Twitter Closing Asia Offices asks workers To Clear Desks and WFH

Twitter’s staff members at the Asia headquarters in Singapore have been told to clear their desks and work from home indefinitely. They received an email on Wednesday that instructed them to depart the premises by five pm the same day. 

Quick Facts

• Twitter employees at the Singapore headquarters are now required to work from home until further notice 
• Singapore-based Twitter employees have been newly designated as remote workers in Twitter’s internal system
• A spokesperson for the CapitaLand, the company that owns Twitter’s Singapore offices revealed that the social media company is still a tenant at CapitaGreen

Twitter representatives refused to comment on the matter. Similar to the fiasco that befell the company’s Asia headquarters, employees at the HQ in San Francisco were also informed that their office has shut down. 

The senior members, who bore the news, refrained from providing any reason for the act but the office reopened a week later. In addition, they were told to be silent about the internal affairs of the company. 

Musk’s takeover continued to invite chaos and dozens of staff members threw in their resignations. Within a month of his acquisition, Twitter’s around 50 percent of Twitter’s workforce was sacked.

An unknown source on Twitter predicted that the company would have “less than 2,000 people left.” In October 2022, the social media giant had 7,500 staff members across all offices. 

Twitter gets sued due to non-payment of rent

Casey Newton of Platformer tweeted on Thursday that “Twitter employees were just walked out of its Singapore office – its Asia-Pacific headquarters – over nonpayment of rent”.

“Landlords walked employees out of the building,” he added. Twitter was due $136,250 in rent for its office space in San Francisco. The landlord, Columbia Reit filed a complaint that said Twitter hasn’t paid rent for 650 California Street on the edge of Chinatown. 

The complaint was lodged on December 29, 2022, in state court in San Francisco. Besides that, the company has not paid the rent for the headquarters, situated at 1355 Market Street.

To remedy the situation, Musk turned the rooms at the Twitter headquarters into small bedrooms containing mattresses, curtains, and computer systems. The beds have been provided for staff workers to be able to spend the night at the office. 

Every floor reportedly has four to eight rooms designed for hardworking staffers who could work extra hours. Twitter was again sued in December for refusing to cover bills for charter flights. According to Private Jet Services, Twitter owes $197,725 for flight services. 

What about Musk’s no work-from-home policy?

Singapore took a big hit during the mass layoffs ordained by the company in November last year and half of the company’s 7,500 staff was offloaded. During that time, Musk removed a work-from-policy and increased work hours ordering employees to return to the offices at the earliest.

The rule was scrapped two years after Twitter officially launched its permanent WFH policy. Under Musk’s authority, staff workers were required to be in the office 40 hours a week. There were exceptions only for employees physically incapable of making it to work.

However, leaves were only granted if Musk personally approved them. He then clarified his stance on remote working policies in response to an unverified Twitter account making unproven claims about him calling his Dublin employees back to the office.

He said, “This is false. Anyone who can be in office should be. However, if not logistically possible or they have essential personal matters, then staying home is fine.” He revealed that his Twitter employees are to follow the same policy as Tesla and SpaceX.

Meanwhile, Twitter has been introducing and rolling back multiple new features within short bursts of time. Paid subscription service Twitter Blue, which charges $8 for blue ticks, is one such feature that highlighted the platform’s shaky security system.

It is predicted that Musk’s presence could push the company further down the ladder.