The end of 2022 and the beginning of 2023 were marked by layoffs at ByteDance, which owns TikTok. According to the information of the South China Morning Postthis cut affected hundreds of employees of Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, which registers 600 million daily active users.
With this action, ByteDance joined other technology giants that also cut thousands of jobs in 2022 such as Alibaba Group Holding and Tencent Holdings.
The cut at ByteDance affected employees of the company’s real estate and gaming operations, according to sources close to the company. The layoffs of employees were due, according to the company, to its intention to optimize operations. Although it is also a frequent practice for employers to fire low-performing workers.
At a company like ByteDance, with over 100,000 employees worldwide, a cut like the one you just took represents a small percentage of your workforce.
Feishu or Lark, which is ByteDance’s business collaboration tool, saw 10% of its employees affected, making it the department most impacted by the wave of layoffs in the company.
The people laid off will be compensated according to the time they had been in service plus one month’s salary, according to sources close to the company.
In 2021, ByteDance also laid off thousands of people following a ban on private tutoring in Beijing, and in 2022 cut hundreds of jobs from its video game operations in Shanghai and Hangzhou.
What’s next for ByteDance?
Although it has been known about these layoffs, it is also known that ByteDance continues to hire staff, since on its website there are about 10,000 job offers in areas such as marketing and engineering in cities around the world such as California, London, Beijing and Mountain View.
The future of the company is uncertain, since on the one hand it has challenges such as political obstacles in the United States and the changing and unpredictable environment with regulations in China.
In the North American country, TikTok has been banned on all devices in the United States and in 19 states they blocked it on state-controlled devices.
There is also uncertainty about its going public, because according to ByteDance’s financial director, there are no plans to go public.
Editorial Team The editorial team of EMPRENDEDOR.com, which for more than 27 years has worked to promote entrepreneurship.