Half and half - Developer TouchTunes Employee Review

3.0
2 May 2018
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

- Cutting edge tech stack. - Solid core product. - They experiment with bleeding edge tech: AI tools, big data and others. - Amazing people. Friendly, funny and smart. - Their IT group might eventually become a world-class team in my opinion - Good health insurance. It offers 100% coverage in most cases. - Fantastic work/life balance. - They like to build everything themselves. The exercise is fun and enriching, that’s why I’m listing it as something positive but sometimes it feels like they are reinventing the wheel. - Solid business and development processes that keep evolving. - I witnessed how upper management evolved from not having any idea on what they wanted to laying out a plan that they now present to the entire company during the first trimester as yearly objectives. It took a while but they have learned the value of communicating rather than being absolutely absent and obscure. - Awesome coffee machine. - Demo Fridays with beer & snacks.

Cons

- Some of their core products are built on top of outdated and painful-to-learn technologies like Google Web Toolkit. - I worked for TouchTunes for several years and I know it very well so I can responsibly say this: it is monstrously cheap. - Training is kept to the minimum per employee even though they brag a lot about “investing in ourselves”. - Even the RSP contribution “match” is abysmally miserable. - They never, not ever, give 100% of the promised bonus to the employees. The bonus is supposed to be tied to the employee’s yearly performance review but it isn’t in reality. They just keep making excuses in order to not pay what they should. - Once I got a yearly bonus of $500 (yes, 500) and I had a 4/5 in my performance review that year. - Like most IT companies in town, TouchTunes falls into the pitfall of giving new hires a competitive salary while forgetting about the more senior employees. By doing this they don’t realize (or maybe they do and they don’t do anything about it) that doing so is disrespectful and unfair to the people that have built the tools that sustain the current revenue. So don’t expect to build a long-lasting career there. You will probably have to leave after 2-3 years unless you are ready to accept being grotesquely underpaid. - One more thing about the prior, management has absolutely no problem lying about your current salary. They will, in private, repeat one time after another that what they’re paying you is competitive with the market. - Because the core product is solid things don’t move very fast. Everyone kind of chills a lot and nothing gets done in time. But eventually some work gets done. - Managers don’t really follow up on development plans. They’ll just lay some plan out to get rid of you and they’ll forget about it. - I disagree with the other review regarding promotions. At least when it comes to the tech group, they don’t promote even if it makes perfect sense. They’ll rather hire new people with a lot of experience instead of giving others the chance to step up. - Worst performance review process I’ve seen in my almost two decades old career: - The format of the review keeps changing year after year. - It isn’t based on personal achievements/goals. - Easily biased in many different ways since it is all based about opinions instead of results. - Will easily contain negative observations which you will hear about for the first time in your life when the review is handed over to you. - No free parking. Hard to park around the office. - No chicks. - If you are going to work in the Montreal office and you only speak English do yourself a favour: avoid the office manager at all costs. - As the result of a merger there are two CEOs. Doesn’t make any sense. There’s one of them that’s just some sort of accountant.

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TouchTunes Response
8y
Thanks for your feedback. While you had some concerns about your time with TouchTunes, I appreciate you laying out a lot of great positives, like our experimenting with bleeding edge tech and your appreciation for the all hands in February laying out the plan for the year. With regards to the areas that you believe we could improve, I am going to focus on compensation, both base salary, and bonus, as that is super important. First, let’s talk about the base salary. Like many companies, we use market surveys to determine the appropriate base compensation. Our goal is to be competitive, and we have made a lot of adjustments in the last 24 months to achieve that. In our March 2018 anonymous employee survey, only 12.5% of employees in our Montreal office felt that they weren’t compensated fairly vs. the market and industry. Overall, I feel good about that, although there is still work to do and that is why I encourage all employees who have a concern about their compensation to approach their manager to discuss it. On bonus payouts, our plan is based on the company hitting its EBITDA goals and employee performance. For FY2017, which ended in December 2017, the company met its targets, and the bonus pool was funded 100%. Every employee that met or exceeded their objectives for the year, of which there was a large number, received 100% or more of their target bonus. I also want to bring up a topic that you didn’t mention explicitly, but is very important to us: Diversity. We know a diverse team is a stronger team and we want people from different countries, cultures, genders and ethnicities to feel welcome at TouchTunes. If I am may offer you some feedback, while you may not have intended it, some of the language you used in your review fell short of that bar. To wrap it up, I am very proud of our Montreal team, both in the great work they do and the work environment they have. In that recent employee poll I mentioned, 92% of our Montreal team would recommend working at TouchTunes to friends and family, which is awesome!

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Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

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Cons

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1.0
16 Oct 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

- hybrid environment - comunter benefit

Cons

- Toxic Leadership Culture: Incompetent, egotistical, and narcissistic management that fosters fear rather than collaboration. - Zero Upward Mobility: No clear career paths or growth opportunities; promotions and recognition are rare or politically driven. - Miserable Work Environment: Employees, especially those who’ve been there long-term, appear burned out, disengaged, and deeply unhappy. - Soul-Sucking Atmosphere: The energy is heavy, draining, and creatively stifling — it feels like survival, not inspiration. - Widespread Negativity: Teams spend more time gossiping, complaining, or blaming others than actually collaborating or problem-solving. - Divisive Leadership: Leadership preaches values like inclusion and teamwork but acts in the opposite way — creating silos and favoritism. - HR Complicity: HR prioritizes protecting toxic management over supporting employee well-being or addressing serious workplace issues. - Culture of Fear and Bullying: Bullies are rewarded and thrive in the environment, while kind, collaborative, and talented people often leave. - Lack of Accountability: Poor performers in leadership roles face no consequences; bad behavior is normalized. - Hypocritical “Culture” Messaging: Company values are used as PR slogans, not guiding principles — nothing authentic about the “people-first” narrative. - Rampant Discrimination: Racism, Islamophobia, and other forms of bias are openly tolerated or ignored by leadership — creating a hostile environment for anyone outside the “inner circle.” -Declining Business & Outdated Product: Revenue continues to fall because the product is irrelevant in a changing economy — especially during a recession. Leadership refuses to innovate or face reality. - Overall Dysfunction: The company is a case study in how not to run a business — a revolving door of talent, crumbling morale, and no vision for the future.

5
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