Beijing ByteDance Technology Co., Ltd.’s mobile short video sharing application TikTok has been reported to be planning layoffs this week, intending to dissolve its global user operations department. The layoffs will affect a significant portion of the 1000 employees in that department, with remaining employees set to be reassigned to other teams.
According to a report by the US technology industry website The Information on Tuesday (21st), TikTok plans to lay off employees in the operations, content, and marketing departments this week. Affected employees will receive notifications on Wednesday night or Thursday morning.
The exact number of layoffs is not clear at the moment, but unnamed employees have revealed that TikTok is disbanding its global user operations team, and team members who are not laid off will be reassigned to other departments, potentially affecting nearly a thousand people.
The video sharing application had already laid off dozens of employees earlier this year, with reports stating that TikTok rarely conducts large-scale layoffs like other tech companies.
TikTok has not responded to the rumors of layoffs yet.
In recent years, the US government has expressed concerns that the Communist Party of China may be using the platform to access American user data, posing a threat to national security.
On April 23rd of this year, the US Senate passed a bill requiring ByteDance to sell TikTok by January 19th next year, or face a ban on its usage. The following day, President Biden signed the bill into law, initiating a 270-day countdown period.
On May 7th, ByteDance and TikTok filed a lawsuit in a US federal court, citing violations of free speech rights and seeking a ruling that the “sell or ban” new law is unconstitutional, as well as requesting to halt the enforcement of the law. It is believed that this case, which pits free speech against national security, is likely to be a protracted process.
In the crackdown on TikTok, job candidates, headhunters, platform merchants, and users are all being dragged into the vortex.
Despite some layoffs, a headhunter told the “Daily Economic News” that TikTok is still making considerable effort to recruit talent from mainland China to Singapore, even though it is now more costly. However, the headhunter also pointed out that positions at TikTok’s Singapore headquarters were already difficult to fill, and that candidates who were once eager to join TikTok have now become more hesitant since the “sell or ban” law was enacted.
On the Maimai platform, there are numerous candidates who have received offers from TikTok but are undecided. Mr. Yan, an algorithm engineer, has had an offer from TikTok for over 2 months now, with a position in Singapore. Although the salary increase compared to his current one is over 60%, he is still unsure whether to accept it or not.
“TikTok might be sold, right? So, what if there are layoffs? If they don’t sell, they might exit the US market, potentially leading to layoffs, right? My concern is, if there are layoffs at TikTok, or if I can’t continue there, and I haven’t obtained permanent residency, what will I do when I return to China and can’t find a job?” Mr. Yan said.
An industry insider pointed out that for TikTok, recruiting people to Singapore is essential as they aim to transform into a “pure foreign enterprise,” even though TikTok emerged from ByteDance.
In fact, prior to the start of the 270-day countdown, TikTok had already begun a series of personnel isolations and data migrations. In May of this year, an employee who had transferred from ByteDance to TikTok told the media that since April, employees who had transitioned to TikTok had gradually been moving to the company’s entities, stating “without the transfer (of company entities), you can’t see the backstage information of TikTok or related apps.”
According to Statista data as of April 2024, TikTok has 1.582 billion monthly active users worldwide. In terms of regional distribution, the US is the country with the highest number of TikTok users, amounting to 150 million. The Chinese version of TikTok is known as Douyin in mainland China, both of which are intelligent mobile short video social networking applications created by ByteDance in mainland China.
Prior to the US Senate introducing the “sell or ban” new law, the Madras High Court in India had issued an order in April 2020 requiring TikTok to be removed from app stores, citing exposure of children to pornography and cyberbullying. In July of the same year, a week after the implementation of the Communist Party-led “Hong Kong version of the National Security Law,” ByteDance released an English statement announcing the formal withdrawal of TikTok from the Hong Kong market.