process tiktok offer

[cunning umbra]

backend swe under platform governance which is under tiktok ecommerce

had another offer from tiktok live, but ghosted after negoing pay, think my performance for that role wasnt good enough and they proceeded with another candidate

[wide verge]

process details?
no of rounds? LC hard?

[cunning umbra]

recruiter hit me up -> 3 rounds technical (team lead/random swe/HM) -> HR. All done in 2 weeks

first round technical was quite tough. Solved 3 leetcode medium, medium-hard questions followed by a comprehensive sys design on how to design google search for text only. Must have indepth knowledge of all the components and implementation details. For example, if we want to use rate limiter, u must know the various rate limit algo, how to implement them, the considerations when u use them and the pros and cons of a few algos.

second round was pretty strigh forward, bro was more interested in my background. Question was house robber II and gave the optimal solution with O(N) time and O(1) space. However, he expects me to know the biz domain of my past intern experiences so u need to have more horizontal exposure. Had a feeling if my internship exp was lacking he would prolly ask me another leetcode

third round theres no live coding or system design, but HM asked a lot of questions across all the domains. For example, when, how and why do u use exceptions based on industry experiences, how to implement several componenents in microservices space like service discovery, asked me a number of middlewares like distributed resource management etc and he expect u to know the inner mechanisms

was shocked by the first round felt like it was the last round lol

LC hard based on my experience was only asked by a few core teams such as recommendation arch, other more biz domain teams dont tend to ask LC hard unless the interviewer rlly dont like ur background

[wind forge]

wow this is super detailed 🙏

Is this for new grad? Or do u alrdy have full-time experience? I wouldve completely failed the sysdesign + industry questions

[meager night]

which level?

[raven magnet]

TC?

[cunning umbra]

this is for new grad 😂

[stiff idol]

That’s an insane process

[cunning umbra]

i have a few internship experiences and grinded for sys design, so i would say with preparation u can still pass them

TC vice the role is based in Asia, so not much meaning to share TC

[still cape]

you must be cracked

[meager night]

goated

[tough imp]

Prep?

[neat needle]

Congrats! r u planning to take this offer?

and did you get offer at cubist in the end (saw it in another channel)?

[cunning umbra]

thank you! I didn't get cubist offer in the end 😢 I got another offer at a prop trading firm so most likely not going to tiktok considering the future career growth...

the compensation difference is quite huge between the two, and I will say its much easier to join tiktok mid-career if I ever want to as compared the other way round

[storm girder]

what resource did you use for system design prep?

[cunning umbra]

lots of youtube videos and related books and articles, but over a longer period of time

the firm doesn't hire many grads so I rather not share hahaha

[past grail]

Thx for the info

How many LC questions did it take to prepare?

[half glen]

What TC did tiktok offer?

[fallow geyser]

It would be great if you share more on this.

[languid shard]

Congrats ur dodging a bullet

Which trading firm haha

[cunning umbra]

from the start of my job application last year till now, i only did about 250 - 300 questions (mostly medium, a portion hard) and i think that is more than enough tbh. However, i stopped leetcoding after jan this year, so from jan till now i didnt touch any leetcode. This isnt the first time i interviewed with tiktok, but they tend to ask common LC questions so i was still able to recall solutions

[past grail]

wow you can recall questions that well? how many LC did you do in total around?

[cunning umbra]

i cant recall the exact solutions but i am able to recall whats the topic tested and the apporach 😂 then i just solved from there. Like for example LRU was one of the questions he asked in the first round, and i rmbed its hashmap and linklist

i think it helped a lot that when i did leetcode i took notes on all the solutions

[past grail]

ohh makes sense

[past grail]

how did you take notes? with comments or..?

[cunning umbra]

yeap i use notion and track all the questions that i did and broke them down on the topic. For each question i will have a short description regarding the approach, and examples, followed by the time and space complexity.

so when i needed to revise i just look through all these notes

[past grail]

oh awesome thx a bunch

[cunning umbra]

no probs

[past grail]

can i also ask if you go to a top tier school?

[cunning umbra]

based on QS uni ranking its top 20 hahaha, so i guess its top tier

[meager night]

Was HR round after verbal offer for you?

[cunning umbra]

HR round is before the offer

u hv to pass the HR round as well

[meager night]

Oh so it’s not like a formality damn ok

[cunning umbra]

yeap, the hr round has a lot of normal behavioral questions

[meager night]

Was it just typical behavioral

Ok should be chill I have “4th round” coming up and i don’t want to study more LC if I don’t have to lmao

[cunning umbra]

yea its pretty chill i dont think the HR will fail u unless u hv a bad attitude

[meager night]

Bet bet thx for the info

[cunning umbra]

for youtube i watched most of the system design interview videos, some from exponent, bytebytego, some are plain lectures related to components. System design interview prep books help a lot too. Theres a lot of resources online where u can build off them

[meager night]

For frontend sys design highly recommend GreatFrontend if you have the funds for it

[cunning umbra]

where are u based in?

[meager night]

Man Jose

[cunning umbra]

nice i hope TC would be better there

[meager night]

I hope it’s not lowball

*assuming I pass HR

[cunning umbra]

the hr will ask u expected compensation during the hr round

but seems like their fresh grad tc dropped slightly compared to last year

at least for my region

[meager night]

Oh ok thx for the heads up

No idea what level they’ll give me probably 1-2 bc I thought I did shit in the interviews tbh

[past grail]

oh nicee, is it top 20 in CS?

[cunning umbra]

for CS its top 10 hahhaha but i think tiktok isnt super focused on uni rep compared to trading firms

so long u hv a good resume u shld parse resume screening

[ionic token]

i do this too - it super helps a lot

[past grail]

wow nicee

[tepid epoch]

I think in US, a big problem is that after the HR round, if they don't think you're the best option, or REALLY like you, they might ghost you. Simply put, it's a side-by-side comparison of all candidates

[cunning umbra]

oh yes the HR told me that the role isnt first come first serve, they want to interview as many candidates as possible, and then pick and choose

i asked for feedback for the technical rounds before proceeding to HR. During the HR round i just told them that i have a hard deadline of 2 weeks for them to decide if they wish to extend an offer considering my feedbacks were positive

[tepid epoch]

Ohh, they gave u like a detailed feedback? All I got was POSITIVE

[cunning umbra]

i think it depends on ur recruiter 😂 my recruiter just passed me everything the interviewers commented so it was quite detaield

[tepid epoch]

hahaha makes sense. I was trying to get some detailed comments before the negotiation, but only POSITIVE

[languid shard]

@tepid epoch the automated email they send if u move forward will jsut say positive. In a call, they could give feedback. For me they gave me some detailed feedback

[storm girder]

is it safe to negotiate in this market? Just curious what you'll be negotiating - the base salary?

[storm girder]

Who was your recruiter if you don't mind me asking?

[languid shard]

only nego signing bonus

Location is difficulty

[storm girder]

do you think you can nego base as well or would it be too risky?

what is usually safest to nego/start with - signing bonus? Does anyone have any resources that they use that are helpful for negotiating?

[meager night]

https://haseebq.com/my-ten-rules-for-negotiating-a-job-offer/

Also there’s some YouTube video from exponent with the levels fyi dude that does a negotiation simulation or sm

[tepid epoch]

was trying to get more details before the offer call, but they were not willing to tell me more

[tepid epoch]

I dont have any compete offer, so just trying to get more cash and relocation bonus

[storm girder]

Is it this one? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyn0CKPuPlA

[storm girder]

Okay. More cash as in stock?

[languid shard]

hard to negotiate base

alot of negotiation videos are out dated these days especially in this economy. Very hard to negotiate. Just realize that theres not much to negotiate.

[meager night]

Yea this is the one I think

Yea it’s probably hard to Nego w/o competing offer that’s better rn

[storm girder]

it just seems too risky to nego in this economy but then it hits you that in the long-term that will be your comparing base band for other offers down the line. There is no going back once you hit a high tier base...but yeah wouldn't take chances in this economy.

[meager night]

I mean I always assumed they’d just say no if you try to negotiate so no downside

[storm girder]

Yup you're right

[meager night]

Or like sure it’s maybe slight probability they rescind but as long as ur not being a dick and asking way out of their comp band they probably won’t rescind

[delicate torrent]

Yeah, I don't think that companies are going to rescind just because you tried negotiating unless you were super weird about it.
I can say I negotiated my offers that I recently got

[storm girder]

What did you negotiate - base, stock, bonus, relocation?

[delicate torrent]

I negotiated RSU and bonus. For one of my offers, signing bonus saw a large increase (about 25k). For my other, my signing bonus went up 5k and RSU by about 5k/yr. Definitely worth asking for more in my case

I know people talk about negotitating relocation, but in one case (idk about my other offers), relocation is standard and not part of the negotiations

[cunning umbra]

I negotiated base pay with my other offer for tiktok

the hr straight up told me she can't do it

but she will try her best

so I think if the number u give exceeds too much of their boundary they may just reject u

more power for employers in current market

[delicate torrent]

sure, but if a company thinks you are the best candidate for the job, it doesn't make to much sense to reject someone instead of just saying "we can't go any higher"

[cunning umbra]

yea for the tiktok live one i think my performance wasnt as good, so they just ghosted me after i tried to nego pay

hahahahaha

[storm girder]

oh wow my gosh! That's why I'm a bit adamant to nego, and especially in recruiter phone interview calls when they ask you straight up if the offer details exactly match what you're looking for

it's 50/50 but worth a shot if you have other stellar offers

[delicate torrent]

I'm curious, what exactly was this exchange like? You said you were looking for more pay, they said that they probably couldn't but would look into it and then ignored your texts/phone calls?
Did you ever outright indicate you wouldn't accept the offer as it was?

Because this does seem terrible

[cunning umbra]

for the tiktok live one the hr just asked me whats my expected pay but didnt say anything about trying their best and what not and theres no news after that, there isnt a rejection or anything just ghosted

for this ecoms one at least the hr was clear that they couldnt match so asked me if its my hard limit if not they cant proceed further

so i told them i am okay with lowering my ask price

and they told me will get back by a deadline

[delicate torrent]

Wait did TikTok ever give you a number? They asked for expected pay, you answered, then ghosted?

[cunning umbra]

for tiktok live they didnt give a number

this one they did