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By Chen Lin and Josh Ye
SINGAPORE/HONG KONG, Sept 6 (Reuters) - Southeast Asia's largest e-commerce firm Shopee has rescinded dozens of job offers in the past two weeks, sources said, a move that began shortly after parent company Sea Ltd reported widening losses and sharply slower revenue growth.
Four people interviewed by Reuters who have participated in a WeChat group of some 60 people that was set up to discuss Shopee's withdrawal of offers said their offers were pulled just days before they were due to begin work.
One 27-year-old engineer who asked that only his first name Wang be used said his call came a week after arriving in Singapore, having quit a job in Shanghai with TikTok owner Bytedance.
"I thought it was a scam call ... until I realised it was a widespread rescinding of offers by Shopee," said Wang, who had by then paid an advance to rent a house.
Singapore-based Sea said it had recently cancelled some offers at Shopee but declined to say how many.
"Due to adjustments to hiring plans on some tech teams, a number of roles at Shopee are no longer available. We are working closely to support those affected," a company representative said.
The move follows other recent job cuts at Sea. Staff at Booyah!, a gaming livestream app, which is part of Sea's gaming unit Garena, were told they would be let go and the app would no longer be updated, separate sources have told Reuters, adding that projects at Sea's development unit were also shut down.
Earlier this year, media reports also said Shopee had shed headcount in Southeast Asia, Mexico and Latin America. Shopee declined to comment on those reports.
PESSIMISTIC TONE
As recently as March, Sea said it would continue to invest in Shopee, which competes with Alibaba Group Holding's Southeast Asian arm Lazada, and that growth for the unit remained at the top of its mind.
But last month, Sea withdrew its e-commerce forecast for the year. Founder and CEO Forrest Li noted an increasingly uncertain market environment and stressed the need to prioritise profitability and efficiency. Sea reported a net loss of $931 million in the second quarter, more than double the loss it made in the same period a year earlier.
"Their tone has never been more pessimistic," said Ke Yan, lead analyst at Singapore-based DZT Research, who added that Sea's strategy of using Garena's cash flow to compensate for Shopee's cash burn was unsustainable.
Sea's handling of the layoffs was "ugly and embarrassing" and likely to hurt its reputation, he said.