"If I knew that working at TikTok would cost me this much, I would have never taken the job. June 2020 me would have run for the hills." These are the words of Melody Chu, ex-senior product manager, three months after leaving TikTok.
Many experiences in her CV – Facebook, Nextdoor e Roblox – but this one has been the "most difficult". 60 hours per week, working at the weekend, a rhythm hard to keep.
Like many other tech company employees, like Amazon and Meta, she felt the symptoms of burnout, lack of sleep, paranoia, nervous breakdown, and weight loss.
Many work environments are based on the hustle culture; the career becomes such a priority in your life or in the environment you work in that other aspects of being human — such as hobbies, family time and self-care — often take a back seat.
Indeed a toxic culture, as defined by the Sloan Management Review, the magazine for business executives published at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. So toxic to be one of the reasons for the "Great Resignation" phenomenon.
As Elon Musk said, "... nobody ever changed the world on 40 hours a week", and so many companies have taken this sentence as a mantra, asking employees to be a daily requirement.
Motivational slogan becomes shared knowledge among the big companies. "Day 2 is stasis. Followed by irrelevance. Followed by excruciating, painful decline. Followed by death. And that is why it is always Day 1." said Jeff Bezos, a motto TikTok borrowed and made its own.
Some TikTok employees of the Los Angeles office had an average of 85 hours of meetings per week and had to find more time to complete their tasks.
A recent enquiry of the Wall Street Journal has collected several employee complaints about stress and burnout. One of the TikTok employees has described how he has convinced his manager to save him a night shift only after sharing the results of a medical lab, showing a potentially lethal condition.
"We encourage a culture of transparency and feedback", has declared a TikTok PR. "Be sincere and clear", "Be open and humble", and "Be solid and bold" are some of the phrases printed on the walls of their office, but according to the leaks of who was reading those messages every day, what was running in the office was worry and distrust.
The WSJ tells how the company didn't share with the employees an organisational chart and was forbidden to create and share one of their own to avoid potential leaks to the competitors. A high-level manager was forbidden to share information with employees of a lower level. A clear message saying, "we don't trust you".
As an additional burden, the United States and China are separated by a gap of 15 hours. When a Beijing employee wakes up to start the working week in Los Angeles is still Sunday early afternoon.
Even if the physical gap could be filled by an e-meeting, the timing is hard to conciliate. But not for TikTok. "Some US ex-employees have told their working week was starting on Sunday afternoon to meet with the Beijing manager", reports the WSJ enquiry.
If everyone around you stays in the office, it will be difficult to leave home at the appointed time
Weebo employee
Tech companies can count on a constant flow of employees made of young graduates willing to add prestigious experiences to their CV, taking advantage by exploiting them with inhuman efforts. When their performance declines, they will be easily replaced.
Consulting societies require constant travel to the clients, reaching a working week of 80 hours. Even in other sectors, the long hour week is a norm. After a few years, most new employees are exhausted and can't achieve the partner position. Still, the prestige of working for these companies makes them desirable to other companies, so there's always a turnover of new graduates.
TikTok has a similar approach. According to the ex-employees interview, "TikTok often has multiple teams working on the same project and pits them against each other to see who can complete it faster.
This tactic aims to push the employees to work as fast as possible but feed the paranoia of being left behind and the frustration when their projects aren't approved".
And you? Which kind of company do you work for?