ByteDance reviews

3.4

51% would recommend to a friend

(4,232 total reviews)
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Rubo Liang

58% approve of CEO

49% positive business outlook

ByteDance has an employee rating of 3.4 out of 5 stars, based on 4,232 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 Informatique industry (3.9 stars).

Reviews by job title

4K reviews
2.0
Jul 9, 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

* Compensation is heavily cash-weighted, with a very substantial annual bonus. * Decent benefits. * Strong healthcare package * 5% 401K match * Catered lunch, paid parking, gym & phone reimbursement.

Cons

* Functionally siloed culture — engineering, design, product, and operations teams that are separated and clash more often than they collaborate. * No long-term vision from the top down. * Everyone operates out of fear of upsetting anyone above them. Leadership prefers employees just smile and do what they're told, regardless of whether what they're told to do makes any sense. * Daily evening calls with colleagues in China wrecks WLB. * No transparency: Documentation is scarce, and that which exists is often in Chinese. Decisions are made without involving stakeholders upon which those decisions should depend. Super hard to access high quality data.

1.0
May 29, 2025

Toxic Leadership

Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

1. Able to offer renumeration above market average 2. Lunch catering 3. Good overall health insurance benefits 4. Metrics-focused

Cons

1. Toxic leadership - unclear business direction (depends on department, since the company is generating so much revenue?) 2. Political -vivid and obvious preference over performance for any recognition or promotion 3. Human resource (HRBP lead are from mainland china) - keeping up with the labour laws finding ways to bypass to manage people out 4.6 months performance review cycle - leadership can kick out employees within shorter time frame relative to other tech companies 5. Foreigners dilution - migration of Chinese nationals to Singapore offices

2.0
Mar 6, 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- Bonus payouts were excellent historically (always hit payout and I averaged 120%) - Big platform, clients excited and want to work with you usually - Most individual contributors are nice, friendly and happy to work at TikTok their first year - Gave opportunities to high performers, lots of first time managers (good for career progression)

Cons

- Very high intensity, colleagues in China working 996 and some leaders expect the same from you - There is a complete lack of transparency; they don’t ever answer employee questions and censor most feedback and questions - Very high attrition rate in the past 12 months - Some horrifically toxic leadership in some unfortunate teams where it’s quite shocking that despite ethics department investigations, nothing happens - Extremely top-down from HQ (China) on several decisions regardless of severe consequences locally - Cases where TikTok didn’t support or provide any paid leave for employees diagnosed with cancer - Base salaries are far below Big Tech competitors - Stock/RSU is potentially worthless and worth less than many purchased it at from the company - Complete opaque levelling criteria and pay scales, dramatic differences in compensation for the same role in teams - Suffering from innovation fatigue - Lots of new managers (very underqualified and inexperienced leaders)

Viewing 82 - 84 of 4,232 Reviews

Glassdoor has 5,867 ByteDance reviews submitted anonymously by ByteDance employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if ByteDance is right for you.