Our leadership is probably on some really hard drugs because the policies they have implemented in the last 3 months are slowly rendering this place into a slave labor camp: 1. RTO5 was originally planned to start in October, but then they pushed it to September, but actually it was enforced in late July. People are upset, and they tried to reason with the leadership, but those idiots just won’t budge citing “the intent to foster a culture of collaboration and creativity” (that’s the only reason they give every time; it’s like a broken record). 2. They shifted the time of the performance review season and the date for the bonus payout (it used to be in May, now it’s in April). Now, there is a gap of 2 months between the announcement of the performance review results and the bonus payout date. Such change allows the managers to pip their employees and deny them the annual bonus, only 2 months before the bonus payout. You have to be employed at the company at the time of the payout to actually get it. Managers and HR at ByteDance are basically a coordinated mafia with unlimited power, so if they want you gone, you will be gone. 3.The long existing problem of attrition across the US offices was solved by our leadership in a very sinister way. Starting with 2023, they have been quietly firing people, or just forcing them to resign, and replacing them with L1 Visa folks from China. Whole new teams come here straight from China. These poor folks are tied to ByteDance until they get their greencards, which can easily take 7+ years. They work in China timezone, while being in the US. 4.The role of the US division has also changed. There is an official plan somewhere deep inside the company where they decided to turn the US offices into factories for grunt work, while the real decision making happens in China. If you work out of the US, you most likely do boring grunt work, so that the folks in China would have their data. 5.Managers know all of that, and they absolutely give jack shit about it. When they came to ByteDance, they received their uplevels (or in many cases their first management gig ever). They get paid a shit ton of money and receive ridiculous annual bonuses, even if their actual performance was horrendous. In my 4.5 years of tenure, I have met very few good managers. Most of them lack both technical skills, project management skills, and don’t get me started on people management; this part is simply absent. Managers at ByteDance are not incentivized to be good managers. They are rewarded for squeezing as much work as possible out of their “slaves”. 6.Most non-Chinese leaders (Sandie, V, Eric, and a couple of others) have left which is a sign that even they just couldn’t keep up with the nonsense coming from Beijing. 7.Discrimination and harassment. It’s rampant, and it affects both Chinese and non-Chinese. For the latter group, it’s even worse because the perpetrators (in many cases they are of Chinese origin) know that the HR won’t do anything. At this point, ByteDance is about to have so many lawsuit cases on their hands from the affected people. There have been reported cases of sexual harassment on the campus. The HR knows about them, but actively works on keeping the news down. There is a ton of other messed up stuff, and it would take more than one post to cover it. 8.Our HR actively monitors Blind and tampers with the company’s Blind rating, by posting fake 4/5 star reviews, mentioning good work culture and other non-existent stuff. It’s already 3.2 at this point, and it would have sunk even lower, if not for those fake reviews. There are even rumors that the company has delegated resources and people to track down those employees who post anti-corporate content on Blind. This is just a part of what is going on at ByteDance. This place is insane, and I have yet to meet a person that likes working here. They all say that it was a mistake to come here, even with all of the money offered. I don’t know what game our leadership is playing, but they are 100% up to no good. I don’t think a single US employee will regret, if this company gets banned eventually. #tech #bytedance #tiktok
It’s literally RTO3???
Yo you're a 1-2 that just joined and still in the honeymoon period, leave it to the folks that has been with the company for a year. RTO5 is coming in September, Seattle and e-commerce first.
The posted offer is from last August, just posted again to see if I’m underpaid.
Tell us more about performance reviews. Are they firing people who get M- rating ? I heard you need to get 2 back to back M- ratings to get piped and that's not much different from Meta.
2 M- from my experience and the timeline change is for one year as they move the dates for the performance review.
So is there a mid year performance review where ratings are locked or is it yearly ? So you can coast for 2 years with M- rating and only then you get pipped ?
What about e commerce? Was told this is US specific team
I have the same question.
Same question
Holy shit theyre literally criminals
A lot of that sounds very familiar. And I know some of these fuckers browse blind and gang report me when I posted their project is a mess.
Why so many bigots at ByteDance?
Because it's ok to be a bigot in China.
Dude it’s a communist company. Wtf do you expect? Become a comrade or GTFO.
Thanks for taking the time to write all this. Absolutely critical that terrible management like this is called out in detail on a forum like this. I feel bad for anyone who works there.
Are Zoom and ByteDance the Chinese equivalent of WITCH?
ByteDance is not witch, it’s a product company with billions of users and their own AI. Don’t compare it to witch, it’s insulting
Sounds like they deserve the insult GS. To be fair, this post is just confirming the market perception of ByteDance - it’s a sweatshop and a bad place to land for US-based workers. Yes, even relative to Amazon, which is saying something.
RTO 5 days a week??? The TC aint worth it
isn’t it 6 days ?
Hey tiktok is generous in that regard 6th day is remote