Amid the controversial layoffs at TikTok’s parent company ByteDance, employees are speaking out against the China-based firm’s allegedly toxic work culture. In one such social media post, a laid off employee claimed that he was sent an AI-generated email to inform that he was let go by TikTok.
Posting on professional social media platform Blind, the worker, who withheld his name, said he stayed up late to deliver his work all the time, but TikTok just sent a ‘ChatGPT email’ to let him know about his layoff.
“I’m impacted in the latest Bytedance/TikTok layoff. I worked my ass off, staying up late for late night meetings, delivering on always random critical shit projects that don’t make sense. Then they sent me a ChatGPT email,” he said.
The employee claimed that there was no clarity on what comes for the laid off employees next.
“What I want to know is, what’s the next process? Will they literally reach out to everyone that’s laid off to talk about the next step via personal email? Can we negotiate on severance?”
The laid off staffer accused TikTok of honing ‘toxic’ work culture, and threatened to complain to the US Congress.
“I know so much toxic culture problems that the Congress and other public would love to hear about discriminations, disgusting bathroom usage, and how incompetently they still deal with personally identifiable information of American citizens,” the employee said.
TikTok layoffs
Beleagured video sharing platform TikTok has opted for a third round of layoffs since April in the US, this time hitting workers from its US e-commerce division TikTok Shop, Bloomberg reported on Thursday.
“As the TikTok Shop business evolves, we regularly review our operations to ensure long-term success,” a spokesperson for the video-sharing app was quoted as saying in a statement Wednesday.
“We’ve made the difficult decision to adjust parts of our team to better align with strategic priorities,” the spokesperson said.
TikTok Shop’s US operations have undergone a series of changes in the past few months following a year in which the division fell short of internal sales targets. TikTok Shop eliminated some jobs in April and enacted a second round of cuts in May, Bloomberg previously reported.
TikTok has not issued an official comment on how many people will be affected due to its latest round of layoffs.