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In focus
- Lessons from Agoda’s retrenchment missteps
- A look at the consolidating Chinese ecommerce market
- A major AWS outage takes out huge chunks of the internet
Hello reader,
There’s no good way to lose your job, and there’s no perfect way to axe jobs, either. But some ways are definitely worse than others.
For example, it’s never a good sign when a layoff turns into a headline. That’s what Agoda discovered in Singapore after terminating 50 employees recently.
However, the public furor wasn’t so much about what happened, but how it happened. Today’s Top Story from guest writer and lawyer Clarence Ding explains where the travel giant went wrong and how other companies can avoid making the same mistakes when they have to cut jobs.
One detail that stood out to me was Agoda’s decision to name Singapore’s Ministry of Manpower and National Trades Union Congress in its severance agreements to discourage employees from bringing grievances to them. The move backfired: After the agreements were leaked, those agencies issued strong public responses – likely because they had no other choice but to do so.
In the end, efforts to keep things quiet often have the opposite effect. The truth tends to make its way out.
Also, today we look at consolidation in China’s ecommerce industry and the major AWS outage that hit the internet yesterday, affecting numerous websites and services, including Amazon, Roblox, Fortnite, Snapchat, and Slack.
Spare a thought for my colleague Scott, who had to manually turn on the lights at home when Amazon’s Alexa went down. Jokes aside, outages like this are a reminder of how much of our daily lives depend on just a few companies.
Peter Cowan, engagement editor
Top Story
Agoda’s severance saga is a warning for tech employers
Image credit: Arsal Ysfin
Even the most routine layoffs can spiral if handled poorly. Agoda’s recent retrenchment in Singapore is a reminder that small legal slip-ups can have big reputational costs.
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