As many tech companies have laid off employees to cut costs, TikTok is moving in the opposite direction.
The Chinese-owned social media firm has committed to adding about 3,000 engineers as part of a three-year push to build out its workforce globally – including in the US.
TikTok, which by most measures is outperforming its rivals among the coveted American teenage market, seems to be growing more than firms like Meta, Amazon and Twitter that have all announced major layoffs recently.
‘We have always been more cautious in terms of recruitment,’ TikTok Chief Executive Shou Zi Chew said in Singapore this week, reports the Wall Street Journal. ‘We’re still hiring, although at the pace that we think has to correspond with the global challenges that we’re facing.’
As many tech companies have laid off employees to cut costs, TikTok is moving in the opposite direction – by hiring about 3,000 engineers
‘We’re still hiring, although at the pace that we think has to correspond with the global challenges that we’re facing,’ TikTok Chief Executive Shou Zi Chew said in Singapore. Above: The ByteDance logo is seen at its office in Beijing, China
TikTok is hiring at its Singapore hub as well, people familiar with its plans told the newspaper.
The firm plans to increase the size of its engineering hub in Mountain View, California, where it already has more than 1,000 engineers, per the Journal.
Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, laid off 11,000 employees this month. Ahead of the holiday season, Amazon could cut up to 10,000 jobs. Elon Musk’s Twitter has laid off about half of its 7,000 employees.
Online payments firm Stripe laid off 1,100, Lyft laid off 700, Coinbase and Shopify each cut just over 1,000 jobs, Snap cut 1,000 and Robinhood cut 30% of its staff.
TikTok said in 2020 that it wanted to hire 10,000 workers, a declaration that came as it was facing intense scrutiny from lawmakers in Washington, D.C.
Sources familiar with its plans told the Journal that the company is seeking engineers both to improve features that users see on the app, and to improve the algorithm and other behind-the-scenes infrastructure that make TikTok work.
The firm also wants to add to the teams that figure out how to make money from the app, grow its e-commerce team and add contractors to monitor for inappropriate videos, the Journal wrote.
Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, laid off 11,000 employees this month
Elon Musk’s Twitter has laid off about half of its 7,000 employees. Online payments firm Stripe laid off 1,100, Lyft laid off 700, Coinbase and Shopify each cut just over 1,000 jobs, Snap cut 1,000 and Robinhood cut 30% of its staff
The company is owned by ByteDance, which is based in Beijing, China, but it has offices in Los Angeles, New York, Dublin, London and Singapore.
However, even TikTok is not completely immune to the larger forces – an advertising downturn driven by consumers pulling back due to inflation – that are shaping the economy.
TikTok slashed its revenue target for this year by $2 billion – from a projected $12-$14 billion to about $10 billion.
Silicon Valley mainstays that saw a massive boom in revenue during the Covid pandemic – driven by lockdowns that forced everyone online – are now grappling with the fact that consumers are defaulting back to their typical spending and behavior patterns.
When announcing the Meta layoffs, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said: ‘Not only has online commerce returned to prior trends, but the macroeconomic downturn, increased competition, and ads signal loss have caused our revenue to be much lower than I’d expected. I got this wrong, and I take responsibility for that.’
