As part of a corporate restructure, TikTok has begun terminating employees, according to a recent report, citing "five people with knowledge of the process." In a post on Monday, David Ortiz, a TikTok employee based in the US who had the title "monetization product leader" listed on LinkedIn, stated that his position was "being abolished in a much wider re-organization exercise."
The number of TikTok employees that were let go or the overall number of jobs that were put at danger due to the restructure were not disclosed. However, one anonymous TikTok employee told that there wouldn't be more than 100 layoffs. Multiple inquiries from Insider for response from TikTok went unanswered.
Before these layoffs, corporate executives had forecast strength in spite of a more general decline in the tech and advertising sectors. Blake Chandlee, the company's head of global business solutions, had earlier stated that the platform had not experienced a downturn in the ad market or some of the challenges that other businesses were dealing with.
Although we haven't noticed it, Chandlee added, "I've heard there will be a downturn in the ad industry, anywhere from 2 percent to 6 percent." We don't experience the headwinds that some people do. The layoffs had expanded throughout the Chinese internet industry in recent weeks, including at ByteDance, the parent firm of TikTok.
Other businesses with an emphasis on the creative economy and advertising have also recently reduced hiring or made layoffs. In order to reprioritize its business, Meta Platforms, the company that owns Facebook and Instagram, put a hiring freeze in place in May. The same month, Snap Inc., the company that makes Snapchat, also issued a profit warning, which at the time hurt the value of equities in social media and advertising.
The layoffs coincide with a new round of political attacks against TikTok in the US. In recent weeks, representatives from the FCC and Congress have questioned the company's ability to successfully protect US user data from the Chinese government. Engineers from TikTok's parent company ByteDance routinely accessed US customer data from within China, according to a BuzzFeed News article from June.