1. Vendor Mentality
The whole company operates like a glorified outsourcing center. Management, mostly made up of ex-vendor managers, imposes a rigid, outdated vendor mindset. Metrics are prioritized over meaningful work, and compliance is valued more than creativity. If you expect to be treated like a trusted professional, forget it. Instead, you’ll constantly feel under surveillance because the default assumption is that you can’t be trusted to do your job without constant oversight.
2. Micromanagement Culture
Prepare to be micromanaged at every turn. From daily syncs to activity trackers, it’s like your every move is being watched. It’s suffocating. There’s zero trust in employees to work independently, and this constant oversight is not only demoralizing, it’s counterproductive. It makes you feel like a child who has to be monitored just to do basic tasks.
3. Career Progression is a Fantasy
If you're hoping for career advancement, think again. Promotions are extremely rare—maybe 0.1% of the team actually gets promoted. It feels like a lottery, where the odds are stacked against you. Don’t waste time hoping your hard work will get you anywhere.
4. Embarrassingly Low Pay
TikTok’s salary offerings are among the worst in the tech industry. The pay is shockingly low, especially compared to other major tech companies. You’ll constantly hear from management and HR that salaries are "aligned with the industry" — but honestly, it feels more like a joke. In some cases, the salaries are barely better than what vendors earn, which is baffling.
Bonuses are pre-decided months in advance, regardless of your performance or contributions, making them feel completely disconnected from the actual work you do.
There’s no transparency around compensation and no real incentive to put in extra effort. Even salary increases, which are tied to performance reviews, aren’t guaranteed — it’s up to management’s discretion whether your salary gets adjusted or not. They won’t give you a clear explanation if you don’t receive a bonus or salary adjustment, and even if you worked five times harder than in the previous cycle, the feedback you get will be vague at best.
Meanwhile, inflation and the minimum wage in Ireland keep rising, but you can end up working for the same pay for years without any adjustment, no matter how much harder you worked since your last performance review.
5. Chaotic Cross-functional Collaboration
Collaboration here is a nightmare. The work environment is toxic, with egos constantly clashing. Everyone believes they’re right, and no one is willing to compromise, which stalls projects for weeks — sometimes even months — while arguments drag on. Most cross-functional colleagues operate with a dog-eat-dog mentality, where self-interest takes priority over teamwork. Getting anything done feels like a miracle rather than a normal part of the job.
6. Ghost Projects
Management loves to talk about “bringing value,” but in practice, you’ll often be assigned to pointless projects that no one asked for. You can work hard to deliver something on time, only for the project to be scrapped without any explanation — as if your effort meant nothing. There’s no accountability from management for the wasted time, no acknowledgment that employees could have contributed more meaningfully elsewhere, and no reflection on why the project failed. It’s just a constant cycle of busywork with no real outcome.
7. No Accountability and Disrespectful Treatment
Internal operations are chaotic—no one knows who is responsible for what, and it’s often like people are just passing the buck. HR, who should be supporting employees, sometimes treats you with condescension and rudeness. Don’t expect professionalism or support when you need it the most. You’ll often feel like an inconvenience rather than an employee.
