[HomeDeLaPot]

>I cannot fathom how a social media app company would need this many employees to function.

I'm sure they're growing as fast as they can, for the sake of their investors and to outflank competitors.

You're probably just not familiar enough with TikTok. "Teens sharing short videos" is just the tip of the iceberg. It does video, like YouTube. It has livestreaming of events and gaming, like YouTube and Twitch. It has a music streaming app, like Spotify. It is an e-commerce platform with live video shopping, like... Facebook Live, I guess? It sells advertising space like Facebook does. I'm sure there's more. Disclaimer: I have never actually used TikTok myself.

[jjeaff]

and for all of those products, you have not just the engineers, you have QA, product managers, moderators, designers, a whole pyramid of HR, sales, accountants, data analysts, finance teams, legal, compliance, support staff for many of these positions as well as the need for duplication of many of these positions for each different country or region where the social media services are consumed.