TikTok is one of the latest companies affected by the layoffs that have occurred in the technology sector in the past year. A spokesperson for the short video social network has stated to NPR that the company has laid off about 60 employees, mostly from the sales and advertising division of its various offices in the United States and abroad.
According to TikTok, as explained to NPR, the layoffs are part of a routine reorganization, but NPR claims that the company decided to lay them off to reduce costs.
ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, reportedly cut hundreds of jobs last year at Nuverse, the developer studio behind Marvel Snap. Other sources previously indicated that TikTok itself conducted a round of layoffs in mid-2022 due to a global restructuring and then again in early 2023 to lay off its hiring staff in Dublin.
This round of layoffs only affects a small fraction of ByteDance’s global workforce, which is around 150,000 employees, but, as NPR points out, it is a “sign of pain in the tech industry”.
The technological world is suffering the effects of high hiring rates during the pandemic. Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google, recently told employees to expect more cuts this year, at a critical time for the company, which recently announced hundreds of layoffs across several divisions. Pichai said that Google is “removing layers to simplify execution and drive speed in some areas”.
Amazon, another tech giant, has also announced a series of layoffs that affect several of its teams, including Prime Video, its streaming division for series and movies, and Twitch, the number 1 video game streaming platform in the world.
