You know a company doesn’t care about its people when it goes nearly two years without a Head of People (HR) and the CEO has open disdain for what he calls “nanny start-ups”. While not said out loud, it's clear the majority of the leadership team believes the success of Sonder is dependent on exploiting the hard work and dedication of the people that join this company. They may try to blame this review on COVID and the tough decisions a hospitality company had to make when the world screeched to a halt. No doubt the decisions to make cuts to the workforce must have been wrenching (just because they are bad leaders doesn't mean they aren't good people), but very little empathy was shown by Francis, the CEO, and others. The only communication about those cuts was self-congratulations at how quickly they acted and how much money those actions saved. Most of those cuts were to city and call-center staff. These are very close-knit groups. Talking about laid-off team members like items on a spreadsheet was tone-deaf and demoralizing. Once Sonder was out of the worst of it and the money from investors rolled in (more self-congratulations), almost none of that was reinvested into lightening the load on employees. No, they determined that all of us doing the work of multiple people could continue on - after all, we'd had success with fewer people, why spend the money to remove the burden on people working 50-70 hour weeks?
