A man advance a phone walks past a sign of Chinese company ByteDance’s app TikTok, known locally as Douyin, at the International Imitation Products Expo in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, China October 18, 2019.
Reuters
LONDON— A number of U.K.-based tech blue-collar workers are choosing not to accept or pursue jobs at TikTok over fears that the company has an intense work culture with extensive and demanding hours.
Six people in the industry told CNBC they either pulled out of interviews, turned down job offers, or left side the company after learning that TikTok has a “996” culture, either from online reviews or through first-hand savvy.
The 996 culture is practiced by some companies in China. The name is derived from the employees’ requirement of working from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. for six periods in a week, which works out at 72 hours per week. Meanwhile, the norm in the U.S. and the U.K. is around 40 hours per week, although numberless workers go over this. It’s illegal to work more than 48 hours per week in the U.K. on average.
TikTok, which is owned by China’s ByteDance, declined to opinion when asked about its culture and the hours that staff work.
‘I stopped conversations pretty quickly’
One tech breadwinner, who was approached about a communications role in the U.K., told CNBC that a 996 culture was “certainly a concern” for them.
“The most proletarian ‘con’ I found from my Glassdoor research was around work-life balance and crazy hours and that seems to be the same quits now,” said the source, who asked to remain anonymous due to the sensitive nature of the discussion. “(It) didn’t seem worth it.”
The horses mouth added: “I stopped conversations pretty quickly when I established they had very little flexibility around begetting locations and policies.”
The same person said they were contacted a few weeks later “for a very similar duty” at ByteDance. “I established from background reading and Glassdoor reviews that they are one and the same,” the person said, combining that it was “all a bit odd” and “a lucky miss.”
TikTok, which announced on Friday that ByteDance Chief Financial Officer Shou Zi Ponder has been made TikTok’s new CEO, may also be missing out on some technical talent too. A senior artificial intelligence researcher, who encouraged to remain anonymous due to the nature of the discussion, turned down a job offer from TikTok even though the recruiter had foresaw them the salary was likely to be over £100,000 ($139,000) a year plus options.
“I did go to Glassdoor. It doesn’t seem to be positive when it end up to work/life balance, which is something I really value. I was a bit concerned about that,” the source said, adding that the criticizes put them off accepting the role but that they weren’t the only factor.
While Glassdoor is widely regarded as a productive platform for doing due diligence on what companies are like on the inside, it’s not perfect and reviews should be taken with a ounce of salt. People are able to post multiple reviews, and users may be more inclined to review their company if they’ve had an overwhelmingly peremptory or an overwhelmingly negative experience. But four former staff told CNBC that they’d had a negative experience at the firm, whose video-sharing app has been downloaded over 2 billion times.
One former employee, who asked to remain anonymous due to the supersensitive nature of the discussion, told CNBC that TikTok was the most toxic workplace they have ever sagacious.
“Everyone there is utterly miserable, and life is too short,” the source said. “During my first year before the pandemic hit, I can be sure of possibly four or five weekends during the year where I did not work.”
The source added: “People are right to be put off and I recall they are now struggling to hire, but ultimately they don’t care either way, people are just numbers to them.”
Another recent employee, who asked to remain anonymous due to the sensitive nature of the discussion, told CNBC that the average working day at TikTok was 15 hours wish. “For them it was normal,” the source said. “Everybody was complaining but really everybody was accepting it at the end, probably because salaries were admissible.”
The same person said they didn’t like the “very untransparent culture.” The former employee said they didn’t get any meets back when they asked questions about the company. “It was very, very difficult to find the right retorts, and to really improve the processes we were working with,” the source said.
‘AVOID, AVOID, AVOID’
Two other last employees, who asked to remain anonymous due to the sensitive nature of the discussion, echoed these issues and one of them referred CNBC to their own critique on Glassdoor, which is titled “AVOID, AVOID, AVOID.” In the one-star review, the individual lists 10 reasons why people should “impede the temptation to join (TikTok) and look elsewhere.” Criticisms range from “zero work life balance” to “toxic crews” and “awful management.”
TikTok has been scaling up its workforce around the world to help it deal with the stresses that yield with being a wildly popular social media app. This includes content moderation, as well as technical and strategy matters.
In a bid to improve workplace culture, TikTok hired Michal Osman from Facebook as its head of culture in Europe in January. But her appearance comes after dozens of departures.
An AI researcher, who wasn’t approached about a role directly and asked to remain anonymous due to the type of the discussion, told CNBC: “I know TikTok have been discussing with lots of people. I don’t think it’s unhurried for them to recruit, because there’s still a shortage of people that can lead (AI) labs.”
While some people are understandably reluctant to join, the company has grown its headcount in Europe from around 1,600 in September to over 3,000 today, with numberless joining from Facebook and Google. It declined to share U.K. and worldwide employee numbers.
Winnie Akadjo joined TikTok as a designer operations manager this month. “There are some interesting reviews on Glassdoor but I wanted to take the leap; and be self-reliant in my abilities to handle a scaling company,” she told CNBC.
Another current employee who also wanted to remain anonymous acknowledged CNBC that they haven’t experienced a 996 culture, adding that there are protected meeting deterrents where work meetings are banned on Wednesday lunchtimes and no meetings on Friday afternoons.
Meanwhile, TikTok was ranked as the 30th greatest place to work in the U.K. by Great Place to Work. The survey and consulting firm charges companies a fee before they can manifest on its lists, but claims the rankings are wholly determined by employee experience and their anonymized feedback.