Hey all! I’m just kicking off the process with TikTok and had a few questions about the work, work culture, WLB, etc. I know people don’t have a lot of good things to say about it (I won’t do 996, I’m not Chinese, definitely can’t work more than 50 hours a week even if the people are awesome). That being said, I realise that companies can vary wildly by team, so curious if anyone know about Ads Integrity specifically, or if there’s a team there that isn’t uniformly bad in terms of work culture/WLB. I’d also love to understand what the work in this team/in general is like - how good is the Dev tooling, engineering process, what’s the tech stack like etc. Also what’s the interview like? Is it really data structures/algorithms heavy like G/FB, or more basic? I’m interviewing primarily to maximise my TC but I’m also quite happy where I am - so unless it’s a huge uptick it isn’t worth it for me. So TL;DR - 1. How bad is the culture really in London, specifically in Ads Integrity would be great to know 2. What’s the work like for an engineer? 3. What’s the interview process like? Thanks! Current TC: ~£110k YOE: 5 #london #swe
From London the key question to the hiring manager will be how much they rely and interact with China. The more with China the worse WLB will be and likely lots of 6 and 7am meetings. The other thing to keep in mind is that your current listed company is pro-remote while ByteDance is the complete opposite: they'll force RTO full time as soon as possible and are already pushing back to the London office in the coming weeks.
Sage advice, thanks! I’ll make this a prio, can’t handle that overlap no matter the TC bump lol. While I’m likely going to be mostly in the office when things open up at Spotify as well, I respect the fact that I can still wfh when I want to here - something to ponder.
You can ask directly if they have weekly meetings with the China teams (and at what time) and how decisions are made (local or in China). I would assume this specific team is largely outside of China and probably has a decision maker in the US but it's hard to say.
Do a search for “TikTok PSA” and read through that thread.
Cant speak for London or the ads integrity team specifically , sorry. But I would say you’re absolutely right it’s team dependent. For example I’m in the Lark group (enterprise software), and I’m happy with my WLB. What I find in addition to team it’s also how good you yourself are at drawing boundaries. I guess it’s because I work on the software that connects us I feel it a bit more. Like getting messages on Lark, or Slack, or Teams, or whatever.... does NOT mean you have to drop everything you’re doing and respond to it. I think those that have the worst WLB all have an inability to say no. Like can’t ever leave an email unanswered or a message unread type of people. And they seem to think using the do-not-disturb bell is some kind of a sin. Don’t be like that if you care about your well-being. The interview process for you will prob be the standard 4 round format. It’s elimination based meaning you only go to next round if you pass. First three rounds are hiring manager, cross functional, and org leader, but it may not necessarily go in that order. 4th round is HR. Questions they ask can be varied - old Blind threads have enough info on that.
Thanks for your detailed response, and I think you’re spot on with the fact that it’s on the individual as well! It’s certainly something I’ve seen happen at previous companies - I guess the crux of it is whether drawing your own boundaries is respected and that depends on the org