TikTok Cuts ‘Hundreds’ Of Jobs

TikTok is reportedly to cut hundreds of jobs in its operations and marketing teams, as part of a wider restructuring drive by Beijing-based parent company ByteDance.

The layoffs, which were announced to staff internally last week, are to affect an undisclosed proportion of the roughly 1,000 jobs worldwide in the two teams, according to multiple reports.

They are expected to reach into the hundreds of job cuts, with the global user operations team reportedly to be dismantled as part of the changes.

The Information, which first reported the cuts, said they would affect “a large percentage” of the employees of TikTok, which has dual headquarters in Singapore and Los Angeles.

Broad cuts

But some employees are to be offered jobs elsewhere, with staff remaining from the global user operations team reportedly to be reassigned to the trust and safety, marketing, content and product teams.

Adam Presser, TikTok’s head of operations, and chief brand and communications officer Zenia Mucha initially sent messages to the affected teams last week informing them of the changes.

The layoffs had been planned for some time, but were delayed for months due to recent turnover in the marketing, trust and safety teams, an employee told CNN.

The cuts are not related to political tensions facing the company in the US, where president Biden last month signed a law that would force ByteDance to divest TikTok to US ownership before the end of his term in January.

‘Cut the fat’

The cuts are part of an ongoing campaign that began at ByteDance in late 2022 to “cut the fat and get fit”, as chief executive Liang Rubo said at a staff meeting in December 2022.

The moves are a response to regulatory and economic uncertainties that have beset China’s tech sector more generally in recent years.

The cuts have included hundreds of layoffs at ByteDance’s video gaming unit Nuverse and its virtual reality unit Pico last November.