TikTok

Software Engineer Interview Experience - San Jose, California

January 19, 2024

Positive ExperienceNo Offer

Process

4 weeks after:

2 technical interviews, including 1-2 LeetCode problems (medium-hard).
HM (Hiring Manager) behavioral/technical interview.
Little deep dive into resume, mostly coding.
Team matching.
Offer.

Questions

Two pointers question

Stack question

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Interview Statistics

The following metrics were computed from 82 interview experiences for the TikTok Software Engineer role in San Jose, California.

Success Rate

6%

Pass Rate

TikTok's interview process for their Software Engineer roles in San Jose, California is extremely selective, failing the vast majority of engineers.

Experience Rating

Positive37%

Neutral39%

Negative24%

Candidates reported having good feelings for TikTok's Software Engineer interview process in San Jose, California.

TikTok Work Experiences

Depends on the team

Software Engineer • Current Employee

San Jose, California, United States

Pros: High base salary, and high-value impact projects

Cons: The docs are in Chinese, the translation works badly, and selling stocks is complicated. It's hard to be promoted if you are a non-Chinese speaker.

Depends on the team

Software Engineer • Current Employee

San Jose, California, United States

Pros: High base salary, and high-value impact projects

Cons: The docs are in Chinese, the translation works badly, and selling stocks is complicated. It's hard to be promoted if you are a non-Chinese speaker.

Pretty Terrible WLB

Software Engineer • Former Employee

San Jose, California, United States

February 18, 2025

Pros: - Good compensation - Free food - Snacks

Cons: - Terrible work-life balance (always international meetings, so expect 6 PM - midnight+ to be filled with meetings). - Fully Chinese environment; prepare to use Google Translate a lot. - Terrible communication.

Pretty Terrible WLB

Software Engineer • Former Employee

San Jose, California, United States

February 18, 2025

Pros: - Good compensation - Free food - Snacks

Cons: - Terrible work-life balance (always international meetings, so expect 6 PM - midnight+ to be filled with meetings). - Fully Chinese environment; prepare to use Google Translate a lot. - Terrible communication.

Horrible company with fake culture

Software Engineer • Current Employee

San Jose, California, United States

Pros: The CEO is the main pro. Otherwise, the benefits and offerings on campus are not even comparable to what other large companies in tech provide. The best perk is their fitness allowance, I guess. WLB is pretty good too because you don't really need to work, as the company is overhiring.

Cons: If you don't speak Mandarin, you're at a heavy disadvantage. 95%+ of the company is Chinese, so you'll have to get used to being in meetings where only Chinese is spoken and seeing the language spoken in the office and all your chat threads. Also, it's very obvious that everyone at the company is forced to do what satisfies HQ (aka "China Team").

Horrible company with fake culture

Software Engineer • Current Employee

San Jose, California, United States

Pros: The CEO is the main pro. Otherwise, the benefits and offerings on campus are not even comparable to what other large companies in tech provide. The best perk is their fitness allowance, I guess. WLB is pretty good too because you don't really need to work, as the company is overhiring.

Cons: If you don't speak Mandarin, you're at a heavy disadvantage. 95%+ of the company is Chinese, so you'll have to get used to being in meetings where only Chinese is spoken and seeing the language spoken in the office and all your chat threads. Also, it's very obvious that everyone at the company is forced to do what satisfies HQ (aka "China Team").

Depends on the team

Software Engineer • Current Employee

San Jose, California, United States

Pros: High base salary, and high-value impact projects

Cons: The docs are in Chinese, the translation works badly, and selling stocks is complicated. It's hard to be promoted if you are a non-Chinese speaker.

3.0
Depends on the team
Software Engineer • Current Employee
San Jose, California, United States
March 8, 2025
Pros: High base salary, and high-value impact projects
Cons: The docs are in Chinese, the translation works badly, and selling stocks is complicated. It's hard to be promoted if you are a non-Chinese speaker.

Pretty Terrible WLB

Software Engineer • Former Employee

San Jose, California, United States

February 18, 2025

Pros: - Good compensation - Free food - Snacks

Cons: - Terrible work-life balance (always international meetings, so expect 6 PM - midnight+ to be filled with meetings). - Fully Chinese environment; prepare to use Google Translate a lot. - Terrible communication.

1.0
Pretty Terrible WLB
Software Engineer • Former Employee
San Jose, California, United States
February 18, 2025
Pros: - Good compensation - Free food - Snacks
Cons: - Terrible work-life balance (always international meetings, so expect 6 PM - midnight+ to be filled with meetings). - Fully Chinese environment; prepare to use Google Translate a lot. - Terrible communication.

Horrible company with fake culture

Software Engineer • Current Employee

San Jose, California, United States

Pros: The CEO is the main pro. Otherwise, the benefits and offerings on campus are not even comparable to what other large companies in tech provide. The best perk is their fitness allowance, I guess. WLB is pretty good too because you don't really need to work, as the company is overhiring.

Cons: If you don't speak Mandarin, you're at a heavy disadvantage. 95%+ of the company is Chinese, so you'll have to get used to being in meetings where only Chinese is spoken and seeing the language spoken in the office and all your chat threads. Also, it's very obvious that everyone at the company is forced to do what satisfies HQ (aka "China Team").

1.0
Horrible company with fake culture
Software Engineer • Current Employee
San Jose, California, United States
August 3, 2023
Pros: The CEO is the main pro. Otherwise, the benefits and offerings on campus are not even comparable to what other large companies in tech provide. The best perk is their fitness allowance, I guess. WLB is pretty good too because you don't really need to work, as the company is overhiring.
Cons: If you don't speak Mandarin, you're at a heavy disadvantage. 95%+ of the company is Chinese, so you'll have to get used to being in meetings where only Chinese is spoken and seeing the language spoken in the office and all your chat threads. Also, it's very obvious that everyone at the company is forced to do what satisfies HQ (aka "China Team").

TikTok Interview Questions

Generate Parentheses

Given a number 'n', generate all possible well-formed (balanced) parentheses strings of length 2*n. For instance, if n=3, you need to create all valid combinations like '((()))', '(()())', etc.

RecursionStrings

Longest Substring Without Repeating Characters

Find the length of the longest substring within a given string that contains no repeating characters. The substring must be contiguous.

StringsTwo PointersSliding Windows

Search in Rotated Sorted Array

You're given a sorted array that has been rotated, and a target value. Find the index of the target value in the rotated array, or return -1 if it's not present.

ArraysBinary Search

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