E-commerce giant Shopee has cut jobs in Singapore amid its latest foray into artificial intelligence, stating that the move comes after a regular review of business operations.
Responding to media queries on Wednesday (Jun 10), a Shopee spokesperson said the company regularly assesses its “staffing needs”.“From time to time, departments may make adjustments based on operational and business priorities,” said the spokesperson.
“These decisions are always made after careful consideration. For colleagues affected by any changes, Shopee is committed to providing support during this period of transition.”It is not clear how many employees in Singapore have been affected.
Bloomberg reported on Wednesday that Shopee was cutting hundreds of developer roles globally, amounting to about 8 per cent of its developer workforce.
Shopee, which dominates Southeast Asia’s e-commerce market, is headquartered in Singapore and has offices in more than 20 cities around the world.
The company had cut jobs in 2022 amid falling profitability and the COVID-19 pandemic.The latest round of job cuts in the Singapore headquarters was confirmed to CNA by two software engineers who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Both employees learnt that they had been laid off on Monday.
One of the software engineers was informed on the company’s instant messaging platform first, before an in-person meeting with the human resources department.
Affected employees were told they will receive an “N+2” severance package, or one month of salary for each year of service plus another two months of pay, this engineer said.
The two engineers were unaware of how many staff members were affected in the latest round of cuts.
A third employee whose role was unaffected by the news told CNA that there was no townhall meeting or company-wide email communicating the news to all employees.
CNA
