Sorry to burst your bubble, but Shopee was never "highly favored" in the tech industry; the tech functions are seen as rejects from FAANG that do non-value adding work yet can have meetings at 10pm+. Non-tech functions are mainly segregated into the do fk all that cruises day by day and saikang warriors (this is the entire PM team). The fact that the ratio of SWEs to PMs is closer to 2:1 should be telling of how fked up the department is.

Re retrenchment, you should be aware from day 1 if your function is core i.e. revenue-generating, or experimental in nature (a fkload of "special projects", no clearly defined scope, and daily changing priority). What is happening now is management giving the middle finger to these "growth" projects, and focus on having a unit economics that actually makes sense.

If you are in tech and were affected, my advice is grind LEET codes, explain your past contributions in Shopee (+ points if can concisely touch on "how" and "why" of the systems architecture, shows you are not just a mindless robot), and memorize the typical BS (DP, tree, BFS n DFS, sorts, etc). Don't rely on the Shopee brand name, it stinks.