When Elon Musk bought Twitter and cut half of its workforce earlier this month, TikTok’s internal recruiters turned to several laid-off software engineers to join the viral video app’s Silicon Valley office. Then last week, the same recruiters contacted some of the engineers cut from Meta Platforms.
The spread highlighted a contrast between TikTok and larger social media companies headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area. TikTok, owned by China’s ByteDance, aims to double its staff in Mountain View, California, to about 2,000, according to two people familiar with its hiring targets. Some of the hiring is unnecessary: TikTok pledged to hire more US-based engineers after the app came under scrutiny from US government officials in recent years.
