BEIJING, April 19 (TMTPOST)— More and more big internet firms in China are said to join in a wave of layoffs. The latest newcomers are China’s Quora Zhihu and the country’s leading video sharing website Bilibili.
Source:Visual China
Zhihu was reported to cut about 40 headcounts in the video business, account for about 60% of its video opearting team, and Cai Lin, the leader of the business also left in the recent round of layoff in the beginning of the year. Zhihu later Tuesday responded that it didn’t have layoff plan yet, instead, it welcomes more talents join in, especially positions at product and operation, as it would continue to increase efforts in video business, which was treated as imperative for its content ecosystem.
Recent reports said Bilibili was about to have job cuts in the live-streaming department and has completed the preliminary list of staff reduction. The layoff, which is set to affect the whole department, was reported to see interviews with workers to explain it when the Covid-19 lockdown in Shanghai, the company’s headquarters, was removed. Bilibili then clarified that it was keeping inputs in live-streaming sector, so it would continue relevant recruitments and renew the talent team working for the sector. It noted there are more than 40 opening jobs in the department, and operation of the live-streaming business was normal, with increase in gross margins for three years in a row.
Prior to rumors of Zhihu and Bilibili, two Chinese e-commerce giants Alibaba and JD.com were reported last month to start major layoffs. Reuters’ sources revealed that Alibaba could cut about 39,000 jobs, more than 15% of staff this year. The sources also said Tencent planned to axe 10%-15% of workers at its unit overseeing search and video streaming this year. JD was said to lay off people in multiple business units such as retail, logistics, fintech, the social commerce platform Jingxi, and most of them were reduced 10% to 30% of workforce. The latest layoff round is just normal optimization, and the main business maintains health development, insiders of JD then told the official financial newspaper the Securities Times. In the end of that month, Youzan, the major Chinese e-commerce software as service (SaaS) platform, confirmed it had laid off more than 20% of its workforce.
