另外一篇
As TikTok Files Lawsuit, Employees Ponder Their FutureThe day President Joe Biden signed a law that would ban TikTok in the U.S. if it doesn't cut ties with its Chinese parent, ByteDance, within a year, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew and other senior executives led an all-hands meeting for staff, reassuring them that TikTok will successfully fight the new law. Chew struck an optimistic tone. At one point, according to six employees in attendance, the CEO joked with the app’s head of U.S. public policy, Michael Beckerman: “You know they are going to make a movie out of all of this someday. Michael, who is going to play you?”
The comment annoyed some staffers, who felt the quip was too lighthearted given the gravity of the threat. One of the employees said the broad message that TikTok would win the battle was an “empty promise.”
The Takeaway• Numerous TikTok employees are weighing their job options
• Many Chinese engineers and product managers at TikTok are on a visa
• Chinese workers would have 60 days to find a new job if the app is banned
The episode highlights the tightrope Chew is walking as he tries to keep employee morale up and TikTok’s business operating, even as the company faces an existential threat. In a lawsuit challenging the law as unconstitutional, filed with an appeals court in Washington on Tuesday, TikTok and ByteDance argued that divestment was not possible in the nine months given. “There is no question: the Act will force a shutdown of TikTok by January 19, 2025.”
The threatened ban has already prompted numerous employees to weigh their own options. Some are looking for jobs elsewhere—particularly Chinese engineers working for TikTok in the U.S. on a visa—while TikTok has curtailed some hiring plans in the U.S. because it is finding it difficult to recruit new employees, say insiders. Employees say the challenges from the new legislation came at an inopportune time when TikTok had been going through a major reorganization since last year that involved some executive departures. Even before lawmakers first submitted the TikTok sale-or-ban bill in March, many TikTok employees had already been wondering how the app’s internal changes could affect their teams and their roles.
To be sure, there’s no sign of a mass exodus. And some TikTok teams haven’t changed their hiring plans at all, employees say. But the unrest among employees shows the impact of the new law, creating uncertainty which could eventually spread to advertisers and creators, potentially eroding both TikTok’s audience and its advertising base.
Adding to the uncertainty, employees say, are the questions they’ve been getting over the past two months from advertisers, creators and other business partners about the app’s future.
So far, ad industry executives play down the likelihood that marketers will pull back from TikTok anytime soon. One executive at a big global ad-buying company said that while marketing clients have asked about the law, there’s been no sign of clients pausing or pulling back their ad spending on TikTok. Marketers are also not yet taking a reputational hit by continuing to advertise on TikTok, this executive said.
A TikTok spokesperson didn't have a comment.
Visa Threat
It may be in hiring and staff retention that TikTok faces the biggest near-term challenge. The app’s fate is a potentially urgent matter for Chinese engineers and product managers working in the U.S. for TikTok, particularly in the app’s offices in the San Francisco Bay Area, at least some of whom are on visas tied to their employer.
Those on such visas would have up to 60 days to find another job if TikTok eliminated their positions. Several of those employees have told colleagues they are already looking around for new jobs because they need a Plan B if they want to find ways to stay in the U.S. TikTok employs about 7,000 people in the country, it said in March 2023. It’s not known how many are foreigners employed on a visa.
One Chinese TikTok engineer in the U.S. recently asked his team leader what would happen to the team if TikTok ever got shut down in the U.S., but the leader—also from China and also looking for a new job—said he had no idea because senior executives were remaining silent. The executives want managers to stay calm and have faith in the company, the team leader said, according to the engineer.
At TikTok’s San Jose, Calif., office, during meals at the cafeteria, employees from China have been discussing what their backup plans could look like. Other than returning to China, where else could they go if they ever lose their TikTok jobs in the U.S.? Some mentioned Singapore and Vancouver, while others talked about the possibility of finding other jobs in the U.S. and making new visa arrangements.
The sense of uncertainty about the future among employees in the U.S. isn’t just because of the passage of the sale-or-ban law, but also because TikTok’s organization had already been going through a transformation before the bill’s proposal in early March. Over the past year, the app has seen executive shake-ups that triggered changes at lower levels of management. In June last year, for example, V. Pappas stepped down as chief operating officer, and Adam Presser, a protégé of Chew, became the new head of operations.
Presser has alienated some of TikTok’s staff via a monthslong reorganization that has led to some senior departures and left many employees working on TikTok’s content team without a clear understanding of what team they will ultimately be mapped to, according to staffers on that team. While Presser announced the reorganization to staff in November, it took him months to finalize it. He has now announced most senior leadership roles, but still hasn’t assigned individual contributors to their teams, according to the staffers.
In reorganizing the team, Presser also collapsed the North America content team into the global one, with the effect of leaving many North American leaders under Pappas’s leadership without a place in the new organizational structure.