Unfortunately my first post for 2023 is a bit of a downer. My five-and-a-half year journey with SoundHound has come to an abrupt end, as I was among nearly half the company affected by a massive layoff and restructuring earlier this month. Honestly, though, I don’t feel too bad about this (at least not for myself) — stick around and I’ll tell you why.

To be clear, working at SoundHound was an amazing experience, and my coworkers there are, I’m convinced, the best a person could possibly ask for. From day one I felt welcomed as part of a community who are extremely talented while also being humble, kind, and collaborative. Whether I was engaging with other developers, language specialists, IT/ops support, the talent acquisition team, data engineers, the office managers and front desk staff, or even the executive team, I consistently felt appreciated, supported, challenged, and enabled to do my best work. And a lot of those coworkers are my closest friends. There’s a reason why many of us still hang out together, even people who have moved on to other workplaces years ago.

Beyond that, SoundHound was a fantastic place to grow into my …