Twitter’s layoff exercise last Friday (4 November) has seen roughly half of its 7,500 employees being let go globally, with some of its offices in Asia Pacific being emptied out.
In India, where the platform had more than 250 employees, the majority of staff, some 180 employees have been dismissed, according to local reports. In Singapore, reports say members of its engineering, sales and marketing teams have also been affected.
Perhaps none of Twitter's teams have borne a bigger brunt of the layoffs than its communications teams in the region, which Campaign understands have all been let go. In a goodbye thread, Lauren Myers-Cavanagh, Twitter's APAC director of communications paid tribute to her communications team, underlining the importance of their work for the platform.
“Brands and customers built enormous trust with Twitter as a result of the seen but mostly unseen work of this group," she tweeted. "Twitter is a proposition that needs ppl to believe before they buy. Comms helped make that happen. Twitter talked for years about losing public trust. No team worked harder to earn public trust by living and breathing Twitter’s values of transparency, integrity and authenticity.”
“This group was thoughtful, balanced, nuanced, meticulous and rigorous. Holding those around them accountable, they were a voice of reason,” Myers-Cavanagh wrote.
“@TwitterComms was the heartbeat of #OneTeam. Sometimes subtle, never brash, there was a group of extraordinarily humble Tweeps who delivered company culture in all its forms day after day through it all, including two years of a pandemic and six months of adversity.”
— LMC (@laurenmyersc) November 5, 2022
Why Sunsetting the @TwitterComms team is shortsighted. A thread and a love letter.
Cipluk Carlita, the head of communications for Southeast Asia at Twitter, has also confirmed she is has been let go.
Carlita, who is based in Indonesia said: “While this is not how I would’ve wanted my journey to end, Twitter will always have a special place in my heart. It’s not just a place to work, but also to learn something new every single day and create lifelong friendships. Twitter is not a place. It’s the people.”
In contrast, despite reports of some layoffs, key marketing team members in APAC at Twitter remain in place. Trang Hoang, head of business marketing for Southeast Asia is continuing her role. Likewise, Evangelina Jia Wei, Twitter's head of global business marketing for Greater China confirmed on LinkedIn that she is still active in her role as well.