Twitter is closing its Australian office, which had once occupied a whole floor of an office tower in Sydney’s CBD, as the short-form social network champions its flexible workplace policy.

Twitter launched its Sydney CBD office in 2016 with a “beachy” theme and a library that contained almost no books at the time press were invited to tour.

Twitter’s office featured a library area that contained almost no books when journalists were invited to tour in 2016.Credit:Jessica Hromas

A source close to Twitter, who was not authorised to talk publicly, said staff had been told they would beworking from home indefinitely because the office was closing.

A Twitter spokesman said: “No decision has been made”, emphasising that the company’s commitment to its Australian staff, customers, business and users was strong. It will consult with staff about future property plans.

Twitter’s office is located in the tower at 2 Park Street in the Sydney CBD, above the Galleries shopping centre. Credit:

“Over the past two years, we’ve proven we can operate our business successfully with a distributed workforce, regardless of whether our employees work from an office or full-time from home,” Twitter’s spokesman said.

“This approach has allowed us to evaluate our existing footprint and consider various flexible work options for our Sydney employees, including alternative office spaces to lease.”

Property industry sources said Twitter’s lease was due to expire at the end of August and renewing it would have cost up to $1400per square metre, or about $2.8 million a year for the full floor, at a time when the company has been cutting costs.

Twitter has not recently been occupying the whole floor, the sources said.

Twitter’s chief executive, Parag Agrawal, announced in March that it was reopening its offices but that its work-from-home policy remained unchanged.

“Wherever you feel most productive and creative is where you will work and that includes working from home full-time forever,” Agrawal said.

The move is contrary to a diktat that billionaire businessman Elon Musk, who has a contract to buy Twitter, issued to staff at his primary company Tesla earlier this year demanding they work at the office.

“Anyone who wishes to do remote work must be in the office for a minimum (and I mean *minimum*) of 40 hours per week or depart Tesla,” he said in a leaked internal email at the end of May.

Twitter’s spokesman did not address how a potential decision to operate in Australia without a physical office would square with Musk’s disdain for working from home, from which he has excluded high performing staff.

Musk is locked in a court dispute over his attempt to back out of purchasing Twitter for $US44 billion, which the company wants to push through.

Twitter confirmed it was sharply scaling back hiring in May and laid off about 100 people in its recruiting teams earlier this month. Technology companies have been pummelled by public markets this year, with Twitter’s shares down about 44 per cent since this time in 2021.

Technology companies have been some of the most enthusiastic adopters of working from home since the pandemic. Australia’s largest home-grown technology firm, Atlassian, allows staff to work from anywhere in the country.

With Carolyn Cummins

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