Pros
I got to work with some great professionals and people. The people at Speechify are interesting. Great engineers in the company. You can learn from them. There's a lot of diversity as there can be people in your call from 5 different countries at the same time. You can bond with your teammates about how ridiculous the management and leadership is. This makes you feel like you're not alone in how it feels to deal with leadership.
Cons
The company is ran by young people. They live the college start-up story, which means leadership doesn't have real professional experience or life experience. The company is ran by brothers and friends, so there's a lot of ego amongst the decision makers. We joke that you just tell leadership what they want to hear because they won't listen otherwise! The culture is most like a U.S. college fraternity. For 1 example, there's 0 female engineers in the company! They are currently "Quiet Firing," so your favorite teammates might be stressed-out or disappear tomorrow. TOXIC: leader compares you to someone else in the team who's much better than you. Then, he compares that person to YOU! This is supposed to make everyone feel like they need to work harder to be the better person on the team. Instead, we joke how "I THOUGHT I WAS BETTER!" They have a principle to "Always be hiring," meaning to refer people to be hired by Speechify. When you refer your colleagues, they will drop them from the hiring pipeline and not tell you. This can strain relationships, so don't actually refer anyone to the company. Leadership treats everyone that isn't in the leadership team as freelancers/ contractors. You will see someone get fired and disappear, then you know not to ask anyone. You'll see a colleague post a "good-bye" message on Slack, then leadership deletes it so no one sees the person is leaving. They pay some people so low, so you feel bad for your teammates who are getting ripped off. CEO only cares about celebrity. Either meeting celebrities or being one himself.
