- Misuse of perks has pervaded Big Tech, as Meta's recent 'Grubgate' episode highlighted.
- Big Tech's lavish perks culture led to entitlement and rule-bending among some employees.
- In a new era of efficiency and layoffs, companies are clamping down.
For more than a decade, Big Tech companies doled out lavish perks to hire and retain a limited supply of technical talent — and some workers pushed the limits of these benefits.
"Grubgate," where Meta fired staff for misusing meal vouchers, shows how engrained perks-grifting became in Silicon Valley, but also how the era of pampered tech employees may be ending.
Cost-cutting, huge layoffs, and the use of AI have put tech employers in a more powerful position. Hiring has also slowed, with tech job postings about 30% below pre-pandemic levels, according to job site Indeed. That, in turn, means fewer perks.
"In the 2010 to 2021 days, it was very much like employees were in charge," said a former Instagram staffer. "Then suddenly the tables turned."
Business Insider interviewed tech workers and industry experts about Grubgate and the evolving relationship between Big Tech companies and staff. Most people asked not to be identified so they could speak frankly about some of the more egregious perks-grifting that's gone on in Silicon Valley. They also described how layoffs, efficiency drives, and tougher policy enforcement have shifted the culture at once easygoing tech companies.
It started with the entrées
For years, luscious Silicon Valley "campus" spaces offered workers fancy food, exercise classes, laundry, and even massages, all on the company dime.
Google kicked things off with high-quality free food in the early 2000s. It now has dozens of cafes at the Googleplex in Mountain View and in offices around the world offering an array of free meals cooked by chefs with fine-dining experience.
Things gathered pace from there as Facebook and other emerging tech giants began competing hard for talent.
Perks became so expected that such benefits stopped being highlighted in job postings across the sector, according to Allison Shrivastava, associate economist at Indeed's Hiring Lab.
Hacking the perk system
In a culture of moving fast and breaking things, it was perhaps inevitable some staffers hacked the system.
In 2022, Meta banned employees from bringing in Tupperware because too many had been stocking up on free food and taking it home with them. Even then, employees invented workarounds.
"They got clued up on people taking food home, so people would start bringing their family in," for meals on campus, said a former Google employee, who worked at the company for five years. (Google's policy also states that employees can't take food from its cafeteria home.)
In the Grubgate episode from earlier in October, Meta fired several employees after they misused Grubhub vouchers to order nonfood items like laundry detergent, acne pads, and wine glasses.
Food isn't the only in-house luxury where employees tested the boundaries.
"I used the laundry expense — yes, do my own clothing, but also my spouse's clothing. It's one big laundry hamper at the end of the day. Am I supposed to use it for my spouse's laundry? I don't know, but that kind of thing seems very minor," said a former US Meta employee who was offered a clothes-washing credit because they worked at an office with no on-site laundry.
Meta briefly nixed its in-house laundry service in 2023 before reinstating it — though it's now no longer free.
The use of voucher-based perks was long established at tech companies with offices that couldn't cater for food and other services. These sorts of benefits ballooned during the COVID-induced work-from-home era as employers looked to maintain employee morale.
Over at Snap, the company used to offer employees Snapchat-yellow-branded cash cards loaded with an allowance for a daily meal. "It could be used anywhere — so yes, people used to save it up during the week and blow it on a big shop," said a former Snap UK employee.
A $2,600 travel pass ruse
A senior Meta employee who left last year recalls former colleagues claiming a $2,600 annual travel pass to get the receipt to expense, only to then instantly refund their tickets.
A $3,000 a year "wellness stipend" — meant to cover costs for employees' physical and mental health and care for their families — was exchanged for Nintendo Switch consoles by other staffers, he said.
A $25-a-month advertising credit given to employees to test and improve their skills on Facebook Ad Manager was instead sold for $20 cash, he added.
"It was just kind of normal. Oh, you're getting an Uber Eats, you throw stuff in. It wasn't like you felt you were cheating," said the former Instagram employee. "You feel like that's your money."
A growing sense of entitlement
Some say that all this pampering of tech employees led to a growing sense of entitlement, which allowed some to think they could push the limits of what was acceptable when it came to perks.
"Google would give out Christmas presents, the latest phone or something, and I would see people complain about it," the former Googler said.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg famously bristled during an all-hands meeting about coming layoffs in 2022 when an employee asked whether the company would continue its COVID-era bonus holidays.
"People would get angry about the littlest of things in the live comments when Zuck did the company all-hands — the kinds of comments that would get you fired in any other job," said a former Meta employee who left last year. "'How can you cut the laundry benefit?' 'The food is crap now!' etc."
Where to draw the line?
None of the tech workers Business Insider spoke to endorsed expense fraud. Indeed, there are tax consequences for companies and individuals if tax-exempted benefits or vouchers or a specific purpose are used for something else.
Many tech workers told BI that companies never really made it clear what was acceptable. Is it ok if your partner stops by late to see you in the office and grabs a French fry from a plate of food that your employer paid for? What about 10 fries, or a whole plate?
Patrick Mork, who led marketing for Google Play before leaving in 2013, thinks tech companies have moved too far away from their initial worker-friendly cultures as their focus has turned toward Wall Street's profit expectations. That shift has eroded leadership skills, meaning some employees aren't clear on their company's values and rules, he added.
"Employers don't focus on anything that's not being measured — and what's not being measured is culture, leadership, and values," Mork said.
Dilip Rao, CEO of Sharebite, a startup that lets client companies give workers credit cards for meals that only work at approved restaurants, criticized companies for offering easily abusable perks to workers then penalizing them for it. "Why even put somebody in that position?" he said.
Grubgate is "a perfect example of a recurring issue," he added. "Obviously it's gained visibility because it happened at Meta. But I got to tell you, this same exact problem happens all the time."
He said he's seen other examples of tech employees using company meal vouchers to buy firewood and pet food.
Layoffs led to more perks-grifting
Layoffs across the industry have left some employees cynical about the companies they work at, and worried about job security. When you might be let go by a company, you might max out on perks.
According to job marketplace Trueup, at least 650,000 tech workers have been cut since the start of 2023.
"Once the layoffs started, people were focused on spending whatever perks they had as quickly as possible," said the former Meta employee who left last year.
Soon there may be fewer perks-grifting opportunities. Alongside industrywide layoffs that began in 2022, many tech companies also trimmed back the benefits on offer.
The Big Tech pampering era could soon be over, according to Bruce Daisley, a former vice president at Twitter and YouTube who now coaches leadership teams at large companies on workplace culture.
"There's a feeling that it became a monster that needed to be killed," Daisley said.