Stay far away! - Anonymous employee Sonder Employee Review

I will preface this with the fact that I left voluntarily after the layoffs, so this is not me trying to "get back" at my former employer. If you are a potential candidate reading this review, note that there was a period of ~6-8 weeks where at least one employee voluntarily left each week. Ask yourself - if Sonder was doing as great as they say and if it was such a great place to work, then why is the turnover so high? Is this somewhere that you really want to join? The first major issue Sonder has is its culture. Several other reviews have mentioned a "cult-like" culture and that is absolutely true in my experience. It starts with the CEO, who is quite delusional and lacks a shred of empathy. After the layoffs, he referred to employees as "line items" and was quoted in an article saying that Silicon Valley employees are "spoiled." For those that were laid off, Sonder only provided two weeks severance and did not extend healthcare benefits for the next month (in the middle of a pandemic). This is indicative of how Sonder views its employees - as nothing more than faceless drones. In addition, after the layoffs, he announced that all employees would take a 15% pay cut for three months. Unlike most other companies, the executive team did not take more of a pay cut despite their higher salary. Only after backlash did the executive team decide to extend their pay cut for another three months. The second major issue Sonder has is its technology. Sonder claims to be a "tech enabled company", but nothing could be further from the truth. Yes, Sonder develops its own tech solutions, but there is very little innovative work being done. If you are a software engineer and clear the high hiring bar to work here, you would be much better off working at another startup or tech company where you can actually use new technologies and work on services/products that are pushing the envelope. Sonder's data quality is also extremely poor. As another reviewer mentioned, if you ask a simple question such as, "What is the occupancy rate of a building over the last month?" you will get 5 different answers. These issues have been brought up for over a year, yet there has been barely any investment in data quality. Working at Sonder in any role that requires pulling data is an incredibly frustrating experience. Overall, my advice to any potential candidates is to stay far far away from this mess of a company. Do not get fooled by the pitch that "Sonder has raised so much money" - the reason it needs the money is that it has so many leases on the books it needs the capital to pay them off. Working at Sonder is a toxic and frustrating experience. Due to the high turnover, Sonder is now trying to backfill many roles. If you are a candidate interviewing for or considering one of those roles, try the best you can do avoid this company.