Pros
The consumer product is amazing. I personally love Tiktok as a user. Brands are doing some really interesting things on the platform and I think it’s a real game-changer for how businesses and consumers connect. Huge potential as a marketing platform.
Cons
Total chaos when it comes to communication across product, strategy and propel. Half baked info some days, no info the next. Even trying to understand the process for managing people and performance is a mountain to climb. Certain data points on your team are kept hidden making it very difficult to present yourself as a valid leaded when you can’t even discuss salary with your team. Micromanagement up and down the chain. You have managers, even as high as your +3, randomly jump in on things without context and as a leader myself, this creates more overhead than adding value. Very senior leaders like to show up and suddenly want to know everything about some small detail, until another thing catches their eye and then they’re gone again. Work-life balance? What’s that? The default is that if your calendar is open, it’s fair game. That applies to 6am - midnight. Regularly calls are dropped in my calendar last minute for times that seem absurd at most companies. A new hire on my team was really asked to join a call at 1am until I intervened. People are not “nice”. Well people aren’t paid to be “nice” I hear you say… well that’s true, but I come with 14 years experience in this field and barring a rare exception every so often, I never doubted that every single person I’ve worked with showed up with good intent. Not so at Tiktok. People are harsh, curt, possessive and not strong on collaboration. I once raised some of these points with a senior leader and I was told - “if you’re not happy, leave”. Tiktok is the way it is. It doesn’t want to and won’t change. If you can accept all that then great, if not, and you want to feel like you can change an organization in your own small way, then Tiktok is not for you.