Elon Musk’s Twitter is shutting down its co-working spaces in Delhi and Mumbai due to the company’s rental issues. The offices in Bengaluru were shut earlier and the move was implemented in two other offices in India.
Quick Facts
- Twitter started to shed its offices in December 2022
- Around 150 employees were working at the WeWork facility in Mumbai’s BKC, and 80 at The Executive Centre in Delhi’s Qutub area
- Twitter was earlier sued for not paying rent for its office space in San Francisco
- The workers of the closing offices in Asia headquarters were instructed to work from home as Twitter couldn’t afford to pay the rent
Earlier this week, Musk asked his staff in Singapore to stop coming to work and resume their duties remotely until further notice. The employees were informed about the decision through a mail asking them to leave the premises of the CapitaGreen building and work from home.
Platformer’s Casey Newton tweeted on Thursday tweeted about the bizarre occurrence. “Twitter employees were just walked out of its Singapore office – its Asia-Pacific headquarters – over nonpayment of rent,” he shared.
“Landlords walked employees out of the building,” he added. In the States, Twitter was sued for being unable to pay $136,250 due on rent money for its office space in San Francisco.
Why is Twitter giving up its office spaces in India?
Twitter is looking for ways to minimize costs due to the uncertainty of its economic state. The company is in the process of vacating its co-working spaces in Delhi and Mumbai.
They already gave up its Bengaluru working facility and laid off 80 workers in India out of the total 250. The layoffs took place after Elon Musk’s $44 billion acquisition of Twitter in October 2022.
Although Bangalore had fewer co-working seats, Twitter decided to terminate its operations. It is on a consistent mission to reduce costs. As of now, both WeWork and TEC have not confirmed the news of their discontinuation.
Offloading thousands of workers between October and December, the company is closing its subscribed services to save budget. At the Twitter India offices, some employees haven’t received their severance pay, for more than two months after they were fired.
Employees worldwide have claimed that the CEO is undertaking strict cost-cutting measures, like blocking janitorial services resulting in smelly washrooms. It has also discontinued its free lunch offerings, a tradition initiated by co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey.
Like Twitter, other tech companies are also resorting to extremity to reduce operational costs. Jeff Bezos’ Amazon announced that it is offloading more than 18,000 employees.
Several workers were fired in November-December 2022 while others are still receiving termination letters. A tweet that gained traction revealed that many workers in the India office were fired recently.
The staff members discussed the situation on theGrapevine forum where a post states, “75 percent of my team is gone, I’m still employed but don’t feel like working anymore… You can hear people breaking down and crying in the office.”
How will Twitter function with fewer offices and employees?
Twitter’s employee headcount is about 70% less than it was before Musk entered the scene. He continues to cut costs with the same vigor even today, so how will Twitter function with a reduced workforce and space?
Musk is reportedly looking for ways to receive new funding from old investors in his Twitter takeover. He is shedding certain features on the platform and streamlining the site to perpetuate his cost-reduction measures.
After its launch in 2015, Moments, a curated compilation of events on Twitter will cease to exist on the site, and the Curation team, responsible for running it was almost entirely fired. Other features that could be discontinued include Voice Tweets, audio messages, and some extras on Explore page and current Explore tabs.
Explore will be redressed into two sections – “Trending” and “For you.” The latter will be an “infinite swipeable video feed.” In addition, the “tech stack,” initially reported as having been discarded, will be rebuilt with few people and faster experimentation.
The “tech stack” contains the data and programming behind applications and features for Explore. In addition, “Spaces” was discontinued as it was too expensive to run but it has been restored and its tech stack will now be altered.
Half of Twitter’s public policy team was fired and various benefits and perks were removed from workers’ salaries. Besides nonpayment of employee benefits, their performances are being evaluated within short periods.
He is looking for money from outside sources and his recent sale of $3.6 billion worth of shares in Tesla was seemingly a move to cover costs for Twitter.
