Do I regret joining TikTok? - Yes, there are lot of pre-ipo and post-ipo startup companies with lot of upside so if I could go back, I would spend one more month interviewing and would rather apply elsewhere. TikTok as a company systematically promotes toxic 996 work culture. They systematically promote discrimination. Our perf reviews are literally due on Monday, expecting us to work on it all weekend and TikTok has one of the most redundant, extensive performance review. I have seen some managers in US cancel 1:1 for perf to give time back but not a norm, specially not from Chinese managers. Our managers are incentivized to rate people negatively and if they havent rated anyone negatively then they have to answer to their their leaders. Inspite of so much going on in the world, our managers dont have basic courtesy to check on well being of the team and in fact literally will dump bunch of extra work in addition to perf and OKRs. People can argue that its a bad team, but if company literally has perf deadline on Monday indicates that they dont want employees wasting work hours for perf and should rather do it on weekend. You might still be able to find a good team but our attrition is so high and all good people leave and there is good chance that one month down the line you might not be reporting to same manager or be on the same team. The burnout is so evident and so many good leaders who wanted to make a change have left company because management in US is just a sham and they cant do anything or make any decisions. Yet anytime you bring up that you are having a hard time, the only response you will get is use EAP. We regularly have late night calls and if you raise this to manager, all they will respond is "we are very flexible, feel free to take some time off during the day". In most good companies, it can take 15-30 min for a normal person to decompress after work and start engaging with family but in TikTok you will need longer to decompress after work due to toxicity. So during mid-day breaks by the time you decompress, its already time for you to think about your upcoming meetings. So basically from the moment you start in morning, until you sleep, all you will think about is work. We have very high number of recent grad and feel bad for those kids who might think this is normal work culture. TikTok work culture is not normal. TikTok doesnt have PR reviews and it can be so imp early in career that can help people improve their coding skills. We dont invest in anyway for the career development of employee, whether its PR review, promotions, career development. You dont get anything here. Definitely dont recommend working here if you have kids. I have heard from several of my coworkers about how working at TikTok has impacted their marriage life and their quality time with kids. If I could go back, I would rather not join TikTok. The upsides are not worth the mental toll it takes. I am actively interviewing and cant wait to get out and tell rest of the world '100 reasons why not to join TikTok'
We had Thursday and Friday to do 360 reviews. I finished all of mine by mid afternoon Friday. I don’t spend more than 5 min per person. I had to do 12 so it took about an hour of my time.
TikTok has no PR reviews? As in whatever you write just gets merged without anyone looking at it??
Lmao it's a wild world out there.
I’m pretty sure all teams have. It’s more chill than other companies, they care less about style and more about performance, but still.
What is a PR review?
pull request review, i believe
💯
Nail meet head. This is so spot on. Hope the spineless US management sees this.
Is it like this for the trust and safety team? I’m deciding on whether to accept an offer or not.
Welcome to the shitshow brother
lmao spot on.
OP missed out listing all the tricks they use to make our lives miserable here. Bi-monthly OKRs, weekly sprints, multiple projects, 360° performance reviews twice a year, ByteStyle principles, and several other methods are used by the company to keep employees in check and turn them into work drones. Another issue is here churn - people ; no one knows what's going on because everyone is new and always busy figuring things out for themselves. That may appear to be a minor issue, but it adds up. And these rookies, they slog and slog away everyday 997 and make things even worse and toxically competitive. I have been stuck here the past couple of years, with a terrible WLB and far too much busy work. The leadership is not communicatively transparent and is unconcerned about employee well-being. I can't even get out of this vortex in which I'm trapped, let alone interview out and gtfo here. I am in engineering.
You say you have been at Bytedance for 2 years. Why are still staying if it’s so bad?
That's what happens if you wait for a while to see if things change. You get sucked into the vortex of workload, on call and commitments. There won't be much left of you to disengage and prepare for a new job, if you stick here for a while. I am at my two year mark and I am looking forward to leaving soon.
It is a wild world here and if you stay over a year this place sulks you in. You go into a phase where you stop enjoying work and find yourself constantly fighting unreasonable expectations by trying to meet them just so you can prove them wrong. People have literally developed sleep disorder, work induced anxiety, work depression and have gone on FMLA but still no change at all. Worst is we think things would change after people create videos like ‘why I quit my PM job at Tiktok’, nothing changed. Our leveling rubric has one sentence expectation line and basically all levels seems same. We don’t have titles nor real leveling rubric but we are suppose to do a perf review and lot of people get negatively rated. If you raise any of these concerns then you will get negatively rated. Managers and HR don’t share your feedbacks with you so only thing in the end that matter is your managers perception about you. We have no diversity on manager level and only people who can kiss their Chinese leaders ass survive. All leaders who wanted to create an inclusive work culture in US have left. Look up our leaders like Jeff or Sean or Amy or Jakub or Joshua…… list just goes on It’s a problem that we can’t retain our non-Chinese leaders and as a non-Chinese person myself, it makes me uncomfortable and nervous that ‘THE ONLY WAY IS THEIR WAY OR YOU ARE F…..’
12 hours even in the U.S.? How much do they pay?