ByteDance reviews

3.4

51% would recommend to a friend

(4,228 total reviews)
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Rubo Liang

59% approve of CEO

49% positive business outlook

ByteDance has an employee rating of 3.4 out of 5 stars, based on 4,228 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The ByteDance employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Tecnologías de la información industry (3.9 stars).

Reviews by job title

4K reviews
1.0
Aug 11, 2023
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- Base pay is good, went from 116k to 175k base with only one uplevel from another large tech company - Benefits are solid, medical is good coverage for cheap (I pay $0 monthly for all coverage)

Cons

- PMs and managers have insane expectations for delivery times and quantity of work - Due to this, you are expected to work basically every evening, late at night, and often over the weekend - Meetings with teammates in China are always China time, so nearly every evening is filled with meetings, meaning even without insane work expectations you are expected to work 10am-10pm 7 days a week just for meetings - If you are not Chinese, all your coworkers will look down on you and you will be constantly treated as lesser and subject to increased scrutiny for everything you do, and it will be extremely obvious in many cases. I am the only member of my team that is required to have my code reviewed, for example - Similarly, if you don't speak and read Chinese you need to use autotranslate for nearly everything, including tons of important documentation that doesn't really translate well from such disparate languages. Most meetings will also be held in Chinese, meaning you will rely on both voice recognition and autotranslate for hour+ long meetings that are mandatory. - About 1/3 of the 'total compensation' for the position is in bonus and stock. The bonus is performance based so they'll pay you as little as they want and the stock is useless because ByteDance isn't a publicly traded company yet so you can only sell back to the company for a fraction of the value

1.0
May 6, 2019

Never ever

Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- Some nice and knowledgeable colleges - nice central located office

Cons

Unethical, unprofessional company, explointment of work laws until their maximum: -change your contract overnight, pressuring people to sign or quit -work on weekends, holidays, nights, shift rotations with weekly changes -Not a good pay check. Even the public sector in Germany pays better. -No work-life balance. Irresponsible management. Extremely unethical HR, -managers are spoiled kids with no people management experience, destroying 70% of the team, making rest of the employees to lose their motivation, -not face paced, just chaotic: decisions from HQ in China follow no logical structure, change overnight -“Changes take time” but suck it up: supervisor promote their friends and leak personal information -“We value every talent” There are no chances to change from jobs/promotion inside of the company. HR just straight lie about it. -HR do not lose any problem inside of the company. -The arrogant and inexperienced supervisor -Fire employees on sick leave, holidays, before crucial dead lines

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ByteDance Response
7y
Thank you for your time to share the feedback with us. And we truly apologize on your negative working experience at ByteDance. We will take your feedback into serious consideration and take actions accordingly. ByteDance is thrived to continuously improve working experience and build up best place for explorers to work.
1.0
Feb 24, 2021
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The company has a leading B2C solution across the globe (TikTok), and heavy hiring plans that come from the cash rich advertising revenues and other 'data' agreements. The company is incredibly large, so scope for horizontal movement could potentially be very good if you are looking to come in and reskill over the course of a couple of years.

Cons

You will quickly realise, as per other reviews - this company has no concern for the wellbeing of its employees or the morality/ethical practice of business. They simply want route to cash as quick as humanly possible - and it shows. At a macro level you may hear of 'copycat' softwares coming out of this region, and this company is in the epicentre of it. Competitor analysis took a new meaning here, as to define every single move and practice the company made. The company is heavily skewed towards Chinese employees, for which they have exported to every corner of the globe to attempt to maintain a stranglehold control on the management layer of the business. I would estimate that 90% of the management at the company is Chinese and to your eyes, seem vastly underqualified for their roles otherwise. Make no mistake, if you do not speak Mandarin at this company - your views will not be trusted or taken into consideration. You will be an 'outsider'. Note that even the American TikTok CEO lasted only a month before resigning. Despite being a senior hiring manager, I did not get the final say on who I would employ, what their duties were to be, or be seen to achieve if I set up my employees to be successful. I would be seen as 'in competition' with the people I hired the entire time. Aside from the issues above, there are wider problems. The company suffers from a deep lack of transparency. We would often find out about major company changes or moves from popular news platforms before we would get any kind of internal notification (if acknowledged at all) and there is a general secretive nature about the business which unsettles both employees and prospective customers. If you are not Chinese, and are expecting to make this company successful outside of the Chinese regions for a product which is not core (TikTok advertising) I would strongly suggest you considering other employment opportunities. You will have limited scope for success, growth and otherwise gain experience which is not relevant to other companies at this business.

Viewing 13 - 15 of 4,228 Reviews

Glassdoor has 5,861 ByteDance reviews submitted anonymously by ByteDance employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if ByteDance is right for you.