On New Year's Eve, Huawei's Twitter page posted a celebratory message wishing its followers a happy new year, which shouldn't have been a cause for any sort of problems. However, users were quick to spot that the tweet had been sent from an iPhone, and even though the post was deleted soon after, the image made its way around social media pretty quickly.
Reportedly, the mistake happened because social media company Sapient, who apparently manages the Huawei Twitter page, was experiencing problems with the VPN service on its computers. As such, employees were forced to tweet from an iPhone with a roaming SIM card in order to make the post precisely at midnight.
While this kind of blunder isn't all that uncommon - Microsoft's Joe Belfiore made the news in 2016 for tweeting from an iPhone as well - Huawei wasn't very happy about it. Reuters has discovered an internal memo from the company which details punishment dealt to two employees involved in the situation.
The two employees were moved to a lower pay rank, which means they had their monthly salary cut by 5,000 yuan, around $728. Additionally, one of those workers, who is Huawei's digital marketing director, has had his pay rank frozen for the next 12 months, so it won't be possible to get back to the previous monthly salary for some time.
While it's understandable that such a situation is harmful to a company's image, Huawei's punishment seems somewhat harsh. The firm hasn't responded to requests for comment.
Source: Reuters
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