ByteDance reviews

3.4

51% would recommend to a friend

(4,234 total reviews)
avatar

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
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
Jul 9, 2019

Long Hours

Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Free food, nice office, and tech

Cons

Long hours, extremely difficult to find work-life balance, teams are basically their own clique so there's lots of drama No one sticks by the company core values

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ByteDance Response
6y
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.
2.0
Mar 11, 2019
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

There is a flexible work schedule, the app itself is interesting, the daily workflow can be considered educational, and there is a caring community among your fellow US co-workers.

Cons

The Beijing team would often ignore the suggestions of the US operatives and schedule last minute assignments only to abandon them before they could be completed. There was next to no management or clear directives. There was no room for growth, a non-existent HR presence, a complete lack of direction both for the app and the employees, disregard for US work culture and customs, and numerous instances of employees being asked to partake in unethical censorship within the app when it came to a negative reflection of China and related topics.

avatar
ByteDance Response
7y
Thank you for your feedback. We continue to work hard and dedicate more resources to building stronger communication and collaboration between our global teams and also recognize that these changes can take time. We are also committed to building out further our HR team and resources in the US and globally to better support our employees. We thank you for your feedback and will certainly use it to drive our efforts to continue to improve. If you have any further concerns, please feel free to contact us at global-oc@bytedance.com
Viewing 7 - 9 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.