TikTok及其母公司字节跳动正推行一种“严管”文化，尤其体现在绩效评估中。公司要求管理者明确指出表现不佳的员工，即使这可能引发内部冲突。字节跳动创始人张一鸣曾表示，“总是试图讨好别人的人，其实并不道德”，他认为区别对待绩效表现，避免一视同仁，是为了保护优秀员工。尽管张一鸣已于2021年离职，但其关于“不搞平均主义”的理念仍被融入公司管理材料。TikTok在绩效评估中设有配额，要求团队领导避免所有员工得分集中在中段，即使直觉上想“避免冲突”。公司采用从“F”到“O”的八级评分体系，并对高分和低分人数设限，例如将最高评分限制在团队成员的5%以内，前四项评分给予10%或更少员工。这种做法与科技行业普遍存在的“非‘好好先生’时代”相呼应，旨在识别和激励顶尖人才，同时淘汰表现不佳者。然而，这种严格的绩效管理也可能导致团队内部竞争加剧，影响协作。

🎯 **绩效优先，拒绝“和稀泥”**：TikTok及其母公司字节跳动深受创始人张一鸣“不道德”于试图取悦所有人理念的影响，强调在绩效评估中区分高低表现。公司明确要求管理者直面并指出表现不佳的员工，即便可能导致内部不和，认为这比为了避免冲突而给予所有员工相似评价更能保护优秀员工的利益。

📊 **强制分布与评分配额**：TikTok在绩效评估中实施了严格的评分配额制度，要求团队领导者避免将大多数员工的评分集中在中间区间。具体而言，公司规定在某个部门，最高评分（如“O”级杰出）的员工比例不能超过团队总人数的5%，而前四项评分的员工比例则限制在10%以内。这是一种“强制分布”的策略，旨在确保绩效排名的区分度。

📈 **“严管”文化与行业趋势**：TikTok的这种绩效管理模式并非孤例，而是与硅谷科技公司普遍推行的“非‘好好先生’时代”管理理念一致。微软和Meta等公司也调整了政策，以更有效地识别和处理低绩效员工。这种文化也反映了字节跳动在中国科技行业的发源地特点，即高期望和长工作时间的文化，以及对非绩效员工“主动劝退”的普遍做法。

⚖️ **内在竞争与协作挑战**：尽管严格的绩效管理有助于激励个体表现，但也可能在团队内部引发激烈的竞争和潜在的敌意。有员工反映，评分曲线有时显得武断，管理者被推向将员工置于“极端”评价。此外，这种机制可能导致员工难以真正地“共同拥有”一个项目并分享成果，因为个人绩效的突出往往需要与他人区分开来。

⚠️ **PIP与裁员的阴影**：绩效评估的结果直接关系到员工的职业发展，有时甚至会影响其去留。在过去的评估周期中，TikTok曾出现对电商部门员工进行大规模低评分的情况，并提供“绩效改进计划”（PIP）或遣散费的选择。这种做法给员工带来了压力，尤其是在公司经历过裁员的背景下，使得绩效评估成为一个敏感且可能带来焦虑的环节。

TikTok tells managers to call out low performers, even if it could lead to internal conflict.The founder of its parent company once said that trying to "be nice" when evaluating workers isn't moral.TikTok employees are preparing their mid-year performance reviews this month.

Tech CEOs are in their extremely hardcore, "No More Mr. Nice Guy" era. At TikTok and its owner, ByteDance, the idea of prioritizing performance over being "nice" has long been part of its DNA.

ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming once said that "people who always try to be nice aren't really moral," according to company materials. He was discussing differentiating performance, and said that trying to make everyone happy by giving low and high performers equal grades could harm TikTok's best workers.

Zhang left the company in 2021, but his line on niceness remains in updated materials for managers, BI has learned.

TikTok did not respond to requests for comment.

TikTok sets quotas on how many workers can receive high or low scores in each cycle, and the company tells team leaders to avoid grading everyone at the mid-point, even if their instinct is "to avoid conflict," according to documentation viewed by BI.

In its reviews, the company uses eight different ratings, ranging from "F" for failed to "O" for outstanding. In one division, the company said managers had to limit the three highest scores to no more than 5% of team members, and dole out the top four ratings to 10% or fewer employees, BI previously reported.

TikTok staffers are preparing for mid-year performance reviews this month. The reviews can be stressful for workers who have watched the company cull head count in previous cycles. In March, TikTok gave low scores to a wave of e-commerce workers, offering some a choice between a performance-improvement plan (PIP) or a severance package. It executed a similar process on other teams a year earlier.

Tech's performance push

TikTok and ByteDance's approach mirrors a broader push in Silicon Valley to better identify top and low performers. Microsoft tweaked its policies in April to help managers address lower performers, and Meta made it a priority in May to rate more workers as underperformers. The ByteDance approach also reflects a culture of high expectations and long work hours characteristic of the China tech scene, where the company was founded.

"It's generally accepted that Chinese companies are quite aggressive about marking non-performers and basically asking them to leave," said Rui Ma, founder of the media and consulting firm TechBuzz China.

While Big Tech's management principles may seem harsh, direct feedback is a critical component of good management, said Deborah Grayson Riegel, an executive coach who writes about leadership communication.

"Often what we find is that when somebody wants to be liked, they don't give direct feedback," Riegel said. "Higher performers pay the cost because then their job is to manage the lower performers who don't want to be there or shouldn't be there, and so that drags them down as well."

Current and former TikTok staffers said the scoring curve can seem arbitrary, however.

"More and more leaders were being pushed to rate people at the extremes," one TikTok manager who left the company last year told BI. "Either exceptional, and doing really well, or doing really poorly and giving them these low scores that will eventually push them out of the company."

The company asks managers to consider each worker's self-evaluation and coworker feedback when assigning review scores, and department heads may later tweak ratings to meet distribution goals, one staffer said. The score distributions are set based on business priorities, though leaders are instructed not to share those details with reports to avoid the appearance of "forced distribution," BI first reported.

The rating curve can breed some competitive animosity among teammates, one TikTok staffer said.

"It's very internally competitive," a former staffer said. "You can't co-own a project really in most instances and claim joint results."

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