Month: August 2025

• Grindr’s CEO told Business Insider that great AI companies would “get destroyed” thanks to the growing “VC bubble.”
• “A few people will set the trends, then everyone will jump in that direction,” he said.
• Grindr has embraced new tech, building “AI-native” products and introducing gAI (pronounced “gay-I”).

Grindr may be an “AI-first company” these days, but its CEO remains skeptical of the amount of money being thrown at certain AI companies.

The debate over whether an AI bubble is forming has reached a fever pitch in the past few months. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently told reporters that “overexcited” investors were practicing bubble-like behavior around the industry.

Business Insider asked the LGBTQ+ dating app’s CEO George Arison about Altman’s comments. Arison said that a “VC bubble” was forming — but that the AI incumbents have an incentive to advise against investment.

“This is how venture always works,” Arison told Business Insider. “Most VCs are actually followers, not trendsetters. A few people will set the trends, then everyone will jump in that direction and too much money will go into that space.”

Arison also warned that a lot of “great companies” would “get destroyed” because of the VC frenzy around AI. He analogized it to the late-2010s SoftBank investments.

“How many companies probably should not have taken money from SoftBank five, seven years ago?” Arison said. “Had they not done that, they might have still been around.”

SoftBank invested $9 billion in WeWork, which later filed for bankruptcy. It also invested $375 million in Zume, which has now shut down. SoftBank did not respond to a request for comment.

Arison said that the “VC bubble” was specifically forming on the “application side,” and not among the architecture or model companies.

“How many sales agents do you need?” he asked.

The bubble isn’t too worrying, though, Arison said. He called it an “inevitable component of how venture capital works.” Some companies will fail, but others will be “very, very successful,” he said.

Arison declined to speak to the OpenAI CEO’s remarks specifically, but spoke more broadly about “incumbent” AI companies that want to protect themselves.

“If you are an incumbent large AI player, you kind of want to stop a lot of investment from going into this space because you now have a unique competitive advantage,” Arison said.

OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment.

Arison also said that the AI field was rife with competitors rapidly outpacing each other. He analogized it to his first company, Taxi Magic. Originally a Blackberry app, Taxi Magic was an early iteration of mobile car-booking company, but then Uber came along and out-innovated it.

“Cursor, which is an innovator, is being out-innovated by Anthropic because Claude Code, a lot of people would say is way better,” Arison said, before clarifying that he himself doesn’t have a preference between the two vibe-coding tools. Grindr uses both, he said.

Arison also sees innovation happening in the foundation models themselves.

“What Elon has done with Grok is actually pretty incredible,” he said. “You have other companies that have been working on these things for so long, and he created something brand-new and most likely it’s headed in the direction of it being better than anybody else.”

Ultimately, Arison said he didn’t think that VCs were over-investing in AI. He’s excited about the tech; Grindr released a slide deck with its second-quarter earnings this year about how the company was embracing gAI. (That’s pronounced “gay-I.”)

What Arison emphasized was that the money was going to the wrong places.

“VCs are herd,” he said. “Wherever the three sheep go, then everybody else follows.”

• TikTok has more than 1,800 open roles in the US on its jobs portal.
• The company and its owner are looking for talent in focus areas like AI, e-commerce, and search.
• Work visa data reveals how much TikTok pays for jobs, including in engineering and data science.

TikTok’s US plans are up in the air due to a divest-or-ban law that puts its future in jeopardy. But it’s still offering six-figure salaries to workers this year in key areas like e-commerce and artificial intelligence.

It’s sought to hire data scientists to sharpen its search algorithm, court workers to grow its e-commerce platform TikTok Shop, and bring in machine learning engineers to improve its content feed and recommendations.

The company’s jobs portal lists over 1,800 open roles in the US in cities like Austin, San Jose, Seattle, and New York.

Like other Big Tech firms, work expectations at TikTok and its owner, ByteDance, are demanding. The company runs performance reviews twice a year, and low scorers can be placed on performance-improvement plans or even shown the door. But the opportunity to work at one of the most influential tech companies in the world continues to draw in talent.

Outside e-commerce, TikTok is shaking up areas like music marketing and young people’s news habits. If it can navigate political tides in the US and China, where ByteDance was founded, it will stand alongside YouTube and a few other players in shaping the next phase of media.

“From a career growth standpoint, you have access to huge budgets and big names,” a former staffer said of working at TikTok. “Everyone in the industry wants to talk to you.”

While TikTok and ByteDance don’t disclose salary information publicly (unless required by state law), they do submit pay ranges in federal filings when they look to hire workers from outside the US.

To understand more about the company’s pay rates, Business Insider reviewed thousands of TikTok salary offers for foreign hires at the company, as well as its owner, ByteDance, for the first three quarters of this reporting year that ran through June 30. The results don’t include equity or other benefits that employees often receive in addition to base pay. But they paint a picture of the range of pay a worker might expect in roles like software engineering, data science, or product management.

The foreign-hire data shows a wide range of salaries at the companies. For example, a finance representative could earn $65,000 a year, and a global head of product and design position could fetch a $949,349 annual salary.

Backend software engineers at TikTok could earn between $144,000 and $301,158, based on the salary data, though rates increased beyond that for specialties like trust and safety. Data scientist positions at TikTok were generally offered between $85,821 and $283,629 — or more in specific areas like e-commerce. For TikTok machine learning scientists, the range was between $168,000 and $390,000, while general marketing managers were offered between $85,000 and $430,000.

These salary offers fall in line with pay rates in federal applications at other Big Tech firms. Meta’s first-quarter visa filings revealed it offered data scientists between $122,760 and $270,000, for example. Meanwhile, a staff software engineer at Google could receive between $220,000 and $323,000, according to the company’s first-quarter filings.

Here are the salary ranges TikTok and ByteDance offered for other roles in key business areas, based on recent applications. TikTok and ByteDance did not respond to requests for comment.

E-commerce and TikTok Shop roles

TikTok Shop – Celebrity Team Live Operation Manager: $94,000

TikTok Shop – US Data Analyst – Logistics: $128,000

TikTok Shop – Campaign Strategy Operations Manager: $132,000

TikTok Shop – Category Manager – Health: $135,000

TikTok Shop – Anti-Fraud Ops Program Mgr – Global Selling: $180,000

TikTok Shop – Data Scientist: $218,000 to $304,000

Product Manager, User Growth Customer Lifecycle-TikTok Shop: $220,000

Strategy Manager, E-Commerce: $228,000 to $230,000

Software Engineer – E-commerce Recommendation Infrastructure: $237,000 to $315,207

TikTok Shop – Inventory Placement Strategy Manager: $250,000

TikTok Shop- Compliance Operation: $257,600

Senior Machine Learning Engineer, E-commerce: $320,000

Tech Lead – E-commerce Recommendation Infrastructure: $320,113

Logistics Procurement Lead, TikTok US E-commerce: $350,000

Senior Data Scientist, Content E-commerce: $350,000

Tech Lead, Global E-commerce Governance Platform: $365,000

Global E-commerce Solutions Manager: $480,000

AI and machine learning roles

Software Engineer (AI Platform): $144,000

Research Scientist (TikTok AI Privacy): $188,000

Product Manager GenAI Safety, Trust & Safety: $218,400

Senior Product Designer, Creation (AI Projects): $221,368

Machine Learning Engineer – Computer Vision: $228,960

Software Engineer, Machine Learning Infrastructure: $270,000 to $320,783

Site Reliability Engineer, AI Applications: $276,000

AI Product Manager: $300,010

Product Manager Lead, Emerging Product & AI Safety: $336,000

AI Security Researcher – Security Flow: $340,000

Senior Machine Learning Engineer, TikTok Recommendation: $386,115

Search roles

Search Product Operations – Creator Search Optimization: $110,000

Software Engineer – TikTok Search Business Infrastructure: $154,880 to $214,720

Product Manager, Search Ads: $205,000

Machine Learning Engineer – Search Ads: $229,200 to $354,000

Machine Learning Engineer – TikTok Search: $241,200 to $300,000

Senior Machine Learning Engineer – TikTok Search Business: $268,920

Product Manager – TikTok Search: $287,500

Product Manager, Search Content Ecosystem: $400,000

Leader of Search and Recommendation Product (ByteDance): $540,552

Search Ads Closed-loop Product Manager: $564,000

• Tools that let job seekers apply to roles with only a few clicks can save time.
• Because it’s so easy, employers are often flooded with résumés, making it harder for applicants to stand out.
• “You start to feel terrible about yourself,” if no one sees your résumé, a job-market observer said.

After graduating with a master’s in computer science last year, Mihir Goyenka spent most days applying for jobs.

His search lasted about eight months. Goyenka estimates that he submitted thousands of applications.

“I got to a point where if I read the company name, I was like, ‘Yeah, I’ve applied to this company,'” he told Business Insider.

Goyenka tried to follow the advice not to just apply to everything he could find — what recruiters often call “spray and pray” — and focus on networking. But, he said, that didn’t get him very far.

So, the 24-year-old, who lives in Tempe, Arizona, started going after as many software engineering roles as he could because there was no downside to applying. Ultimately, Goyenka said, it became “a numbers game.”

That’s how many other people see it, too. Job applications submitted on LinkedIn were up more than 45% year-over-year as of May, according to the company’s most recent figures.

It’s just one indicator of how difficult the search can be. One thing meant to take some of the sting out of the process — but that can make it worse — is the ability to apply to many roles with only a few clicks.

“It’s way too easy, and that’s not a good thing,” tech-industry veteran Jenny Dearborn, who is chief people strategy officer at professional services firm BTS, told Business Insider.

Making it a cinch to apply for a role sounds like a win. Fewer taps and less time. But that convenience brings a trade-off: It can be harder to stand out.

HR departments flooded with résumés can feel compelled to lean on applicant-tracking software. Those systems are designed to help filter out the noise — like candidates who don’t bother reading job descriptions or submissions cranked out by AI. And even if you make it across the digital moat, you still have to go up against everyone else.

Now, as the job market shows signs of slowing, the competition could grow.

‘A tsunami’

Lindsey Zuloaga, chief data scientist at Hirevue, which makes software tools for screening job applicants, told Business Insider that automation is often necessary because of the volume of applications. Without it, a résumé might not get seen at all, she said.

Zuloaga said that even though scanning résumés for keywords matching a job description isn’t a great way to evaluate candidates, employers often do it to winnow the field. The biggest hurdle for job seekers, she said, is the sheer competition.

“Every single job you apply for, the numbers are kind of stacked against you,” Zuloaga said.

The challenge only gets worse if there are more people gunning for the same role. Zuloaga was recently hiring for a senior data scientist position and even received an application from a real-estate agent. Not qualified, but still required reviewing. About half of the roughly 4,000 applications that came in didn’t meet all of the requirements, she said.

Dearborn said that the number of résumés can be so overwhelming — what she called “a tsunami of digital paperwork” — that some recruiters tune out applications that took only a few clicks to complete.

“It’s just created a huge amount of noise,” she said.

Applying more, but feeling worse

Unless you’re in high demand — hello, AI hotshots — you’ve likely been ghosted by an employer. That, in turn, can add pressure to keep clicking “apply.”

A LinkedIn survey conducted in late 2024 across more than a dozen countries found that 37% of job seekers reported applying more but hearing back less.

Serial applying can also be counterproductive if it adds to job seekers’ insecurities, said Laura Labovich, who heads an outplacement firm in the Washington, DC, area.

“You start to feel terrible about yourself when likely no human has ever viewed your résumé,” she told Business Insider.

The cobra effect

Erin McGoff, who founded and runs the career-education platform AdviceWithErin, said that easy applying is a classic cobra effect: The “fix” just makes things worse. More competition, more résumés for employers to sort through, and more chances for good candidates to get lost.

She said that AI tools promising to make applying to jobs like using Tinder, where a quick swipe shoots a customized résumé to an employer, often only add to the problem.

“It doesn’t work because everyone else is doing it, too,” McGoff told Business Insider.

Another problem is that, too often, job seekers who don’t know anyone at an employer don’t have a good way to figure out whether a role is a good fit, said Kiki Leutner, cofounder of SeeTalent.ai. The UK startup is building AI-run tests to mimic job tasks, aiming to better match workers and employers.

“Often you don’t have an option to talk to anyone about the job before you submit your CV, which is so crazy,” she told Business Insider.

The result, Leutner said, is a “lottery-like scenario” for employers and applicants where neither is aware of what the other can offer. She said that because employers often screen for irrelevant information, people hunting for a role often feel compelled to submit loads of applications to try to get past the software gatekeepers.

Goyenka, the engineering grad, felt that pressure. In March, he found a web developer role in Phoenix on Handshake, a career platform for students and recent graduates. He applied and, a few days later, had a video call with the hiring manager. Not long after, Goyenka got the offer he’d spent months seeking.

If he had to look for another job, Goyenka said he’d try to network even more than he had — though he said he’d probably still keep hitting submit on plenty of applications, just to boost his chances and feel like he was making progress.

“If you don’t apply, what have you done?” Goyenka said.

Do you have a story to share about your job search? Contact this reporter at tparadis@businessinsider.com.

Kyiv – A Russian drone attack overnight targeted four power facilities near Odesa, a southern Ukrainian city. As a result, over 29,000 customers lost electricity on Sunday morning, according to the region’s governor and the power company DTEK, reports 24brussels.

The Ukrainian Armed Forces’ Air Forces reported that Russian forces conducted 142 airstrikes overnight, deploying 142 drones of various types. The military indicated that these drone strikes originated from the Kursk, Millerovo, and Primorsko-Akhtarsk regions, as well as Chauda in occupied Crimea. The Defence Forces confirmed that they successfully downed or intercepted 126 drones across the north, south, and east of the country.

What damage was caused by Russian drones?

Oleh Kiper, head of the broader Odesa region, stated that the port city of Chornomorsk, near Odesa, experienced the most significant damage, impacting both residential and administrative buildings. Kiper reported the injuries of one individual as a result of the attack on his Telegram channel.

“Critical infrastructure is being run on generators,”

Kiper explained that Ukraine’s largest energy company, DTEK, confirmed that four of its power plants were affected during the night. The company stated that emergency repairs will commence as soon as they receive clearance from military and emergency services.

How has Russia intensified drone strikes before the winter season?

In recent weeks, Russia has significantly escalated its attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure, targeting key installations in multiple regions. These strikes have led to widespread blackouts, affecting over 100,000 residents in Poltava, Sumy, and Chernihiv.

Russia’s systematic use of large-scale drone and missile strikes has caused considerable damage to gas transport systems, electrical substations, and other vital energy infrastructure. For instance, on August 27, Russia launched a coordinated drone attack aimed at energy and gas transport systems across six Ukrainian oblasts: Poltava, Sumy, Chernihiv, Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, and Donetsk.