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Huawei demotes responsible employees & slashes their pay following latest ‘Twitter for iPhone’ blunder

Chance Miller | Jan 3 2019 - 9:39 pm PT

Earlier this week, Huawei rang in 2019 by wishing everyone a Happy New Year using Twitter for iPhone. Reuters now reports, however, that Huawei is taking things to a new level by demoting the employees responsible for the blunder and slashing their pay.

While Huawei quickly deleted the tweet in question, screenshots went viral – as is often the case when Android manufacturers are caught tweeting from iPhone. In a memo obtained by Reuters, Huawei vice president Chen Lifang slammed the employees responsible for the tweet, saying “the incident caused damage to the Huawei brand.”

As for what exactly happened that led to Huawei tweeting “Happy New Year” from Twitter for iPhone, the memo explains that an outsourced social media manager experienced problems with their desktop computer, so they turned to a nearby iPhone to send the tweet:

The mistake occurred when outsourced social media handler Sapient experienced “VPN problems” with a desktop computer so used an iPhone with a roaming SIM card in order to send the message on time at midnight, Huawei said in the memo.

Further, even though the tweet was sent by an outsourced social media handler, Huawei is partly blaming in-house management. In the memo, the company says the mistake showed “procedural incompliance and management oversight.”

In light of the blunder, Huawei has demoted two employees by one rank and reduced their monthly salaries by over $700 (5,000 yuan). Additionally, Huawei says that its digital marketing director will also have their pay rank frozen for twelve months.

While Huawei certainly isn’t the first Android manufacturer to be caught using Twitter for iPhone – Samsung is a regular victim – this is certainly the first time a company’s internal response to such an error has been made public.