Interview Tips & Culture insight at Sonder HQ - Engineering Sonder Employee Review

Work at Sonder HQ is perfect for people with a very particular mindset. It's rare that a single word can perfectly capture the complex mission of a silicon valley company. Sonder has such a word: _"Greed."_ I don't mean that in a small way. This is a machine optimized to grow as fast as we can, eat the world, and IPO. My experience is that Sonder thinks it is playing a zero sum game with Marriot and AirBnb. They will gentrify, disrupt, and step on the heads of whatever community, company, or politician tries to oppose them, because of a fiduciary duty to every Sonder shareholder. They boast deep pockets, intense focus and an army of relentless litigators. We can officially stop making fun of Silicon Valley for its corny spin on "making the world a better place." This company doesn't even pretend. It is the anti-intellectual antithesis to something like Alphabet's moonshot division. Maybe you're about to head in for an on site interview and you want to know if this is a good place to spend 10-12 hours per day 5-6 days a week. Ask every interviewer the following questions: Question 1: Why do you get up in the morning? I'd wager, the number one reason is three letters: I P O. Secondary reasons might include: - I want to buy a house in San Francisco. (even as the business model drives up prices and displaces lower paid Sonder "city team" employees). - I used to work for a ride share company that was an endless party before a new CEO was hired, this is like the old days. It's likely that: Nobody talks about solving problems that only Sonder can solve. Nobody talks about doing the most important work of their lives. Nobody talks about building better, more efficient cities. They don't even agree that customer facing technology can be a real differentiator when up against entrenched competition. Question 2: What metaphor describes your corporate culture? Some companies think of themselves as a pro sports team, or a family, or seal team six. When new skills are needed, do you develop people, or bench them? See if you get a satisfactory answer from each person, or if they look quizzically at you. Maybe they instead of answering the question they'll say, "Well, we get catered lunch every day." Question 3: How long have you worked here? Seriously, ask everyone you meet at Sonder. See if you have an experience like this: Recruiter: Less than a week Hiring Manager: Less than 2 months. Lead Engineer: Barely 1 year. Most Engineers: Weeks or months, with a couple almost nearing their last cliff, but not quite. The average tenure seems way less than the vesting schedule. They might chalk it up to growing pains, but search LinkedIn for previous leadership, and maybe offer to buy a previous manager lunch if you want to do your diligence. Question 4: What's the pay scale? If profit is your personal motive, probably you're in luck. My experience is that they will try to compete with the big 5, and salaries near 300K are on the table. Seriously tho, don't miss a sprint deadline. Question 5: The tech stack is a little old school, why did you choose it? Maybe the answer you get is something like "Dunno, I started last month." Maybe it is: "Cause the founders used Ruby in college once." I encourage you to probe and see if you can dig up technical line of reasoning that makes sense for you, especially around the persistence layer. You might even get brownie points for asking why they eschew modern data stores and streaming techniques for very wide tables