SoundHound reviews

My advice to you is don't join the marketing team. Avoid at all costs. I initially joined SoundHound because of the people and the culture. These were people I wanted to work with, a team I wanted to be a part of, and values that spoke to me. With new leadership, though, there has been a culture shift in the marketing team over the past year. It has become one of high stress, zero work-life balance, and high turnover. A lot of people have left in the last year, sometimes without notice, and for good reasons. Hardly any of the original team is still there, and a majority of the team has only been there for a few months. Leadership has created an extremely toxic work environment, and I don't use that term lightly. The marketing team has been slowly turning into a mini ad agency, and I left ad agency life because it is unsustainable and leads to burnout. Leadership has people working on weekends and contacts them on PTO. Regardless of the situation, everyone deserves respect and kindness, and there has been a complete lack of either. The environment is harsh, with leadership sometimes being just plain cruel and inappropriate, leading with fear. The people who do have empathy and emotional intelligence have either long gotten out of there, are trying to get out, or are being constantly targeted by leadership and stripped of their power. HR is well aware of the issues and has done nothing about them. I could talk about how the pay is lower or how they went back on their word about letting people be completely remote, but at the end of the day, those are smaller details and what it is truly about is whether you feel safe at your job. At SoundHound, you won't. Protect your mental health and stay clear.

It's been a nightmare since the start. The org is super flat which means that my manager was too busy to meet let alone clearly explain what I should be working on. There is too much red tape surrounding the OKR and Jira systems to manage tasks and the program managers seem to love it. It's a drain on productivity in my opinion. A few teammates (esp the new hires) are helpful but a few old-timers are so full of themselves. Work-life balance is nonexistent. Since the company went public, it's only gotten worse. The stock has been tanking. Starting now, we need to report the number of hours worked on each project (adding up to <= 40 hours) into a public spreadsheet so that they can know that "no team member is overloaded". I am guessing clocking in and out will be next. Free food is the only nice thing. The other benefits are pretty standard: no 401-K matching, no bonuses and the base pay is lower than other tech companies. Culture: probably too "open" for my taste, having to notify everyone whether you'll still be on slack when on PTO or that you can't work this week because you have covid.