't miss out.

0x8BADF00D 7y ago

This will not do anything substantial. When monetizing the debt, the Fed should instead helicopter money to everyone. Everyone can then be a millionaire like in the Weimar Republic.

WoefullyInept 7y ago

It might be a gesture at a company like Amazon where they employ many low paid workers, but at FB a high proportion of workers will see this as a 0.2-1% bonus. The 'exceeds' performance review will have a much bigger impact on income.

packetslave 7y ago
The 'exceeds' performance review will have a much bigger impact on income. Not until mid-September bonus payout, though.
- disgruntledphd2 7y ago
  Exceeds bonus: great! Not having to write perf reviews: priceless!
cjhopman 7y ago
I suspect that for many employees, the important thing isn't even the income aspect of the 'exceeds' rating, it's the fact that they don't need to be stressed about maintaining high performance when they are dealing with a lot of challenges related to newly working from home and being near quarantined and possibly having kids doing kid things all day.

nodesocket 7y ago

> as the median compensation for a Facebook employee is $228,651 Meanwhile in silicon valley people making an average of $228k a year get a $1,000 for no reason. They are on salary already and $1,000 doesn’t move the needle for them. This is absurd.

pathartl 7y ago
Median != average
pbhjpbhj 7y ago
I thought FB was global, and doubt that all of their staff make that much? If it doesn't help, what have we lost, other companies are doing nothing, it seems. https://about.fb.com/company-info/ https://about.fb.com/company-info/ says 85 locations around the World.
cjhopman 7y ago
I don't understand what sort of person jumps to this response. Would you be similarly negative if FB decided to give their employees 6 months of parental leave?

hmate9 7y ago

Not sure why there are so many negative comments. This is a win and sets a great example that hopefully other companies can follow. Yes, software engineers at FB have probably no (or very little) problem working from home and get their $200k salary, but this is a win regardless.

Retric 7y ago
> Not sure why there are so many negative comments It’s seen as rearranging deck chairs on the titanic. the median compensation for a Facebook employee is $228,651 That’s not a group facing huge financial issues which 1k is going to do much about. I am not saying it is a poor use of 45 million dollars, but I can see people viewing this as meaningless.
- tudelo 7y ago
  Eh, imagine Facebook hired remote workers. I bet they would be fine giving them 1k upfront for tech setup
  - Retric 7y ago
    I suspect it was to offset the costs of setting up a home office. And in that context it seems like a completely reasonable thing to do.

subsaharancoder 7y ago

Bonuses just got issued at most if not all SV companies, I work at Uber and ours checked in 3/13, so more money is the last thing SV techies need at this time. The funds should have been directed to orgs supporting freelancers etc

cjhopman 7y ago
What does one have to do with the other?

packetslave 7y ago

Facebook is giving $1k to every employee And $100 million in cash grants and ad credits to small businesses in 30 countries. https://www.facebook.com/business/boost/grants https://www.facebook.com/business/boost/grants #idontspeakforfb

throwaway713 7y ago

I don’t know what the deal is, but I feel like the cynicism on HN has just constantly ramped up over the past couple of years. I actively feel worse after reading the comments on a lot of articles posted on here, and it’s just not an enjoyable experience. There was another article posted recently about a CEO raising the minimum salary of all of his employees to $70,000 and cutting his personal costs to afford it, and even with this gesture there were many negative comments and conspiracy theories about it.

hombre_fatal 7y ago
HN comments remind me of how monkeys would rather have nothing than see another monkey get more than them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meiU6TxysCg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meiU6TxysCg
- ryandrake 7y ago
  People are not always rational utility maximizers. See the Ultimatum Game[1]. There are always people who would rather get nothing than get a small amount when they know the other person would get more. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimatum_game https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimatum_game
  - lukifer 7y ago
    Assuming a game is played more than once (a safe assumption for human social behavior), I think an occasional Defect / Nobody Gets Anything is quite rational: it's a credible deterrent to disincentivize a grossly unfair distribution.
tenebrisalietum 7y ago
The number of non-tech articles with social/political slant on HN is increasing.
CydeWeys 7y ago
Seriously, I don't know why people are trying so hard to find the negative here in a thousand bucks bonus to all employees. The top ranked comment in this entire thread is currently "But why? [...] What do they need the extra money for?" Talk about crab mentality. If your employer gives you extra money, you take it! Good on Facebook for redistributing some vanishingly tiny fraction of their cash to their employees in this time of crisis.

vuln 7y ago

What if Facebook gave a $1,000 to every user... Now that would be news...

jefftk 7y ago
FB has ~2.5B MAUs, so you're talking ~$2.5T. Facebook is worth about $0.5B, but they'd be worth much less than that if they tried to turn the business into cash to distribute. FB doesn't have anywhere near the money you're talking about.
SheinhardtWigCo 7y ago
Yes, botnet operators would love that.
- vuln 7y ago
  Require a photo ID and tax documents.
  - rkho 7y ago
    And then the headline becomes "Facebook wants to harvest your ID and tax documents"

sabujp 7y ago

Google is being flexible about letting employees not use their PTO while school is out, which IMO is a far better thing to give.

jedberg 7y ago

If Facebook actually wanted to help, they would instead give every employee a $1,000 donation budget. Pick a charity and Facebook will donate on your behalf. Why give an extra $1,000 to someone who is still making their salary? Or you know at least cut it off at people making over $100,000 or something.

seattle_spring 7y ago

The much bigger news here is that they're suspending performance reviews for this half and giving everyone an "exceeds expectation" rating. This is huge for working parents who are having to give up family responsibilities just to grind for their employer.

oaiey 7y ago
To the point. It removes the pressure when pressure is everywhere else. I hate defending FB, but these measures are really good.
- edanm 7y ago
  To be fair, even though a lot of people rightly or wrongly criticize Facebook, I don't think most of the criticism has been about their treatment of employees. I'm pretty sure it's always been pretty great.
dan15 7y ago
The other thing that wasn't really covered is that contractors are getting paid even if they're unable to work (for example, people that work in security and culinary teams that aren't required because the offices are closed). That's one of the best things IMO.

sciurus 7y ago

My employer, Mozilla, is reimbursing employees up to $1,000 towards equipment for working from home [0], childcare, etc. The guidance has been for employees to be reasonable and for those approving expenses to be flexible. [0] The roughly half of the company that works from home already got to expense setting up their home office when they were hired, so this mainly helps the people who were working from a company office.

throwawaymanbot 7y ago

wow... people who are already well paid... meanwhile the people they rape data off get nothing. (and lets face it will need help a lot more) Typical Zuck logic.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

hemantv 7y ago

Man, not fan of company toward public. But these acts are changing my view and their work to improve mis-spread of information. I feel like they are becoming a new company (growth from teenage years I guess).

qihqi 7y ago

Shopify did the same. Supposedly to help employees to buy stuff they need for working from home. It's really a pair of decent monitors + a good usb hub.

Traster 7y ago
That seems oddly tax inefficient. If you're buying equipment for work it should be expensed through the business. You shouldn't be paying income tax on it.

voz_ 7y ago

Proud to work here. Confused by the all downvotes.

huangc10 7y ago

fwiw, after taxes, looking at $600-$800 depending on tax category.

starpilot 7y ago

Are the contractors who serve food or drive the employee shuttles also receiving this?

cjhopman 7y ago
Probably not (possibly giving bonuses skirts the contractor-employee line, idk). But they are still getting paid even if they are sitting at home all day when the cafeteria shuts down and the shuttles stop running.

m0zg 7y ago

Leaked video of Zuck making the decision: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYHO7FRsQAA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYHO7FRsQAA

GoodJokes 7y ago

Must be nice.

allenrb 7y ago

Disclaimer: Former FB engineering employee. I have rarely seen a greater bunch of whining here. Don’t like FB as a business? Fine, I don’t really either. But they take care of their people. If there must be an outpouring of whining, maybe direct it at those other companies that also have cash on hand and aren’t giving some of it to employees?

xbeta 7y ago

How about giving out some masks which are more effective than just money? We can't even find any masks to buy in the Bay Area, and we are at risk.

some_random 7y ago
Is it possible that some FB employees have problems that can be solved with cash, but not with N95 filters? And where is FB going to get these mask, and how would they distribute them to their employees working from home?

throw_away_45 7y ago

I work for FB and wanted to shed some more light on this Several employees are pledging to donate that to charities, including me. Internally, employees are mobilizing to help others in need, via fundraising and other causes. It's a beautiful sight. FB is giving away around $100 million to 30K small businesses. Zuckerberg has pledged to match up to $20 million in donations. And he's pledged money via his philanthropic arm to fight COVID-19. Stop complaining and start doing. What did you do today to help others ?