A former Facebook exec says an employee at a 'large tech company' once complained to the CEO in an all-hands meeting about the quality of company toilet paper

David Marcus, vice president of Messaging Products at Facebook, speaks on stage during the annual Facebook F8 developers conference in San Jose, California, U.S., April 18, 2017.
David Marcus.REUTERS/Stephen Lam
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  • An ex-Facebook exec said an employee griped to a CEO at an all-hands about the toilet-paper quality.

  • He tweeted that the day Elon Musk told Twitter employees to quit if they wouldn't work long hours.

  • The tweet reflects a growing belief among tech execs that employees have become too lazy.

Some tech employees may be seeing fewer office perks soon.

David Marcus, a former Facebook and PayPal executive, alluded to that in a tweet on November 16. He said an employee once complained about the quality of a company's toilet paper during an all-hands meeting there.

"I guess the times of complaining to the CEO of a large tech company at an all hands in front of thousands of people about the quality of toilet paper have come to an end," the tweet said.

The tweet was posted the day Elon Musk sent the entire Twitter staff a midnight email saying they would be fired unless they committed to working "extremely hardcore" under "long hours at high intensity" to build "Twitter 2.0."

Marcus' tweet — and Musk's email — reflects a growing belief among some tech executives that employees have become too lazy and entitled in regard to workplace privileges. It comes at a time when tech giants like Google and Meta have been holding tense all-hands meetings where employees ask questions about how cost-cutting measures will affect their perks.

During an all-hands meeting at Google in September, one employee asked CEO Sundar Pichai why he's slashing travel and merchandise budgets despite the company's record profits after COVID-19 lockdowns, CNBC reported.

In the same vein, an employee at Meta's companywide meeting on June 30 asked CEO Mark Zuckerberg whether "Meta days," the extra vacation days created in response COVID-19, would continue next year, the New York Post reported.

In both of these meetings, Pichai and Zuckerberg responded by citing the tough economic environment their companies were facing and a need for improved productivity among all employees, CNBC and the New York Post reported.

Marcus has made similar public remarks. A day after more than 1,000 Twitter employees resigned, Marcus tweeted in a short thread saying the tech industry was going through a difficult time, adding that he believed new companies would "focus on productivity and doing more with less," rather than increase employee head count.

Former PayPal president berated his employees in 2014 for not bringing enough passion into their jobs

This isn't the first time Marcus, now a crypto-startup entrepreneur, has made comments about his employees' work ethic.

When Marcus was the president of PayPal in 2014, he sent an email to his San Jose, California, staff criticizing them for generating a lower number of client leads than other PayPal offices with fewer employees, according to an internal email reviewed by VentureBeat.

In that email, Marcus also berated the PayPal's San Jose employees for not using the company's products, calling their behavior "unacceptable" and pressuring them to leave if they were not committed to PayPal's mission.

"In closing, if you are one of the folks who refused to install the PayPal app or if you can't remember your PayPal password, do yourself a favor, go find something that will connect with your heart and mind elsewhere," Marcus wrote in the email.

Read the original article on Business Insider