Two Huawei employees were demoted and given pay cuts after an embarrassing blunder on the social media platform Twitter.
On January 1, a tweet saying “Happy #2019 from all of us at Huawei” was posted using the official Twitter account of the Chinese smartphone giant. Things would’ve gone as planned if only some eagle-eyed Twitter users hadn’t noticed one thing: the tweet was succeeded with the automatic tag, “via Twitter for iPhone.”
As screenshots and memes started circulating around different social media platforms, Huawei immediately released an internal memo blaming the blunder on an overseas supplier, Sapient, which also handles its social media relations. This memo was seen by both Bloomberg and Reuters.
According to the internal memo released, the supplier apparently experienced some problems with their computer’s VPN, causing them to use an iPhone with a roaming sim as an emergency measure. This resulted in the embarrassing Twitter mistake that caused Huawei to demote the employees involved, on top of a 5000 yuan (roughly $730) pay cut. One of them is Huawei’s head of digital marketing who, according to Reuters, will also get their salary frozen for a whole year.
The controversial tweet has since been deleted from Huawei’s official Twitter account.
