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.s and china markets which i find very fascinating there was this big emergency and i had to whip together this like insane proposal i got all the stakeholders from the us team and the uk teams to green light it and then when i presented to the beijing team it got so shot down someone straight up said the fact that we have so much feedback about this means that your idea is a bad idea and we shouldn't do it ultimately it didn't work out but i shared my learnings with my core team which i think is a very important thing to do so this doesn't happen again right after i shared a senior manager straight up said let this be a lesson to you to do your job right publicly in front of 30 people i thought it was a language barrier but then that person continued to elaborate to rail on me and i just sat there shocked another time i presented at a team review meeting and another teammate gave me some feedback and i said neat idea we'll explore let's move on to the next agenda item and then after that meeting a senior manager pulled me aside and said when people give their ideas and you hadn't thought about it before it makes it look like you don't know what you're doing you just accepted another person's opinion from this point you should not accept other people's opinions before giving your opinions first to which i responded with is the problem isn't this the purpose of having these review meetings to hear our opinions from our colleagues and they were like it is a huge problem because you haven't thought about it it makes people think that you don't think deeper you are a senior pm this makes you look very junior it shows our leaders that you don't know what you're doing and it's a problem for your reputation i talked to some of my colleagues about this and apparently there's this thing called workplace pua pua stands for pickup artist and it comes from how pickup artists use emotionally manipulative language to get people to question their reality and then take advantage of them when translated to the workplace it refers to when colleagues and senior managers attack your character and your identity instead of your professional behavior it's kind of like nagging and sometimes gaslighting i learned that it was happening to me on a number of occasions and i felt crazy i cried a lot people i thought i should have trusted it said some really hurtful things and it sucked number three diversity big surprise there was a significant lack of woman and by poc representation in the managerial and leadership roles i mentioned that earlier that when i do become a mom i wouldn't be able to work here and i think a lot of people had the same thought i was in a business review meeting where there were 12 speakers representing their business verticals and two of the speakers were women i just felt like it was a boys club the question of promoting women and bipoc talent into the company and into leadership kept coming up on every slido in every all hands and there was nothing to say except it's hard and we're trying i went to her first woman in product session an actually funny story there a couple of the attendees introduced themselves and were like hi i'm this person and i watched chloe on youtube and i just thought that was really cool but anyways in the session i decided to share my experiences of nagging and being gaslit and i just ended up bawling it was a really vulnerable moment for me and afterwards six ladies reached out to me to tell me that they were actually going through or had gone through or no teammates that are going through the exact same thing and a couple of them said that they were native chinese speakers and that it wasn't a language issue it's not you chloe it's actually a problem with the culture and just hearing those words from them gave me so much inner peace because i've been explaining this to my male colleagues and some of their first words were oh i don't experience this it must not be a thing it must be you and that was so invalidating and when i don't have to armor up and defend myself so that people would believe my side of the story i feel so seen and i don't know why it was so hard to feel this way outside of the support group but i realized that the company just doesn't really care about this at this time at least this type of issue used to be a nice to have for me because it's really hard to enforce but after going through 2020 and 2021 this is a deal breaker number four health yes tick tock is notorious for having really intense work culture as you can see on blind and i'm getting to the age where i can no longer stand it i actually think i developed a sleep disorder from working so late into the evenings i am doing sleep studies and frequent checkups for it but especially knowing that the majority of the company is awake when i am supposed to be sleeping gives me so much anxiety at night i'm only speaking about my experience there are people who are handling it just fine and then there are people who are really struggling from a mental health perspective yes i had been severely impacted i've talked to my close friends about it and they've seen me through the ups and downs of me feeling frustrated crying and feeling devalued and they said that there's no amount of money that's worth your health that you would have years of your life back and also because i had no time in the work week i couldn't really invest in my relationships with my family my friends my partner my evenings are all booked and i would constantly be eating my dinners over work meetings which felt really sad to me so now space for my health has become a non-negotiable so what i shared was really the tip of the iceberg of what led me to my decision it was a really tough one ultimately i don't regret joining tick tock i learned a lot from there and i met a lot of amazing leaders and i went in knowing what the culture would be like and i got what i initially wanted from the job however i just didn't see myself there long term i'm a pretty transparent person and i talk a lot about this with my colleagues and for some of them i actually think that staying is in their best interest there is a very likely world that i stayed there and made things work but there were a lot of challenges and not every hill was worth dying on for me as i'm getting older i need to prioritize my family and my well-being i just couldn't be there anymore but i am very hopeful of the product teams at tiktok they're legit tiktok is a really great place for people who want to work really hard and do some extremely innovative industry-leading things but for me i wanted other things in my career and my life and i couldn't find them there so i had to walk away i'm also extremely fortunate and privileged to be able to do so i've been saving and building up a safety net to have more flexibility and freedom in my life this was a very calculated and thoughtful decision that has its own consequences that i am willing to face i don't recommend rage quitting but i also don't recommend putting up with a place that doesn't work for you life's too short and it's just not worth it so for me this helps me build the muscles to put myself first and respect my personal boundaries i think it takes a lot of courage and vulnerability to admit when things aren't working out and then to take action to own your happiness so i'm happy i've grown in this respect as a woman of color from a low income household i didn't have a lot of resources when i first entered the world of tech while i learned a lot i made a lot of mistakes and a lot of really traumatic things happened to me but i don't believe that people should go through those traumatic things just to be effective in their careers i hope that the videos on this channel help the people who also don't have the resources to be readily equipped to lead meaningful and healthy work lives so do let me know if there are topics that you would want me to cover to help you if you'd like to see more of this type of content which is basically me mustering up all my courage and sharing some of the more challenging and the deeper stories within the world of tech do subscribe and support this channel and watch some of the other videos too that's all for now and see you next time bye [Music] you

Channel: Chloe Shih

Views: 369,566

Keywords: why i quit my job, product manager, product manager at facebook, product manager career, what does a product manager do, the great resignation, why i quit my job at tiktok, why i quit my product manager job, why i quit my pm job, why i left my job at tiktok, why i left tiktok, why do people quit their jobs, why do people leave tech, tech content creators, tech career content creators, why i left tiktok colorsofchloe, tiktok product manager, product manager day in the life

Id: pkDXV2g_i7Y

Length: 14min 40sec (880 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 11 2021