Twitter’s Singapore Office Impacted By Mass Retrenchments
SINGAPORE – Employees working at Twitter’s office here have also been affected by Elon Musk’s mass job cuts, reported The Straits Times on Friday evening (4 November, SGT).
The news outlet learnt that the layoffs at the social media platform’s Singapore office impacted different departments, including, sales, marketing, and engineering.
In an internal e-mail on Friday, Twitter’s new owner said the retrenchments aim to “place Twitter on a healthy path”. A second e-mail later notified employees if they are among those being fired. However, it’s unclear how many Singapore staff were let go.
Those whose jobs are safe received a notification through their work e-mail, while those who were retrenched were informed about the next steps via their private e-mail.
Notably, Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk intends to slash around 3,700 jobs, or about 50 percent of the social media platform’s global manpower in an effort to reduce cost after his US$44 billion (S$62.3 billion) purchase of Twitter.
The billionaire started dropping hints about his staffing priorities before the acquisition was completed, explaining that he wanted to focus on core products – software engineering, as well as server design and operations.
On Thursday, affected employees filed a class-action lawsuit against Twitter in San Francisco’s federal court regarding the retrenchment, with the plaintiffs arguing that it flouts federal and California laws as staff were not given sufficient notice.
The sad news is a reversal of fortune for Twitter. In January 2022, the social media giant announced that it plans to double the number of engineers at its engineering hub in Singapore to over 100 by the end of 2023.
The layoffs are among a spate of job cuts amid a hiring slowdown in the tech sector. Last week, Stripe said that it would slash its workforce by 14 percent. After the retrenchment, the digital payments company will have around 7,000 staff, stated an e-mail from its founders John and Patrick Collison.
