These Are the Biggest Cultural Differences Working at TikTok

• Lucas Ou-Yang is a tech direct supervisor at TikTok and has worked as an engineer at Facebook and Snap. 
• He suggests doing work for a Chinese tech firm has led to some stunning cultural and place of work discoveries. 
• He breaks down the major differences he’s observed though doing the job for TikTok, from movie-optional conferences to the manpower powering Chinese product improvement. 

As Chinese tech providers come to be ever more critical on the world stage, additional Americans are interested in performing for them. I invested the earlier seven a long time doing work for Silicon Valley’s major firms such as Snapchat, Instagram, and Facebook in program engineering. My time at these providers centered close to setting up on the net marketplaces and feeds. I served ship the preliminary computer software launch of Instagram tales in 2016 as nicely as the initial launch of Snapchat’s articles feed.

In early 2021, Bytedance’s subsidiary Tiktok was intrigued in choosing me to direct engineering endeavours in constructing an on the net marketplace to hook up creators and models. Soon thereafter, I joined Bytedance as a tech guide supervisor to drive efforts relevant to their creator market.

I seen astonishing distinctions concerning performing for US tech corporations versus Chinese tech organizations. I was ready to choose up on a ton of nuances in evaluating the two sides because of to both of those my time in Silicon Valley as very well as becoming a 2nd era Chinese American who has an knowing of both cultures.

This is my guideline to navigating these discrepancies.

Meetings are frequently larger 

Most meetings at ByteDance are bigger, usually with 50+ persons and 2-3 presenters. These broadcast type conferences are most appropriate with Chinese corporations prime-down administration design and style. 

1:1 conferences or smaller Socratic group discussions that American personnel just take for granted are really rather scarce at providers like ByteDance. 

This is due to the fact businesses at Tiktok are more substantial and less segregated. Some groups have 50-200 folks reporting up to just one manager. Most staff members on a regular basis need to converse with 20-30 colleagues throughout many time-zones to get the task carried out. These factors, in addition to the prime-down administration type, guide to broadcast design and style conferences remaining extra prevalent.

These conferences are normally multi-time zones spanning several countries and cultures, so we make use of true-time movie translation software package. Broadcast design and style meetings are a lot more conducive to this. 

On the other hand, this also implies you usually are not obligated to switch on movie through conferences. Chinese colleagues dislike utilizing real mugshot profile pics, preferring anime, track record, or cartoon visuals. 

Products improvement relies additional on manpower 

Because of to the reduced labor price tag in China, several Chinese web businesses have a larger reliance on manpower. In contrast, western tech companies emphasize a much more passive and knowledge-driven approach. 

For case in point, TikTok depends on operations groups to manually provide in significant influencers and marketing consumers on the system. The firm also spends advertising and marketing funds to recognize their local marketplaces while at the same time using the services of nearby personnel in just about every big current market to support internationalize the Tiktok products.

In 2020, TikTok established a $200 million creator fund, a venture led by armies of ops groups to give US creators money to deliver them on the rising platform. This fund was unconventional at the time, but Instagram and Youtube speedily followed suit following seeing its achievement.

This capability to leverage operations is a crucial explanation why Chinese tech firms are ready to shift so quickly and crack into new marketplaces — one thing western tech companies could find out from. 

You could have to operate a number of late nights 

Do the job existence harmony is generally worse in China than it is in The united states. Chinese workforce generally subscribe to the motto of “996.” You perform from 9am to 9pm, six days a week. 

Even though US and Singapore groups are not expected to do 996 — I work usual US performing hrs — the reality is that US employees still normally attend late evening conferences to collaborate with teams in Asia. 

This is in contrast to the regular performing design for multinationals the place American colleagues ‘hand off’ in-progress do the job to the Chinese, Japanese European, or Indian teams strictly at 5pm. 

But the fact of fast paced collaborative multinationals means you need broader doing the job boundaries — a sacrifice that is predicted of an worldwide workforce.

Chinese businesses price performance and deliverables among the all else 

Chinese businesses also are likely to aim a lot less on course of action and documentation. Documents on how to do matters, or code and product reviews, or outage investigations are typically deprioritized in comparison to offering visible concrete output like code, products characteristics and launches. 

This ruthless result-oriented approach potential customers to a lot more performance, but the absence of documented institutional awareness also retains back long-expression efficiency of the enterprise.

Your crew measurements will fill soccer stadiums

One more shocking issue I saw at Tiktok was the organization’s framework. When Western corporations typically advocate groups consisting of 8-9 people today, some professionals have in excess of 200 direct experiences. Due to the flat framework, some of the much more junior experiences have zero deal with time with their supervisors. Some employees will under no circumstances even know what their professionals appear like. 

ByteDance also keeps their org charts concealed thanks to the competitive mother nature of talent poaching in China.

When Western tech providers choose specified engineers or product or service professionals to very own items of the all round products, staff at Chinese organizations are likely to work across the board, dividing new work, capabilities, or product necessities as they appear up from management. No a person human being ever gets to be an skilled in a certain region. 

A great deal of these discrepancies can be boiled down to lifestyle

For illustration, because I do the job with colleagues across the globe and we have fewer cultural similarities, we also make less tiny discuss. Conferences can open up awkwardly with people not knowing what to say to every other. 

At the very same-time, cultural references are distinct as well. Chinese colleagues have their individual “bible verses” named “Chengyu” 成语 to make jokes or convey deep metaphors. Frequently in conferences they will translate these Chengyus into English to categorical one thing, but the meaning receives missing. 

Asian tradition is also really hierarchical. This signifies declining conferences with your superiors is frequently taken much more significantly than other Silicon Valley businesses I have labored at. It also means that professionals are tasked with driving business effects and in many cases present a lot less assist to the occupation ambitions of their direct reviews. 

Your do the job daily life equilibrium can also be diverse with numerous US staff members not getting able to operate as late into the night time. 

Doing the job at a Chinese tech business isn’t for all people

If you are new to the industry or have fewer than 5 several years of working experience I would not suggest performing at a Chinese tech company. The lack of procedure, mentorship, standardized general performance review, and interior documentation signifies that it really is harder to find out ideal tactics and mature in your career.

But this problem just isn’t as lousy for senior amount later profession people who know how to execute. 

It’s an opportunity to master new techniques of undertaking issues from how Chinese providers design and style merchandise to how they check and onboard new end users by means of sheer manpower. 

If you are the adventurous sort and really don’t head late meetings, a Chinese business will provide context on how non-American organizations are productively building products and solutions and expanding internationally.