Troubles at Grooveshark

Major Troubles at Grooveshark

Grooveshark employee here. I'm posting this anonymously so I won't be sued into oblivion. They will sue you into oblivion.

It's bad. Really, really bad. So bad I figured I should do something.

> 10 people laid off mid-June

No one was spared. Senior engineers and people who were here for less than a year were both kicked out.

Sam (our fucking CEO) lied about our valuation back around October. He told us point-blank we were worth $375 million. Bullshit. We barely rake in $13 million a year and we're being sued to hell, how the hell are we worth 28x that?

Hey investors! We have a deal for you: Sam and clown circus are trying to raise $60 million for the Series B. $30 million of that will go to paying off the major music labels because Sam was caught red-handed uploading pirated music to his website. The rest will be spent helping us pivot from being ad-based to subscription-based in a market full of strong competitors that aren't being sued to hell. Ready to invest?

Our positive Glassdoor reviews are nearly all fake. Really. If you scroll back through to the reviews written in February, you'll see a bunch of "Work here! It's awesome!" reviews that Adrian-Hayes Santos ordered out of us since HR was convinced no developers wanted to work at Grooveshark because our Glassdoor rating wasn't high enough. How about our pay motherfucker? Is $40,000 really compensation for spending 50-60 hours a week here doing hard work? You want to read an honest review? See this one (I know exactly who wrote it): http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Employee-Review-Grooveshark-RVW4413466.htm

The people who make all the decisions are all Greek culture and smooth-tongued PR fucks. From that controlling bitch Julia Anderson over at QA to our laughable excuse of an in-house lawyer Jeff to the 40+ year old frat bros Todd Chase and Dan Rua. You know you're working on illegal shit when Dan Rua's in the house. Guy worked on Napster too. God help you if you're not drinking with these douchebags, because you're probably next on the chopping block.

In addition to being all Greek fucks and suits, the executive team is incompetent. They went on a hiring spree getting 10-20 people on board from a guy who used to work on the original Mac team to a bunch of HR clowns. Now, I'm not a math guy, but let me figure this out:
1) Revenue is constant
2) The company is already just barely scraping by
3) You go on a hiring spree

These dumbasses were so confident they would get funding that they decided to start hiring immediately. Fuck. You. Guys. We lost a lot of good people because of you fucks.

Interestingly enough, the HR people who do fucking do nothing got to stay. The guys who did actual work got fired. This used to be a really fun environment instead of a corporate hellhole. All our perks are gone or meaningless too and we've all got paycuts. Morale was low before, but now it's in the dumps.

We don't have the money to keep people on for next to nothing, but we do have money for instigating lawsuits that they kindly don't mention to us ever: www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2014/05/22/digital-music-news-prevails-grooveshark-california-appeals-court

Oh, and last bit. Grooveshark operates by social blackmail. You don't let anything out because your friends work at the company, and you don't want bad things to happen to your friends, right? Sorry guys, but you've already been fucked. Alex Shifrin's already cheated you out of your stock options, and Sam's going to keep lying to you. I'm tired of seeing good people getting hurt because of these douchebags, and it's going to hurt before it gets better. I'm working here until I can find a decent job somewhere else where I won't have to sell my soul anymore.