
Facebook is giving $1k to every employee - theBashShell
https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/17/21183513/facebook-giving-1000-dollar-bonuses-every-employee-coronavirus-mark-zuckerberg
======
seattle_spring
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
To the point. It removes the pressure when pressure is everywhere else.

I hate defending FB, but these measures are really good.

~~~
edanm
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.

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packetslave
_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

------
hmate9
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
> 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
Eh, imagine Facebook hired remote workers. I bet they would be fine giving
them 1k upfront for tech setup

~~~
Retric
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.

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fallmonkey
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
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
> 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.

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throw_away_45
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 ?

------
Hamuko
> _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
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.

~~~
jabroni_salad
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
> They are Accenture's w-2 employees.

Then Accenture should be giving them allowance to work from home, not
facebook.

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WoefullyInept
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
_The 'exceeds' performance review will have a much bigger impact on income._

Not until mid-September bonus payout, though.

~~~
disgruntledphd2
Exceeds bonus: great!

Not having to write perf reviews: priceless!

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

~~~
MegaButts
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
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
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
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.

------
shartshooter
_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
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.

------
throwaway713
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.

~~~
CydeWeys
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.

~~~
tathougies
Because life is so easy that people need a crisis. This is especially true in
the United States, where life is exceptionally easy.

~~~
sybarita
Life is only easy for about 1% of the country... Most of us are barely
surviving

~~~
bmelton
This isn't meant to diminish the plight of those suffering in America, but it
takes approximately $32,000 to be in the top 1% for worldwide incomes. Much of
America's poor are relatively wealthy when you consider the global scale.

I don't know that there's any object lesson in that, but it's worth
remembering that most of us live positively enveloped in so much privilege
that we take for granted how much more difficult the struggle could be.

~~~
ShorsHammer
Except very rarely can you live worldwide while earning that. Someone on that
much money is going to be struggling in Sydney, not the sort of person you
would call the 1% to their face. It's actually around the legal minimum wage
not including annual/sick leave and retirement benefits.

------
hemantv
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).

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voz_
Proud to work here. Confused by the all downvotes.

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regnerba
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.

~~~
oaiey
Because working from home with kids unable to leave house produces extra
expenses for child care (switching from daycare to babysitter will be
expensive) etc.

If you do not do that, you need to cut hours, which reduce your income.

What FB does here is to comfort their worried employees with some money, push
the overall moral and mitigate some of the impacts ppl feel.

You can replace babysitting with caregiving, being sick, etc.

~~~
Hamuko
> _If you do not do that, you need to cut hours, which reduce your income._

Are Facebook employees paid by the hour?

~~~
samstave
They have a lot of contractors, who are. And there is (used to be) a caste
like energy on how contractors were viewed as opposed to actual FTEs.

~~~
cmiles74
As far as I can tell, contractors aren't included in this initiative.

~~~
fatnoah
As far as I can tell, they are included.

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

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sciurus
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.

------
danpalmer
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
> 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...](https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/06/facebook-commits-to-paying-
contingent-workers-affected-by-corporate-coronavirus-response/)

------
333c
> 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
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
> 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.

------
allenrb
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?

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qihqi
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
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.

------
subsaharancoder
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
What does one have to do with the other?

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huangc10
fwiw, after taxes, looking at $600-$800 depending on tax category.

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

~~~
cjhopman
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.

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

~~~
SheinhardtWigCo
Yes, botnet operators would love that.

~~~
vuln
Require a photo ID and tax documents.

~~~
rkho
And then the headline becomes "Facebook wants to harvest your ID and tax
documents"

------
xbeta
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
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?

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

~~~
tudelo
You want... Facebook... To give 1000 dollars... To every employee of some
other unnamed company...

~~~
buboard
this could be e.g. in the form of food delivery vouchers etc, speficically
aimed to keep small businesses running

~~~
chillacy
They're doing something like that here:
[https://www.facebook.com/business/boost/grants](https://www.facebook.com/business/boost/grants)

------
0x8BADF00D
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.

------
m0zg
Leaked video of Zuck making the decision:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYHO7FRsQAA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYHO7FRsQAA)

------
jedberg
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.

------
nodesocket
> 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.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
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.

