Social media giant ByteDance, owner of TikTok and its Chinese sibling Douyin, says the median service length of existing employees was 2.9 years, while their average tenure was three years, the Beijing-based company disclosed at an internal meeting.
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According to two sources briefed on Thursday’s town hall meeting that was led by co-founder, chairman and CEO Liang Rubo, about half of the firm’s 120,000 employees have spent more than three years there.
The median service length of former employees was estimated at 2.6 years, while their average tenure was 2.5 years, the sources said.
The median tenure figures, if confirmed, would show that ByteDance was an attractive employer in mainland China’s technology industry, where the turnover rate remained high because of the sector’s infamous 996 work culture – which refers to working from 9am to 9pm, six days a week, or longer.
ByteDance, China’s most valuable unicorn, abandoned the 996 culture in November 2021, when it asked employees to embrace a “1075” work schedule – 10am to 7pm, five days a week.
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ByteDance’s decision to reveal the numbers for median service length and average tenure to its employees followed online speculation that the company had mostly retained staff for an average of about seven months.