Pros
The handful of cool people and brilliant personalities that you get to meet makes a sliver of this job worth it. They also provide lunch, dinner, and a constant stream of snacks + beverages. I literally spent $0.00 on groceries lol. Also, when people hear you work at ByteDance/TikTok, you get a lot of impressed looks from the youths and adults. - their benefits like medical/dental/vision/etc. are actually super good. like amazing actually. probably bc they know we will need it lmao. I’m about to hit you with a lot of cons, but before I do, I want to give credit where credit it due; This job really pushed me to grow professionally and personally. I grew in confidence, worked on my people skills (I am such an introvert), built really strong relationships with stakeholders and agencies, and so much more. The good definitely outweighs the bad, but it was such a toxic environment that I am glad I parted ways.
Cons
literally everything else lol. - management does not care about you. they don’t know the first thing about managing. the only qualification to manage is you have to be chinese or east asian presenting. straight up, no bs. it’s the elephant in the room and i’m just calling it out. - they literally paid me in pennies for the same job my team members were getting x3 more than me for. they hated that ‘pay transparency was a thing in America.’ - while they try desperately to show the optics that they aren’t tied to China, TikTok and all its managing decisions are all ultimately made by them. - they want to know what competitors are doing and will hire ex employees from those places and then listen to zero advice, suggestions, guidance, etc. They truly do not listen to anyone but from the top. - they love to make you feel dumb, if you have Asian parents you know what i’m talking about. nothing you do is good enough. - even when you show them proof and receipts and cold hard facts of unethical treatment, they just have nothing to say, deny it, and write you off as a disruptor. from there, they will actively begin to review poorly so they have an excuse to force you to resign. - their performance review system….. gworl don’t get me started. absolute nonsense and chaos. I will leave it at this list because I can go on and on.