- It's performance review season at TikTok, and some staff with low scores have been given a choice.
- They can either go on a performance-improvement plan or leave with severance, employees told BI.
- The company last year asked managers to deliver more low scores during review cycles.
It's review season for US staff at TikTok and its parent company ByteDance, and some employees are getting a choice: PIP or go.
TikTok is offering some employees who received low performance scores the choice of submitting to a performance improvement plan (PIP) or agreeing to leave the company with some severance, according to two e-commerce employees who received the offers verbally and three other current staffers who had heard directly from colleagues about the arrangement. TikTok instructed managers last year to deliver more low scores in reviews.
The employees said the value of the offers, which have also been made in earlier cycles, varied. One offer included one month in which the staffer would stay on payroll without having to work — often referred to as "garden leave" — along with a separate one-month severance payout arranged as part of a mutual separation agreement. The staffers who spoke to Business Insider asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation; their identities are known to BI.
Business Insider was unable to determine how many employees had been given an offer like this as part of this review cycle. A TikTok spokesperson confirmed the company was implementing PIPs but said they did not have information on severance offers. In February, The Information reported that TikTok's CEO Shou Chew had said he wanted to review the company's workforce and remove unnecessary layers.
TikTok and ByteDance are not the only tech companies to offer voluntary exit agreements to staff with low scores. In 2024, Meta began delivering lower ratings to staff as part of a workplace efficiency effort, offering some of those staff a chance to take three months' severance instead of going on a PIP. Other tech companies similarly offer PIPs, which can be tough to recover from no matter where you work. And a push to identify "low performers" has become trendy across the workforce.
Three current TikTok staffers told BI that they felt that accepting a PIP instead of severance was rare at the company because it was very challenging to survive a PIP.
"I have never met somebody who's passed a PIP," one of the staffers said.
The departure agreements arrive at a challenging moment for TikTok. The company's political future in the US is up in the air due to a divest-or-ban law that asked TikTok to find a new owner. In January, President Donald Trump instructed his attorney general not to enforce the law for 75 days, giving TikTok and ByteDance some more time to find a political resolution.
Current and former employees at TikTok told BI that burnout has become common at the company amid political uncertainty and the pressure to perform. Performance evaluations, in particular, have become a point of anxiety.
While TikTok reviews employees twice a year, it sometimes feels like "it's always performance review season," one of the current staffers said. "They'll PIP people, and then they'll hire new people, and then they'll continue this meat grinder of performance reviews."
