Used to be a good startup but now full of bureaucracy and third-rater - Senior Software Engineer SmartNews Employee Review

1.0
22 Jul 2021
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

- Most people are nice. Some of them are really top talents. - Good office in San Francisco and Tokyo

Cons

- Business stopped growing since mid 2020 - Leaderships are ridiculous and incapable - Only very few people care their product - High communication cost and extremely hard to ship things - Timezone issue: have to stay late night or wake early morning to meet with people from other offices and it happens everyday

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SmartNews Response
4y
Thank you for sharing your feedback with us. We appreciate your recognition of our quality talent and kind employees. Our hiring team works hard to recruiting that align with our company mission and we take pride in maintaining an office environment that our employees feel comfortable in. Our HR team is working on developing training programs and effective feedback loops for leaders within our company. We are actively working on creating a system that accommodates for individuals in different time zones effectively to make the workplace better for all our teams. We appreciate your time in bringing our attention to these shortcomings. Please let us know if you have any additional feedback at feedback_hr@smartnews.com.

Explore other reviews about SmartNews

5.0
7 Apr 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Founders are very clear about their mission. Many people joined because of this mission.

Cons

Current US business is in an early phase startup while Japan business is already late stage; interesting struggle of the culture mix

2
2.0
8 Jun 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Smart people, competitive salary, good benefits

Cons

Senior mgt under spell of tech bros despite documented record of failure and ADHD management style on news product no one wants except them.

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