Got reached out from a TikTok recruiter in the middle of the year and ended up joining despite the uncertainty about the ban. Here’s my experience about the whole process, NDA-safe version.
Background before the loop: BS in EE in National Taiwan University, several SWE internships, 0.5y YoE as a full time backend engineer in American Express, pursing Master of Computer Science in UIUC remotely part time
The Process
The whole process is pretty lean, with only 2 coding interviews with the engineers in the team, 1 behavioral with the hiring manager, and then a final casual round with the HR, all virtual.
There are 3 HRs involved, one getting me into the process, one scheduling the interviews, and a final one doing the offer. Working with the former 2 were pretty smooth, but the last one was pretty unresponsive, almost made me think that they ghosted me.
Here’s the timeline
- 7/16 - recruiter reached out on LinkedIn
- 7/25 - the team decided to move forward
- 7/26 - recruiter call
- 8/9 - 1st interview - coding
- 8/19 - 2nd interview - coding
- 9/9 - 3rd interview - behavioral
- 9/13 - final round - HR & verbal offer
- 9/19 - offer approved internally
- 9/20 - verbal offer with numbers
- 9/25 - verbal offer with updated numbers after negotiation
- 9/26 - accepted verbal offer
- 10/4 - official offer
1st Interview - Coding
Before this interview, I solved 56/57 of TikTok-tagged last 3 months problems on LeetCode.
The problem is an easy-medium from TikTok-tagged last 3 months with follow-ups. I did fine, but could spot some edge cases and minor optimizations myself instead of being pointed out by the interviewer. I’d give myself a hire but not a strong hire.
2nd Interview - Coding
Before this interview, I solved 140/142 of TikTok-tagged last 6 months problems on LeetCode.
The problem is a medium from TikTok-tagged last 6 months. I recalled doing it but didn’t really remember the solution, and had to get a hint from the interviewer after a failed attempt, but I quickly coded it out after the hint. I’d give myself maybe a weak hire since I needed a hint for the core logic.
3rd Interview - Behavioral
The 3rd and the final actual interview was with the manager of the org. I answered all questions in satisfactory details, but toward the end I was like a zombie spitting out words, no soul, and the structure was not the best.
The vibe I was getting from the interviewer was that they just wanted to get people in and started working.
Final Round - HR & Verbal Offer
The final round was with the HR. From the email wording and the info on Blind I knew that it was an offer round to discuss some comp details and maybe some behavioral questions. So I did a lot of research on the TikTok’s compensation range and some negotiation tactics before going into the interview.
It was a 30-min phone call, starting with 3 behavioral questions. Since it was over the phone I just pulled out my LP stories and read through them.
When asked about expected compensation, I used some of the tricks I learned to gaslight hard on it, and countered by asking them the average number for entry level. I did a lot of research on levels.fyi so I knew the range well, or so I thought, but the number they pulled out (as an example, not my actual offer) was NOT the typical number for entry level. Only 11 out of the most recent 140 numbers in San Jose were more than that. I’m so thankful that I didn’t just give in and gave out my number.
Offer Negotiation
A week after the verbal offer, they came back with one with actual numbers, and it was again completely out of my expectations, much higher than the number I was about to give out just to pull the numbers a bit. The base is higher than the usual offers on levels.fyi, and they just dished out sign-on & relocation bonus without prompt. According to my research they didn’t really offer sign-on bonus.
Still, I stood my ground, hid away any emotion, mirrored everything, merely described the offer as “interesting”, and still shamelessly asked for more like a professional.
A few days later they came up with an updated offer with 50% more sign-on, but instead of a relocation bonus they said they’d provide a comprehensive relocation service instead, including a lump-sum, a month of hotels, and a full mover service.
Post-Offer
I watched some videos and asked some of my alumni working in TikTok about working there, and it sounded like a hell of a place to work in, like having no unit tests and PR reviews.
But since I was working in American Express in Phoenix then, a 3rd tier company (for SWE) in a city with zero tech opportunities, there wasn’t really a reason for me to not join.
My actual experience since joining is very watered down from the reviews I gathered from the outside. My team has very strong code quality enforcement, tho it’s a very new team that only started a few months ago before I joined, and the working hours is fine, tho you do need to have a lot of late night syncs with cross-teams in China. Overall not a bad place to work in if you can speak Mandarin.