‘TikTok Got Me Fired’ – Tech Industry staff shares ‘heartbreaking’ experience
A woman in Denver took to TikTok to share her $20,000 pay increase at a new job working for a tech company — but she says she was ultimately fired after the company found her videos.
In June, Lexi Larson shared a TikTok video saying her salary had risen from $70,000 at a marketing agency to $90,000 after landing a job in the tech industry.
Her content on the platform leading up to and following the video covered her spending habits in Denver and how she got the new job.
But Larson says that after her company found her TikTok account, she began deleting videos to try to avoid angering her bosses.
She was aware her right to discuss her salary was federally protected by the National Labor Relations Act but still decided to take them down, USA Today reports.
Eventually, her supervisor discussed the TikTok account with her.
The company “really, really did not like” her videos sharing her salary, Larson said in a video. When she asked the company whether she’d posted any videos that violated security measures, she said, superiors told her “no” but weren’t willing to “take that risk.”
“TikTok cost me my job,” Larson said in the same video announcing her termination, which she said came about two weeks after she was hired. “Two days later, after they talked to me about my TikTok account, they did end up firing me because they said me having this account was a security concern.”
USA Today spoke with Bennitta Joseph, a partner at the law firm Joseph & Norinsberg LLC, about employers monitoring social media.
“A company has a huge interest to make sure you are not engaging in discriminatory statements, disclosing trade secrets, threats of violence, and unlawful conduct,” Joseph told USA Today. “If they do find out that you are doing any of these, it could be grounds for termination.”
Larson concluded her termination announcement video by letting her now -33,000 followers know she’d gone back to her old job as an account manager after calling her former manager in tears over the firing.
That video has amassed over 1 million views.