Site Reliability Engineer Interview Experience - Sunnyvale, California
Process
I'm writing this review based on my experience and also on behalf of my friend, who also applied there for a totally different role.
The initial chat with the recruiter went well. That was the only positive aspect of the process.
Scheduling the next round was a mess. There seemed to be a disconnect between HR and their assistant, compounded by time differences as most of the company is located in China.
Finally, they scheduled the next round, which was a straightforward coding phone screen. I hadn't interviewed in a couple of years and did it just for fun, but I failed. There were no questions about it; that was my fault.
When I spoke with an interviewer, he mentioned they have two SREs now and need to hire fifteen this year.
Later, my friend told me he had applied for a completely different role. I shared what I was asked so he could prepare.
I spoke with him afterward, and he solved all three coding challenges. However, the next day, he forwarded me an email stating he was rejected.
They may claim their bar is high, but it appears more like discrimination based on race or other factors, as I don't see a reason to reject someone at this stage if they solved all the challenges.
Questions
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Find the intersection of two arrays (they could have duplicate numbers).
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Parse logs and count the number of events by severity level.
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Parse log messages and count all aggregated errors.
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Interview Statistics
The following metrics were computed from 1 interview experience for the TikTok Site Reliability Engineer role in Sunnyvale, California.
Success Rate
TikTok's interview process for their Site Reliability Engineer roles in Sunnyvale, California is extremely selective, failing the vast majority of engineers.
Experience Rating
Candidates reported having very negative feelings for TikTok's Site Reliability Engineer interview process in Sunnyvale, California.
TikTok Work Experiences
- 4.0Interesting place to work at!Site Reliability Engineer • Former EmployeeSingapore, SingaporeJuly 15, 2022Pros: * Difficult problems to work on * Friendly teammatesCons: It might be difficult to communicate with the Chinese counterpart if you don't speak Chinese.
- 1.0Don't be scammed into this company!Site Reliability Engineer • Current EmployeeSingapore, SingaporeMarch 8, 2024Pros: - High pay and good insurance/benefits - Free food - Get exposed to new technologiesCons: Please choose your team wisely. I highly advise against joining the Recommendation team. HR will tell you all sorts of lies. I was told that the team is moving their documents to English and how I can write documents in English; none of these is true. * No clear expectations of your role. I don't mean that there are no OKRs, but because there are no clear expectations of your level, your boss can always change the goalposts and say that you failed to meet expectations. Extremely biased boss that can either build you up in 1 minute or tear you down in the next minute. * Culture that does not empower you to work. Always getting belittled by mentor and manager (e.g., from calling your ideas, saying you're not good enough, calling you out for being too slow). Shouting at you in a closed room when you make mistakes. Micromanagement with an extreme, aggressive attitude. Poor guidance during the onboarding phase. * HR is never on your side. They take every opportunity to snitch on you. A lot of things are hidden and not brought to light; you've not much data to work around this toxic behavior. * Long working hours, always getting pinged. There's so much inefficiency at work. The codebase is difficult to understand, poorly maintained, has no tests at all, and no proper tracing tool to troubleshoot issues. Most of the time you will be spent doing meaningless work. As someone that doesn't write reviews, this is my first time sharing something like this. I would strongly advise against joining this department (other teams might be different, but long work hours and Chinese work culture still remain). If you value your own mental health and value being empowered at work, please don't join, even if you're offered high compensation (by the way, compensation doesn't increase yearly here). Trust me, it's just not worth it, even if you're just planning to stay for a year.
- 3.0Challenging, long hoursSite Reliability Engineer • Current EmployeeBellevue, Washington, United StatesMay 27, 2023Pros: You learn a lot and work with diverse teams on a wide range of technologies.Cons: The hours are long, and the work moves fast.
TikTok Interview Questions
