Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Facebook is giving $1k to every employee

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 210 posts

Re: Facebook is giving $1k to every employee

#171

Post by tathougies »

sybarita wrote: post #150
tathougies wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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

Most Americans who are 'barely surviving' are still surviving. Surviving means you have all your immediate needs met. That means your life is exceptionally easy. Most of the world cannot have their basic needs met. That is the typical state of humanity. Most Americans can not only have all their immediate needs met, they are also able to pay off the debts they have taken, which puts them lightyears ahead of most of the world.

Re: Facebook is giving $1k to every employee

#172

Post by Dahoon »

oaiey wrote: post #74
regnerba wrote: post #4

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.

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…

>Because working from home with kids unable to leave house produces extra expenses for child care

Why on earth would you need childcare if you work from home? Oh such hard work at FB.

Re: Facebook is giving $1k to every employee

#173

Post by CydeWeys »

buboard wrote: post #14
pmiller2 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not every FB employee is a highly paid software engineer who has savings to weather a multi-month public health crisis.

then not everyone should get it

Why is it bothering you so much that other people are getting a thousand dollar bonus? I'm happy for them, and I'd love for it to happen to me too.

Facebook is not short of money. I'm glad they're doing something extra for their employees in these times.

Re: Facebook is giving $1k to every employee

#174

Post by packetslave »

Dahoon wrote: post #172
oaiey wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>Because working from home with kids unable to leave house produces extra expenses for child care Why on earth would you need childcare if you work from home? Oh such hard work at FB.

Let me rephrase your comment for you: "I don't have kids."

Re: Facebook is giving $1k to every employee

#175

Post by CydeWeys »

fallmonkey wrote: post #8

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.

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.)

Re: Facebook is giving $1k to every employee

#176

Post by bmelton »

sybarita wrote: post #150
tathougies wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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

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.

Re: Facebook is giving $1k to every employee

#177

Post by sumofi »

throwaway713 wrote: post #37

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…

Is it note worthy that people who will not have issues are getting even more?

I would say no?

There should be some cynical response to that.

"Oh you loose your business? I just got 1k extra to my FB salary"

I'm not even sure why FB would not try to do something for the society directly with it's money instead of giving it to there well paid employees.

Re: Facebook is giving $1k to every employee

#178

Post by bigbob2 »

oaiey wrote: post #74
regnerba wrote: post #4

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.

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…

So instead of reducing hours without cutting pay, or even just finding ways to give parents more flexibility in their work arrangements, we increase the demand and thereby the cost of those services so those employed in less cushy/flexible industries have no recourse.

Re: Facebook is giving $1k to every employee

#179

Post by sybarita »

tathougies wrote: post #171
sybarita wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Most Americans who are 'barely surviving' are still surviving. Surviving means you have all your immediate needs met. That means your life is exceptionally easy. Most of the world cannot have their basic needs met. That is the typical state of humanity. Most Americans can not only have all their immediate needs met, they are also able to pay off the debts they have taken, which puts them lightyears ahead of most of t…

Well yeah that's survivorship bias, many Americans die every day from direct results of poverty. Most Americans I know barely have their needs met, I've lost many friends to suicide and drug overdoses etc. Of course there are places that are still worse off, that doesn't excuse in any way the horrible inequalities in our current system. It would honestly only require simple things like m4a, higher min wage, to make life moderately livable for the working class. UBI would be a lot better. The only real argument against it is that it would cost rich people money.
Post reply on HN