My experience at Sonder started off promising and ended with me abruptly quitting. I reached a breaking point and decided my mental health was more important than a job. I was repeatedly spoke to in a demotivating and demoralizing way and my manager threatened my job multiple times. I asked him many times to stop speaking to me in this manner. He tried to use fear tactics as a means to motivate me. He repeatedly told me I was expected to work 75+ hours a week, that I wasn’t meeting expectations, and that I didn’t have hustle (and you can’t teach hustle). At times his behavior would improve, but ultimately he would revert back to speaking to me in a way that I’ve never been spoken to in my 15 year career history. I felt like he used gas-lighting techniques to make it seem like I was making all of this up. He told many lies to me (as I confirmed with HQ) regarding concerns about my perceived lack of performance. Everyday felt miserable, not knowing which personality of his would be showing up.
I had multiple interventions, over a span of several weeks, with HQ about his behavior towards me. I told them it was affecting my work performance, my personal life, my mental health, and some of the things he said to me were borderline discriminatory. I certainly don’t think he would’ve spoken to a man the way he spoke to me. One of the last conversations I had with HQ about his behavior resulted in me asking them “how many more times do I have to have this conversation with you before action is taken against him?”. At that point, I felt it was clear they were going to allow this behavior to continue because the GM was excelling at his other job duties. I felt defeated.
As far as Sonder goes as a company and their mission, I have mixed feelings. I personally liked all of the people I connected with at HQ. I think one of the difficulties of working remotely from HQ is the isolation. When you only have one local co-worker, and they treat you poorly, it leads to you feeling alone and helpless. I also think Sonder grossly misled me on the commission structure (the one they changed and rolled out 3 months into my job). It was then that it became clear - I wasn’t going to be making the kind of money I was led to believe that I would be making and it definitely wasn’t enough to continue to be treated in an abusive manner.
