Communication

Throughout the interview process, I spoke with 3-5 employees, and I’m pretty sure everyone was Chinese. I thought maybe the interviewers (recruiters as well as engineers) were based in Beijing, but no, they were based in Sydney. I wouldn’t have any issue with employees being Chinese, but I do have an issue if the people I’ll be working with in Sydney speak terrible English.

Comp

After passing all the interviews, I told the recruiter I was looking for at least 150k base pay, to which he assured me was doable. A few days later, he came back to me with an offer of 125k plus bonus. I would get 160k+ only if I received that bonus. On top of this, they refused to give me details of the bonus program unless I signed the offer. After back and forth with the recruiter, he sent me part of the contract related to the bonus. The criteria for meeting the bonus is unclear, and whether I get the bonus comes down to the decision by my manager. Furthermore, the company reserved full rights to not only change or remove the bonus incentive at any time. Even worse, the company reserved the right to take back the bonus after giving it to you.

Working arrangement:

Despite them telling me during the start of the interview process that I had to go to the office a couple days a week, when I got the offer, the recruiter said I have to go to the office every day, and that that’s a global TikTok policy which they had no control over. Either that’s a lie, or there’s so much bureaucracy that your day-to-day quality of work-life balance is up to TikTok HQ.

Summary

So many red flags. It seems to me they make employees in Sydney come to the office every day, to the point where they don’t have enough meeting rooms available. Without the bonus, the base pay was very, very low. Based on what the recruiter said, either:

1. The Sydney office working policy is completely determined by someone at global HQ with no understanding of Sydney working culture.
2. They tell blatant lies to use the global HQ as a scapegoat for poor working arrangements. Surely the Sydney office and each team has the power to decide if they want to work remotely or not. But instead, they told me that it’s a global policy.

Two Leetcode easy and medium questions related to 1D and 2D arrays.