Kevin Mayer is less than four months after taking the job as director of TikTok. While his resignation comes in the midst of the ongoing political unrest caused by the Trump administration, his decision to leave is likely to have less to do with politics and has more to do with his own autonomy than an acquisition over.
“I have given important reflection on what the structural changes of the companies will require, and what it means for the global role for which I have signed up,” Mayer said in an email to staff, posted in full on Pandaily. “Against this background, and because we expect to reach a resolution, it is with a heavy heart that I wanted to let you all know that I decided to leave the company.”
Mayer became CEO of TikTok on June 1, with the task of helping the company navigate bumpy political waters in the United States when pressure began to mount to investigate the app because of its Chinese ownership. At the same time, he was appointed Chief Operating Officer of ByteDance, the owner of TikTok, and gave him the executive reins of a global company. The offer was strong enough to persuade Mayer to leave his cushy position as head of Disney’s DTCI (direct to consumer and international) team, where he oversaw the launch of Disney Plus. It did not hurt that Mayer was transferred to CEO just three months earlier after Bob Iger stepped down – a position that many in the sector thought he was a forerunner for.
“He thought the grass was greener on the other side, so he jumped the fence and landed in dry sand,” said a Disney employee in the company’s streaming division, who asked to remain anonymous. The edge.
Reports suggest Mayer was not included in recent conversations with two top TikTok gadget makers, Microsoft (now teaming up with Walmart) and Oracle. That he was left out of the loop is likely to be detrimental to Mayer’s future in what would be a broad and increasingly powerful role.
When Mayer signed for the job of TikTok CEO in May, he entered a company that, although controversial, also flourished. TikTok saw rapid growth between October 2019 and June 2020, with the company adding 52 million users in those eight months alone. Advertisers stream to the app, makers build actual careers by following them, and TikTok shows no signs of slowing down. Companies like Instagram and YouTube are trying to figure out how they can emulate some of their success as the app continues to dominate the U.S. market.
“It’s always a very difficult decision to make,” said Brian Stafford, author Government in the digital age, told The edge. “There are a lot of CEOs who feel compelled to stay with a company to help it go through a transition. As a result, the whole mantra of ‘the captain with the ship goes down.’ ”
However, there is a difference between running a global company with a lot of autonomy and managing a regional company that is being audited by a tech giant. Mayer, it seems, would not likely get the same whole position from the TikTok buyer. The whole point of forcing a sale is to get ByteDance out of the picture – Mayer is losing out on the bigger, global company he really wanted to join, not just TikTok. “Being a division CEO is the opposite de CEO was probably an important calculus in that decision, ‘said Stafford.
On top of running TikTok, Mayer was commissioned to “manage the global development of ByteDance”, and was put in charge of segments as wide as “music, gaming” and “emerging companies”, according to a press release announcing his appointment at the time. Without ByteDance, Mayer’s position looks a lot smaller.
In an email to staff about the departure also posted on Pandaily, ByteDance CEO Zhang Yiming stated that the sale would have a “significant impact” on Mayer’s job, “in particular, seeing his global role while based in the US.”
Once TikTok is acquired, Mayer may end up “reporting to someone who is likely to use TikTok for a different strategy,” said Tal Chalozin, chief technology officer at research firm Innovid.
“Kevin is the type of man who needs to be involved in something very special,” Chalozin said. “He has built a record for successful products. He does not want to be known as the man who succeeded at Disney, but TikTok could not. ”
Chalozin and Stafford both think Mayer will be fine. He is known as one of the smartest strategists to work with, with a pretty good record of success. Even if he finds himself in a different CEO position than a specific division in another company – “I do not think the three-letter title of CEO is not everything to him,” said Chalozin – Mayer will continue.
TikTok’s new leader, for now
For the moment, Vanessa will be Pappas act as interim CEO of TikTok. It fits well: Pappas has been working with ByteDance on TikTok since 2018, and became the general manager of the platform in January 2019. Before joining ByteDance, Pappas spent seven years on YouTube, giving her a rich background in online video. and social media platforms.
Pappas is arguably more associated with the company than Mayer was in his less than 100 days on the job. Dad is the one who talks to the press, the person who writes a lot of the blog posts about updates at TikTok, and has been with the company for longer. Dad is “just as ready to start the business through a transaction as anyone else” could have appointed TikTok, Stafford said.
“The TikTok team is working tirelessly to make this platform a place of joy for hundreds of millions of people around the world, and we are just getting started,” Pappas said in a statement to The edge. “It’s amazing to look back on our last few years and see how much we’ve achieved, and I’m even more excited about what we’ll continue to bring to our community. The future for TikTok is bright. ”
Whether or not Pappas stays in the job depends to a large extent on who gets TikTok. Each company probably has a different goal for the app, and if major strategic changes occur, personnel changes will come with them. Just months after Jason Kilar took over as CEO of WarnerMedia, longtime directors Bob Greenblatt and Kevin Reilly were fired. Randy Freer left his position as CEO of Hulu after Disney acquired majority ownership, with everything moving under Mayer while he was still at the House of Mouse.
“A company like Oracle will more often put that company under a different leader,” Stafford said. “Microsoft has a history of keeping up with the current team. It is as much the philosophy of the acquirer as anything else. ”
If Microsoft wants to keep Oracle TikTok as it is, Dad can stay in the role. If the company wants to change TikTok’s strategy – Walmart, which today joined the list of potential acquirers, sees it as a potential e-commerce platform more than anything else – the leading role could be given to someone with the experience of moving a product in that direction. The “evolution of strategy can steer leadership in a different direction,” Stafford said.
Like everything with TikTok these days, it’s all a game of waiting.
