Pros
SoundHound is truly a great place to work. Our CEO has a clear vision and is effective in driving technical innovation and growth. Employees are treated as human beings, and the culture of high-trust allows employees to thrive and do their best work instead of fearing punishment or undercutting peers. The small company size allows individual contributors to have a relatively large measure of ownership over their work, and given the growth of the company in recent years there is significant uncharted territory with opportunities to work on things that haven’t been done before. Many managers are promoted after they have already demonstrated a track record of leadership, which gives them credibility. There are some very smart engineers and scientists here you can learn from, and you can trust most people are good at their jobs. Benefits and compensation are pretty good for a small company. Additionally, there are other perks like lunch every day and happy hours. One of the things that makes SoundHound a good place to work is the people throughout the company that are willing to do things “not in their job description” - people who go out of their way to mentor those early in career, who take notice when something is wrong and generally show care for those they work with.
Cons
The high-trust culture cuts both ways. Underperforming employees are kept on and there is inevitably some percentage of people who will take advantage of the leniency. Unfortunately, some teams show a pattern of “failing up” subpar employees who lack competency in one role and are moved to other projects/teams (some of which are seen as more important work than their previous role). This is obviously discouraging to the high performers (and could even be interpreted as a penalty). Some groups lack strong leadership which leads to entitlement going unchallenged, passive-aggressive ways of employees communicating their frustrations, or just a lack of communication more generally. Unfortunately you will find some amount of entitlement that has become stereotypical at software companies, but maybe that’s inevitable in the industry. All-hands meetings are infrequent so it’s hard to know what’s happening at the top.
