Twitter Begins Laying Off Employees

After Elon Musk completed his purchase of Twitter for US$44 billion,  a round of layoffs have begun.

This was after most of the C-suite executives have been let go in earlier weeks. 

A New Delhi-based Twitter employee has said her entire team has been fired. 

Multiple sources have indicated that 180 of its 230 odd employees have been terminated.  The few remaining survivors worked mainly on government engagement and critical maintenance operations. 

Employees who were let go found that their access to work emails had been revoked.  Most employees were expecting some notice period even though they were aware of rumours in the past few weeks. 

In Singapore, Twitter employees have also been let go though it is not known how many employees were laid off. 

A search on LinkedIn shows that Twiiter is still hiring though

It was reported that Elon Musk had earlier indicated that he intends to cut 3,700 jobs (half of Twitter's global workforce) in a bid to drive down costs. 

In the US, a class- action lawsuit has been filed by workers in San Francisco's federal Court who said they were not given enough notice. 

Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter is not without controversy. After he took over the company,  the CEO, finance chief and senior legal executives were all let go.

Musk has taken on the role of interim CEO and has also brought in Tesla employees to help run the company. 

As Twitter has been taken private,  its stock has already stopped trading on New York Stock Exchange on Friday. Shareholders will be paid US$54.20 for their shares. Existing shareholders will not need to do anything as their brokers will handle all the necessary. 

Twitter has been listed since 2013. 

The Wire-Meta Fiasco

What is truth?

Tough to answer that. Where does journalistic creativity end and falsehoods begin?

India was shook when an online news portal reported that Amit Malviya (BJP IT cell head) was granted amazing powers by Meta to take down any social media post without any questions asked. 

"The company has given Malviya two levels of privileges – he can post as he likes, without the rules governing the platform applying to him, and he can impose his will as he pleases to have posts critical of the BJP, the Union government, or right-wing Hindu politics, deleted.”, The Wire’s story had alleged.

Meta executives called out the bluff in response. 

After questions were raised followed by public outcry,  the online leftist news portal purportedly even produced inside letters proving or alluding that there was some truth in their earlier reports.  

Of course, all this was proven false and the news articles were taken down. 

It was reported that: "In its apology on October 27, the Wire acknowledged that the “internal editorial processes which preceded publication of these stories did not meet the standards that the Wire sets for itself and its readers expect from it.” However, it did not issue an apology to Malviya or Meta. Two days later, Malviya filed a case against the Wire for cheating, forgery, criminal defamation and criminal conspiracy. "

And then,  there were news that police has raided the offices of Wire.

Bad day for journalism in India.

 “It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.”

Mark Cuban - "Live like a Student"

Mark Cuban and his Broadcast.com founders sold their company to Yahoo for $5.7 billion in 1999.

But he did not upgrade his lifestyle.

He said the wisest advice he got was to "live like a student".

So he kept his house,  car and furniture. 

The only thing he splurged on was a private jet (a Gulfstream V business jet) for $40 million.  And the reason for doing so was because he valued time as the most important asset and this bought him time. 

Mark Cuban is an American entrepreneur who has a networth of $4.5 billion according to Forbes.

He has also been expanding his investments in the blockchain space. In 2021, it was reported that he invested in Indian crypto firm Polygon(MATIC). Sandeep Nailwal is the co-founder of Polygon.

Was reading one of my old post: 

I know that my financial freedom goal is to achieve a passive income of $2800 per month by the year 2022 (FUTURE). NOW, I am achieving slightly above $200 per month in passive income.
Since now is the year 2009, I have set the goal of achieving $400 per month in passive income by the end of this year. How I set out to achieve this goal is to reduce my expenditure and increase my sources of passive income.

 

2022 is here already!! Can't believe it has been 13 years since I wrote that post. 

Have I achieved what I set out to do? Stay tuned to find out more. 

Bank Savings Account Interest Rates and Singapore Savings Bond

The interest rates for the flagship savings account of the 3 local banks have gone up.  As of 1 November 2022, the interest rates are as follows:

UOB One Account- 3.6%

DBS Multiplier Account- 4.1% 

OCBC 360 - 4.65%

Meanwhile, Singapore Savings Bond (SSB) 10 year average interest rate of the December tranche  = 3.47%

Which one is more attractive?

I think the SSBs are a good long term holding.  While the interest rate seems less,  you don't really have to jump through any hoops or fulfill any spend/save/salary kind of criteria to earn the higher interest rates. 

Given how the SSBs were oversubscribed in the last tranche,  I think I will opt for a 10k sum for this tranche. 

MHA officers to receive 3-10% pay increase

It was reported in ChannelNewsAsia that about 22,000 MHA officers will receive a 3-10% increase in their gross monthly salaries starting 1 January 2023.

MHA said on 31 October 2022 that officers on the Home Affairs Uniformed Services,  Home Affairs Services,  Home Team Specialist Scheme and Commercial Affairs Scheme will receive the salary adjustments. 

Earlier in June, the PSD had also announced a salary increase of 5-14% for about 23,000 civil servants. This took effect from 1 August 2022 and applied to the Civil Service generic schemes.

PSD also announced in September another pay raise of 5-12% for administrative officers, judicial officers and statutory appointment holders. Around 300 administrative officers and 30 judicial officers amd statutory appointment holders benefited from the pay increase. 

The salary adjustments were to keep pace with the market amd ensure that pay remains competitive. 

6 month Treasury Bills Hit 4.19%

6 month Treasury Bills yield have reached 4.19%. This is up from 3.77% reported for 6 month bills last week.

This is compared to Singapore Savings Bond last tranche average of 3.21% over 10 years

CPF and Singapore Savings Bond - Risk Free Component of Portfolio

Have been making regular voluntary contributions or top-ups to my CPF ever since I started working.  This is on top of the "mandatory" contributions and it has been tough at times to force myself to top-up especially when cashflow might be tight and there are so many other investment opportunities out there that are screaming a "Buy!".

However, the CPF really forms a solid foundation for anyone's retirement plan.  Having been inspired by other blogs in my younger days, I stuck to the habit of making regular contributions to my CPF Special Account and Medisave Account since this was earning an interest rate of 4%.  This was much higher than any fixed deposit rates out there in the past 10 years (ignoring this year of course where fixed deposit rates have climbed up).

At times, I will also refund my CPF housing loan component which I had utilised to buy my home.  This has not been the priority recently since there are other instruments such as the Singapore Savings Bonds which now provides an interest rate or return of more than 2.6%.  Thus, it makes sense to buy into these instruments using my spare cash instead of returning money to my CPF OA which only earns 2.5%.

The CPF now forms a significant amount of my portfolio as it is equivalent to the risk free or "bond-like" component of my portfolio.  I am essentially investing in a risk free asset and this should form the base of my retirement portfolio.