I first met the team at a happy hour event in SF. I was definitely a little thrown off by the culture of the team, with managers coming around with shot trays, trying to get everyone to take shots with them. Very little talk about what it's like to work at TikTok, pretty much just a party. I first had a 30 minute chat with the recruiter. Then I had a 45 minute first round interview with an IC PM. Pretty standard, nothing really revealing (positively or negatively) about the company or team, but the PM who interviewed me seemed like a nice, smart guy. (I only interacted with men during this entire process.) Then I had a second round interview with the head of product. Admittedly, I did not do well in this interview, and if I were them, I would have stopped the process with me as well, but his answers to my questions are worth mentioning. I asked about the culture of the team. He talked about how he wants his team to be intense and frugal like Amazon (his former company) and that some people on the team are too used to the pat-on-the-back culture of places like Google and their perspectives need to change. I asked about how TikTok considered the impact they have on teenagers, and he said "Well we let them know if they've been on the app for too long" referring to a message that pops up after 2 hours of scrolling. I then asked about career development and mentorship. As someone relatively early in my career who has benefited greatly from mentorship in past roles, this was important. He told me that people just need to crush projects and be autonomous. Overall, I received pretty terse answers. For some people, these answers may be okay. For others, they may not be, but I personally didn't get a good vibe for me personally (nor did they choose to advance me). As an aside, recruiting was quite slow moving things along from interview to interview. 3 weeks would go by in between interviews.