Twitter Inc. is reducing physical offices in a number of regions around the world, including San Francisco, New York and Sydney, as the business slashes costs and shifts more toward remote work. However, this does not mean the company intends to reduce its workforce.
According to an email issued to workers on Wednesday, Twitter will dramatically reduce its corporate presence in San Francisco by closing an office on Tenth Street just behind the Market Street headquarters.
The company has also abandoned plans to open an office in Oakland, across the Bay.
According to a memo, Twitter may close its Sydney office and is considering closing locations in Seoul, Wellington (New Zealand), Osaka (Japan), Madrid, Hamburg (Germany) and Utrecht (Netherlands) as leases expire. It may be possible to find alternative office space at some of these locations.
In other key areas, such as Tokyo, Mumbai, New Delhi, Dublin and New York, the company’s footprint will be reduced. Twitter is not planning any layoffs in these cities, the email said.
“I want to make it clear that this does not change our commitment to the work in each of these markets,” said Dalana Brand, Twitter’s chief people officer. “If certain offices were to close, there would be no impact” to Twitter workers’ jobs; they would simply transition to full-time work-from-home employees, she said.
According to a spokeswoman, the decisions will have no impact on existing staff numbers or duties, “and we’ll continue to support and regularly meet with our customers to help them launch something new and connect with what’s happening on Twitter.” The company had more than 7,500 employees at the end of 2021.
The changes are the latest in a series of cost-cutting measures the social media company is implementing, citing macroeconomic conditions.
Twitter imposed a hiring freeze in early May, and CEO Parag Agrawal also announced cuts to marketing and business travel, as well as a request for employees to be more cautious with their spending. A scheduled work vacation trip to Disneyland in early 2023 was also canceled.
