Voicebox Technologies reviews

The company is poorly managed from the top down. Executives place unrealistic expectations on employees, without providing the support the middle management and below needs in order to accomplish the work and do well. The work life balance can get out of control quickly. By the time I left, I was working more overtime than I felt was fair or necessary for the project. At one point, I was even told at the last minute by executives and project managers that I could not take pre-scheduled trip because of a 'project need' that turned out to be a false alarm.

- Ineffective leadership from middle management up - Smoke and mirrors. Consistently promise customers more than can be delivered and ignore the input of their most senior developers from every team - Executives do not understand linguistics or its problems well enough to support its team or encourage innovation, and unfortunately are too emotionally invested to step aside and allow for others with that vision and insight to step up and stand up for where the product needs to go - Broken promises. Year after year, were promised that "this was the product that would launch us", and year after year this did not happen (see: smoke and mirrors). There is not viable, consistent revenue model. Work is almost always at risk. - Unreasonable expectations. It's not uncommon to receive emails from the CEO chastising the workforce for not working hard enough or long enough, even while many dedicated employees pull 60-80 hour weeks on a consistent basis. That's apparently not enough. - Gender discrimination and skill-set discrimination. Unless you're a male programmer, don't expect to be paid anywhere near what you're worth. And even if you're the magic combination, expect to be paid noticeably under market value. And don't expect annual reviews, raises or bonuses either. - No career advancement opportunities. Talent is not supported or developed in any way whatsoever. Occasionally, if team level management has time outside of their insane workloads, they will try, but are met with no support from the upper echelons even to structure their teams in a way that makes more sense and allows for career advancement/growth, let alone hire more people, and forget about any team tool development. - Executive team does not communicate well with each other or lead in any meaningful way. Everyone has a different vision and none are actioned appropriately. - No one stands up to the customer. I get that you need the revenue. But sub-par products get shipped when you don't let your highly skilled and experienced voice application and interface professionals lead the product design and when you don't push back against unreasonable or asinine customer requests. - Dollars matter far more than people or quality of product.