Why I just quit my Product Manager job at TikTok

hi i just quit my job at tick tock let's talk about it yesterday was my last year tick tock as a lead product manager and i'm gonna talk about why i left if you're new here hello i'm chloe welcome to my channel here i talk about career tips as well as vlogs about my adult life i also post regularly on instagram so be sure to follow there for some life updates before i dive into this all i just want to say that my goal here isn't to bash on people or the company i've actually met a lot of phenomenal people leaders directors that i do want to keep in touch with forever and they know who they are i also think that tick tock is a very successful company and there's a lot that the industry can learn from them i thought a lot about whether i should share this publicly because it's so sensitive and risky to my career it's always safest to say nothing but the truth is a lot of tough things happen our careers and we rarely talk about it and so the same mistakes get made over and over again and it doesn't help anyone and let me tell you i have gone through my fair share of toxic unbelievable work experiences and i've never spoken up about them and i really regret it so in this video i want to share why i decided to leave tick tock and i hope that my perspective can help someone else out there who might be going through similar things so let's get started for some context i joined end of last summer as a third pm hire the two pms before me quit i quickly became the most tenured pm of the department a lot of things happened but it ultimately came down to four main reasons number one lack of support in my career growth i'd always been very strategic with my career development i have this whole template and i'm excited to share with you on this channel so stay tuned for that i also always have these conversations proactively and i ask explicitly i don't beat around the bush i take my career very seriously and i have the results to show for it too how i normally approach this is that i usually have a formal career development conversation with any new manager that i work with in the first month and then i have that conversation every two months after so in this case i had many career conversations with the senior leader i was working with and they were always like oh yeah of course i will support you and so two months before a performance review cycle i popped the question do you and the leadership team feel confident in nominating me for promo this cycle and this person dodged my question for four weeks in a row and finally in the 11th hour they were like oh actually i can't nominate you this other person has to then i talk to the other person and when asked the same question they were like no your output is not enough and i said can you clarify what is enough and in my head i knew i was the highest performer on the team so where was the disconnect they said and let me read this i cannot describe what output is the next level because i didn't look at the leveling rubric i cannot describe the work you need to do because i don't know it you should know it then convince us and explain why it's important then launch the project and when performance review comes we look at your outcome and see whether you are worthy for promotion my last tip to you is don't pay attention to your job level just do the work i said i get it i'm all about that entrepreneurial spirit but leveling is a very real topic to discuss previously at facebook i had sponsorship from a manager but i got blocked by hrbp because of leveling issues and i just don't want that to happen here and then they said without a beat maybe hr had a different reason they couldn't tell you maybe it's that you haven't demonstrated the capability i said the vp of product herself was sponsoring me and was going through the hr hoops it wasn't an issue of capability a lot of other things happened but after discussing with leadership about it we concluded that it just wasn't a good fit and they advised me to look around internally for other teams and that they would give me all their support ultimately having been on the team longest and talking to numerous colleagues about this i just didn't see any signal that things would change even after a stay for another year levels were not defined clearly three senior managers told me three different processes for promotion nobody knew it was actually the right process and managers were there just to judge performance they weren't there to lift the teams and elevate them to the next level even some of the most talented colleagues who we all knew internally carry tick-tock they also faced many challenges and weren't promoted into leadership positions so i felt that support in my career growth was non-existent number two culture to give you a sense of what work is like tick tock is owned by bite dance which is a chinese company that is about over a hundred thousand people you might have heard of 996 culture from china which is working 9 a. m to 9 00 pm six days a week we had this in our apac teams up until a couple of months ago it was kind of controversial i don't have too much context around it but still the work culture is not chill here i'd have uk meetings from 8 to 10 a. m and then u.

s meetings from 10 to 6 p. m and then beijing meetings from 7pm to like midnight i'd also regularly have team meetings in my evenings usually tuesday wednesday and thursday there was kind of a bizarre meeting culture too about half the time i would have one-on-ones and senior managers would be like 15 minutes late or they would reschedule the meeting when the meeting was supposed to start i'd also have meetings set for 30 minutes and then they would go on for 90 minutes and it'd be midnight my time or i had impromptu meetings where they just straight up called me i regularly worked around 12 to 16 hours a day and i really questioned whether or not i could do this should i ever become a mom there's also a very strong performance driven culture here because it's very tied to our bonus and it disincentivizes people from taking the time to invest in the things that matter to me like connection team building relationships mentoring outside of the hours the culture was also a little harsh and i don't mean the lack of happy hours or swag or no meeting days or awards culture to me is how people treat each other behind closed doors and behind these doors i saw that people were kind of mean and they got away with it there was a very interesting experience i had where people were debating between the product principles in u.