Audible reviews

If you're a creative, research-driven product person, Audible is NOT the place for you. You have a helicopter CEO who seems to spend less time on Audible than trying to make Newark a better place. The latter in an admirable goal, but pick one. CEO periodically drops in and suggests absurd product ideas - things that a first year MBA student would ridicule. It's clear that some of these have been circulating at Audible for a decade or more. No one in the product leadership team has the guts to say to the CEO, "these ideas don't make sense." Periodically, leadership will be so convinced of their idea that they will go to bat against Amazon execs. Inevitably, they lose because THEY ARE BAD IDEAS. Like in the Trump administration, science, research and truly understanding customer and market needs is discouraged, because they will (very likely) test poorly. No one here, especially the CEO, wants to hear that. What gets rewarded is grand pronouncements with little follow through. When the CEO eventually notices that one of his pet projects didn't get done, product leadership will find someone to throw under the bus. For as little as Audible product team actually does, you could get by with 40 people instead fo the 400 they have. Unless you're an SVP, assume that nothing you have to say will matter, even if you are an accomplished leader and have 20 years of experience under your belt.

Three major issues: 1. This is NOT a technology company. This is a media company. And how the Tech/Product organization is run reflects this. 2. Politics! If you read the reviews on Glassdoor this is a them that's repeated again, and again. 3. Year-end review process. It's a popularity contest not an assessment. As modern software companies go Audible is behind the times in many ways. The tech itself is state-of-the-art - after all, they leverage a lot of Amazon technology - and there is also innovation happening. However, as Agile product delivery organizations go, there is LOTS of room for improvement! You will hear this is an Agile enterprise, but it's not. Planning is a "death march". Priorities change like the wind. Expectations are too high so too much is committed to so there can be a lot of extended hours for the dev teams. The impact is huge and, ultimately, negatively affects employee engagement. The biggest problem with this is that there's no desire from upper management to actually do something about it. Politics is probably most to blame for this lack of action. Many of the upper managers seem to be more concerned about themselves and maintaining their "empire" than doing what's best for the company. Managers have literally said that certain words/phrases should not be used! Huh!? I believe that these managers fear being exposed and losing their empire so they live in denial about how effective the delivery org is. If you're not into dealing with politics you probably want to think twice about joining. Finally, the appraisal process. You answer a few questions in essay form. All managers gather to evaluate all of the employees and bucket them into five buckets (now three). They are forced to put a certain amount of employees into each bucket. For example 5% in 1, 15% in 2, 60% in 3, 15% in 4, and 5% in 5. So if you have 100 Directors and more than 5 are excellent, then the others are screwed out of an excellent rating. The biggest flaw in all of this is the complete and utter lack of objectivity. Managers are evaluating and ranking you even if they don't know you or haven't worked with you. Who your manager is has more of an impact on your performance appraisal than what you actually have done. Basically, don't question management, or make any waves, and you'll probably get a good review. Try to be an agent of change and a disrupter, and those managers afraid of losing their perch will exact their revenge at the end of the year.