Blind is full of comments on the 996 culture at Tiktok. I am seriously considering accepting an offer from them, and of course worried about giving away my life. I want to clarify the 996 part, though. Do they require working on Saturdays, or it's just that everyone works on Saturdays? What happens if I work 9-5 Mon-Fri? Will they fire me for not working overtime for free?
I'm in the same situation. Considering the offer, but so far, everyone has "warned" me, not even caution that don't join
Did you end up taking the offer? Can you share offer details?
Check out this post! "Don’t come to ByteDance. It’s only getting worse. (Tech Industry)" https://www.teamblind.com/us/s/sDhce2UH
Thanks for sharing. But ok, what's the worst that can happen? Fire me for not complying non-sense decisions? I'll get another job then. Just receiving their cash comp for a few months would be worth it, right?
"Would be worth it" totally depends on you, your risk appetite, and being out there again in a dry market.
TikTok is not a place to join if you care about personal boundaries.
TikTok US is the tech equivalent of a pig sty. I’ve been here for over two years and worked at several tech companies including Amazon. I’ve never seen a more dysfunctional leadership core. In two years, I’ve seen my team reorganize 3 times. On the USDS side, we have senior DS 3-1s who have BAs in liberal arts and have never even written a single line of code in their lives. We have director level leadership managing hundreds of technical people who have never managed a team…ever. A coworker told me Bytedance had to provide her high level leaders “management coaches” because they were so clueless on how to run teams. Guess how well that’s going. In the US, EVERYTHING feels like a façade. We do work but decisions aren’t made in the US. They’re made in China. So here we just spin our wheels to, I guess, give the impression that there’s US control. The infrastructure is awful. They made the absolutely absurd decision to park their architecture in Oracle cloud: the worst cloud service provider in the hottest goddam state in the country. Guess what happens. Alert after alert after alert because server rooms are too hot and services go down. Internal dev tools break down every other day. It’s an absolute cluster f$&k. And then there’s the culture portion. I’ve heard horror stories about Bejing teams berating US employees. And in the US, those 3-2 leaders? You know, the ones with no expertise in their fields? They’re on a culture war binge. We get a lot of male applicants for lead roles. Something to be expected in a field where men continue to dominate (not saying it’s fair, just what the data says) and yet, those highly qualified applicants are turned down for wildly less qualified female applicants because they weren’t a “culture fit”. That’s completely out of pocket. Filing an HR complaint? Better be about a male because if you complain about any female leaders here, you’re asking for the fastest pip you’ve seen in your life. Guaranteed m- at least on perf. The thing is, TT knows they have you trapped because the market sucks. Every dev I know is trying to get out but can’t find work elsewhere because the market is oversaturated still. This barely even breaks the surface about how awful and completely unimportant the US component of the company is. All the senior leadership in the US just blew out all at once too. That’s a horrible sign and indicates that they didn’t have any control of the wheel. It’s bad here right now. Really bad. I’m really bummed because I like the platform and the community engagement on it but the company itself and the leadership is atrocious, has no direction to provide other than slogans or platitudes, and move goalposts more often than a soccer field groundskeeper during a tournament.
Thanks for all the points. You still haven't answered my question. What happens if I refuse to work after hours. Fire?
I mean, they technically can’t do that but you’ll be piped for underperforming
Which role have you applied for ? Would love to hear about your interview experience, what was asked , were there was any focus area for each round ?
It's an ML role. 2 interviews on both coding and ML sys design, one interview of ML sys design, and HR interview, mostly behavioral
Most people join TikTok for money even after hearing all the horror stories but forget that it’s all paper money. Even their cash offers are not worth it.
~300K cash + 25% target bonus is not worth it for 2-2? Not sure how much signing bonus I'll get
The problem is that if you have been in other tech companies in the US, the tiktok culture will not be similar. Most if not all US companies are huge on DEI, sustainability, employee engagement and mental health while Tiktok and ByteDance are focused on whatever China wants to align with.
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even with companies like TT and amazon, it’s still highly team dependent. newer teams especially are doing much better with WLB but there can still be some evening meetings depending on what you work on. overall I’d say worth a shot and set your personal boundaries early.
Still waiting to hear from other companies, but even if I end up taking Tiktok's offer, I will be setting my boundaries the first day. Maybe one or two after-hours meetings are ok weekly, but if anyone asks me to work or join a meeting on Saturday, I'll just smile and say no 🙂