SoundHound

Kind, engaged coworkers. Interesting projects and problems to solve.

Executive leadership is horribly incompetent. Priorities are unclear and shift rapidly, making it impossible to get any meaningful work done before your project is deprioritized for something else. There seems to be little vision or future planning, just rushing after whatever client seems important at the time. Post-IPO, employees are treated as dispensable and secondary to the egos of executive leadership.

Compensation is very low: salary is low relative to other companies, there's no 401k matching, and no bonuses. Employees are rewarded with stocks that have turned out to be worthless.

There is little opportunity for career growth. Only a chosen few favorites get to go to conferences due to costs, and there is no other opportunity for training. Work is so hectic that there is not even time for self-improvement or reading recent papers during working hours. And with recent layoffs, this is probably only going to get worse.

Working hours are long, with little recognition. Impossible deadlines are set, and many hours of work are put in, just for the project to be canceled or deprioritized after weeks of 12-hour days and weekends. In theory, there is a recognition program, but whether you're nominated is highly dependent on your manager and what project you happen to be assigned to.

Middle management (in the eng org) is all engineers who have been promoted to management and do not have any experience with managing, to the detriment of their teams.

There are no core values. Despite initiating an effort to create a set of company core values more than a year ago, there have been no results. As a result, the company is lacking in any standardized vision and has been steadily declining in terms.

Diversity is lacking, and bias training is something that has only very recently been introduced after many complaints.

Determine a unified vision for the company. You've been trying to commit to too many projects and clients with too few resources for too long. Narrow the scope.

Come up with several contingency plans for funding. Retain great employees by rewarding them, because without those folks, this company cannot succeed.