Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

TikTok, a popular short video platform, is still hiring staff at a time when major technology companies in the United States are laying off staff. The company said it would add about 3000 engineers around the world and expand its office in Mountain View, California.

Now that Silicon Valley technology companies are laying off staff, TikTok is bucking the trend. It is embarking on a three-year recruitment program that promises to add about 3000 engineers around the world.

In addition to the United States, the company will also hire people in places such as Singapore, according to people familiar with the TikTok plan. In addition, TikTok parent company Byte Jump is also recruiting employees in China to work for the TikTok platform.

Zhou Shengzi, chief executive of TikTok, said this week that TikTok was still hiring despite significant layoffs by some competitors, but was moving forward cautiously.

"We have been cautious in recruiting," Zhou said. "We are still recruiting, but the pace of recruitment must be commensurate with the global challenges we face."

At present, TikTok has no official headquarters, but the company has major offices in Los Angeles, New York, Dublin, Ireland, London and Singapore. Chief Executive Officer Zhou is mainly based in Singapore. TikTok employs more than 20, 000 people worldwide, about 1/4 of whom work in the United States.

According to people familiar with the matter, TikTok plans to expand the size of the largest engineering center in the United States in Mountain View, Calif., which already has more than 1000 engineers. In some cases, TikTok has hired close to the number of employees recently laid off by competitors such as Facebook's parent company Meta and Twitter.

Of course, the economic environment has also had a negative impact on TikTok business. Zhou told employees at a recent online meeting that the company plans to lower its advertising revenue target this year from at least $12 billion to $10 billion.

TikTok's current staffing goal is to hire at a slower pace than in previous years, according to people familiar with the matter. Like all companies, TikTok's hiring plans may be adjusted again according to the economic environment and the company's business performance.

It is only about five years since TikTok was founded, and its growth trajectory is completely different from that of many traditional American technology companies that are making large-scale layoffs. In some ways, TikTok has surpassed Meta's Facebook and Instagram in popularity, especially among American teenage users. But Meta's revenue in 2021 was $118 billion, while TikTok's revenue was a fraction of Meta's.

In recent months, TikTok's competitors have launched the biggest layoffs in years. Meta, the parent company of Facebook, plans to cut about 11000 jobs, while Amazon could cut 10, 000. Twitter, Lyft and other companies have also announced layoffs. It needs to be clear that mass layoffs have not affected the recruitment of staff for key positions.

In 2020, TikTok said it would hire 10, 000 American workers. According to people familiar with the company's hiring plans, the company is still hiring engineers to improve the features that users can see in the app and to improve the infrastructure that makes TikTok applications work, such as recommendation algorithms.

TikTok also plans to recruit more staff for commercial teams and newly formed e-commerce teams, some of the people familiar with the matter said. The company's commercialization team is responsible for studying how to make money from TikTok applications. People familiar with the matter also said TikTok plans to add contractors to content censorship centres in the US and Dublin, Ireland, to monitor applications for improper video content.

According to people familiar with the matter, TikTok's parent company, Byte Jing, also continues to recruit staff in China. Some of the new hires will work for the TikTok platform, while others will develop chips for byte jumps.

People familiar with the matter also said byte jump was moving some employees from the Chinese market to Singapore, but at a slower-than-expected pace. It is mainly because there are few local talents in Singapore, and the examination and approval of work visas is more complicated.

It has recently been reported that a financial report was released to the company's employees in August. The company made an operating profit in the first quarter of 2022 after years of huge losses, according to the report.

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