TikTok s Work Culture: Anxiety, Secrecy and Relentless Pressure – WSJ

With a seemingly bottomless feed of goof-offs, dance-offs and good-natured pranks, TikTok bills itself as the happiest place on the internet.

Fueling its success: an exacting management style and demanding internal culture that belie its buoyant public image, say employees at its U.S. offices.

The employees, many of them veterans of other major tech companies, say TikTok emphasizes relentless productivity and secrecy to a degree uncommon in the industry.

As TikTok continues its torrid growth, those conditions are increasingly a source of tension at U.S. offices of the app, a unit of Beijing-based ByteDance Ltd. Founded just six years ago, TikTok recorded the most downloads of any app through the first quarter of 2022, according to analytics firm Sensor Tower.

via www.wsj.com

Evidently, the Tik Tok algorithm relies on the little motion sensors in your mobile device that tell it how you’re holding your phone, which in turn is a remarkably accurate indicator of how engaged you are. I don’t know if you hold your phone more still if you’re entranced, or if your hand quivers a bit, but whatever you do, Tik Tok picks it up and radios it up to HQ to be evaluated. If you like it (or perhaps hate it enough) you get more. Thus do the Communists psychoanalyze and hypnotize our youth. What could go wrong.