Toxic workplace and culture without transparency - Program Manager TikTok Employee Review

1.0
Jul 8, 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Salary and health benefits are slightly better than market rate however you are expected to work a lot more than the market norm as well.

Cons

Incompetent and bad leadership. We are all on a boat without any direction. Reorg is normal in tech industry due to focus shift however it happens every 2 months here. You might be hired as a data analyst and ended up working as a program manager, there’s just no transparency in this company. Expect to work almost 996 (overtime and weekend) since most of the leaders are from China or are neutralised Singaporeans so they expect this working style. Lots of team leaders have no relevant work experience nor leadership skills at all. Thus, their bottom down are the ones who need to work relentlessly to achieve their team leaders OKRs for them. TikTok managed to hire a lot of talents from other top tech competitors due to tech layoffs yet they are all reporting into incompetent and unethical leaders who do not take ownership of their incompetency at work. If you do not care about your physical health and mental wellbeing - TikTok is a place for you to feel abundance with only salary offering.

Explore other reviews about TikTok

2.0
Jun 15, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Pay is level with industry and actual work is somewhat interesting depending on the team you're on

Cons

In my experience, career growth can feel very limited if you are not part of the dominant internal language and cultural network. A significant amount of important context, communication, and decision-making happens in Chinese, which can make non-Chinese-speaking employees feel excluded from key conversations and promotion opportunities. The environment did not feel as inclusive as it should be for a global company. Advancement often felt less tied to performance and more tied to whether you were connected to the right groups or able to operate fluently within the Chinese-speaking side of the organization. Over time, it felt like non-Chinese-speaking employees had fewer long-term career paths and were at risk of being replaced by people who could better fit that internal operating model. Things also move very slowly because employees are often given access only to the bare minimum needed to do their jobs. There is a heavy push toward using AI tools, but in practice it can make it harder to get help from real people. Instead of getting quick support, you often have to spend time going through AI bots or internal tools before getting a useful answer.

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