Pros
- THE PEOPLE. People who work there are genuinely so talented and nice. That's why I and, I think most people stay(ed). - Its awesome when having a @tiktok.com email opens any doors or inbox to you - Its an awesome brand and the product is exceptional - Great events, very unreliable but cool swag - Many of the leaders are genuinely awesome
Cons
- There is a pattern of consistent and underlying gaslighting at TikTok that I have witnessed over my many years working there. I think this is largely driven by poor HR practices. You see this cascade through levels of management where leaders and individual HR members are complicit in continuing it down to their directs & stakeholders in order to do a good job at their roles and keep discontent from employees at a minimum.Examples of this: convincing employees that they are wrong when they come with comp concerns, setting unachievable goals or moving the goal posts, changing policies that they'd previously indicated, over-relying on top performers to carry teams but not rewarding them, giving individuals management roles but stripping their autonomy to make decisions at it applies to their business, leaders who aren't really making decisions but are having decisions dictated to them - Culture of individual self promotion externally - Comp & benefits is truly subpar, the current stock buy back program is evidence of this. ByteDance already devalued RSUs for employees last year to "make the company more attractive to future hires" and has further devalued stocks by offering a different buyback price for former employees than current. Their value just keeps getting lower and lower. I genuinely think many people hold on because they keep hoping it'll pay off rather than just cutting bait on something that's actually becoming less valuable over time - The "360" performance review isn't real and it takes most people about 3 review rounds to see that. Your success is determined by your manager, their sway, their results, whether or not they like you, and the overall forced distribution - Performance review is used as a chance to change the levels of employees who have been "promoted" in the middle of the period, rather than actually reward high performance - No merit increases. Your performance "raises" or any raise from a role change (unlikely to happen) slowly get eaten up by inflation. It's very difficult to tangibly increase your comp - Pockets of bad bad lack of work life balance