TikTok cuts 60 jobs in sales and ads as tech layoffs continue

BYTEDANCE’S TikTok joined a spate of layoffs among technology companies by cutting about 60 jobs, mostly in its sales and advertising division.

The positions affected were based in Los Angeles, New York, Austin and overseas, a company spokesperson said. The number is less than 1 per cent of the company’s roughly 7,000 staff in the US as at March, and is one of the smaller cuts made recently by major tech firms.

Alphabet is laying off dozens of employees at its X moonshot division, shortly after eliminating hundreds of jobs at teams including hardware and Google Assistant recently. EBay is also cutting about 1,000 jobs, or 9 per cent of full-time employees, while Tencent Holdings’s Riot Games is slashing 530 jobs, describing the move as “a necessity”.

The TikTok layoffs were first reported by NPR. For ByteDance, US lawmakers’ questioning over TikTok’s ties to its Chinese parent and alleged links to Beijing have done little to deter the company’s growth.

The app continues to attract an audience of millions and counts the US as its most lucrative market, with its twin app Douyin serving the Chinese domestic audience. The app had 150 million American users as at March last year, and became the first non-game mobile app to generate US$10 billion in consumer spending, according to app tracker data.ai. BLOOMBERG