(Yicai) Jan. 31 -- The biggest sense of crisis is the concern that ByteDance is becoming mediocre and unable to achieve breakthroughs, according to the chief executive officer of the Chinese owner of TikTok.

ByteDance’s goals for this year are strengthening its sense of crisis at the organizational management level, enhancing the company’s entrepreneurial spirit, building social responsibility, and focusing only on a few key businesses, Liang Rubo, who is also the Beijing-based firm’s co-founder, told employees during the annual staff meeting.

The organizational mediocrity of ByteDance is characterized by inefficiency, sluggishness, and low standards in the face of fierce competition, Liang said. For example, a task initially estimated to take 1,000 days could be completed in just 15 days. An ex-employee told his old colleagues he completed six months of work at ByteDance in just one month at his new company.

Moreover, there is a lack of sensitivity to opportunities at ByteDance compared to startups, Liang noted. The firm did not start discussing GPT until last year, while well-performing large language model startups had already been established as early as 2018, Liang explained.

Between 2019 and 2021, ByteDance’s staff increased to over 100,000 from 10,000. But after the expansion, the company’s efficiency dropped 30 percent compared with other teams, Liang said, adding that this is a sign of low standards, which need to be raised in the future.

ByteDance was founded in 2012. Its businesses include short video platforms TikTok and Douyin, workplace collaboration and communication platform Lark, cloud service provider Volcano Engine, online education, gaming, and virtual reality. TikTok has nearly 1 billion monthly active users worldwide.

Editor: Futura Costaglione