ByteDance reviews

3.4

51% would recommend to a friend

(4,234 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 4,234 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 Information Technology industry (3.9 stars).

Reviews by job title

4K reviews
1.0
Apr 2, 2019

Terrible ethics and culture.

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

There are good benefits and a handful of great teams with stellar individuals based out of Los Angeles.

Cons

Working here was the worst. The culture is so toxic, as there's hardly any trust between anyone and the combative nature of most teams often mean not coming to productive agreements on important projects. In most departments the leadership is lackluster and in need of major improvement, with some team leads being extremely inexperienced, uncommunicative and antagonistic even to their own team. In some cases, it's common for individuals to take on initiatives overnight without consulting the team, leading to conflicts that often see other members pinned as lazy and unmotivated. The daily expectation is to work long hours, usually with short notice regardless of holidays or time off, and to be always available with hundreds of requests to answer in the dead of night. Communication is extremely lacking between countries despite trying to mediate time zone differences, and grievances are hardly handled with any resolution. Role expectations are cloudy at best. Any individual can reach out to you with tasks that don't fit your job description but you're expected to do it anyway, and do it fast without any questions or guidance under the guise of urgency. Reaching out for any clarification often results in no real answers, and whenever issues occur it gets blamed as your attitude and work ethic being poor. Growth doesn't seem possible as you're expected to never question your role or team structure, unless you "prove" yourself to be deserving of promotion against impossible standards. Expressing a desire to grow in your role or team gets shut down and you don't have a say if you're moved from projects, teams or departments without notice. When people leave they are easily replaced without proper consultation from team members. Do not work here, the shininess of being in a new and big tech company gets overshadowed quickly by the sheer amount of disrespect, poor treatment and general toxicity that occurs every day. The company must improve and make major changes immediately or else more qualified and talented employees will continue to leave.

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ByteDance Response
7y
Thank you for taking the time to share your feedback. We truly apologize for your negative working experience at ByteDance. And we will take your feedback into serious consideration. If you have any further concerns, please feel free to contact us at global-oc@bytedance.com.
1.0
Jun 28, 2020
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Smart coworkers, lunch and dinner provided

Cons

- Work-life balance is awful. Lots of impromptu meetings on the weekends with coworkers in China - Pretty much all major business decisions take place at the Chinese HQ, and these meetings are conducted in Chinese. You will feel very disconnected from the product and culture of the company if you are not a Chinese-speaker. - Little-to-no formal code review process; the company is more focused on short-term results than long-term maintenance. Bugs everywhere on the development pipeline with little documentation for them. They are reported through group chat and will only be addressed once coworkers in China have time on their hands (very rare). - Compensation isn't on-par with the rest of Silicon Valley

1.0
Feb 6, 2019

Poor HR Policies

Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Free food, pay is pretty good.

Cons

Being a company based in China, they are unfamiliar with proper HR and management styles in the US. They aren't transparent at all with communicating what is to be done with their US team. Our Beijing colleagues are underhanded in their handling of HR issues and do not have a good grasp on the culture US employees deserve and expect.

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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.
Viewing 4 - 6 of 4,234 Reviews

Glassdoor has 5,869 ByteDance reviews submitted anonymously by ByteDance employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if ByteDance is right for you.