TikTok

• Competitive compensation
• Great people (below management)
• Good benefits (meals, drinks/snacks, 401k, health)

• Micromanagement
• No work-life balance
• Difficult to promote
• Work around the clock, 10+ hour days consistently (minimum expectation)
• RTO 5 days a week, no flexibility from management, but they expect employees to always be available.
• Engineers in China will always be the golden child for management, leading to constant comparison and unrealistic expectations.
• Weaponize cultural tenets (Byte style); leaders will pick and choose which ones are important in the moment and how they apply to their expectations or your performance, always with the purpose of getting you to work longer and harder.

Technical management needs to shift the prioritization away from metrics to people, and have the product org focus on the push for metrics. Management has their head in the sand looking for incremental monetary gain, while balance falls apart everywhere else. Management is critical and quick to blame for the slightest dip in metrics. If things continue, TikTok will find itself surrounded by yes-men who constantly inflate impact and outcomes to appease management.