TikTok Joins The Layoff Wave Sweeping The Tech Industry

There's been a lot of noise, wailing and gnashing of teeth about the massive layoffs that Microsoft is going through, including the layoffs in the Seattle area. But Microsoft is not the only tech company needing to trim their staff. The latest is TikTok. 

According to seattletimes.com,
‘TikTok, a tech employer relatively new to the Eastside, is laying off 65 employees, according to a Washington state Employment Security Department filing Monday.’ 

TikTok came from Singapore and wound up landing in Bellevue in 2021 with a relatively modest staff which has now grown to about 1700 employees. The announcement of a staff reduction of 65 workers is about a 5% reduction and seems pretty modest in comparison to, say, Microsoft. 

The reason that TikTok expanded so quickly in the Northwest is because of their e-commerce division. TikTok still remains the 7th largest employer in the Bellevue area behind companies like T-Mobile, Meta, and Amazon. 

Currently, TikTok is building an app specifically for United States users in the hopes of circumventing the sale-or-ban deadline in the United States coming up in September. 

Not being a TikTok user. (I'm way out of their core demographic.) I'm kind of ambivalent about the whole sale-or-ban situation with TikTok. For me, it can go either way. I personally look as Tik Tok as a gigantic “time suck.”  

Not as much as YouTube, mind you, but it's still pretty big.
TikTok’s e-commerce division lays off dozens of Bellevue employees | The Seattle Times
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