Pros
Audible is a mission-oriented company – to help entertain, inform, and educate people when their eyes are busy, but their ears are free. There’s an air of social consciousness, mostly focused on Newark, but also for populations like the visually impaired that could benefit from audiobooks. The free food is great!
Cons
With the exception of the CTO, executive leadership has literally no experience working at any other company, and it shows. The CEO has severe communications challenges (no one can understand what he’s saying) and lacks a grasp of digital trends long gone mainstream. The rest are well-paid yes-men. HR is terrified of certain leaders, and is forced to do things they know are wrong, resulting in many “settlements” and a growing wake of mistrust and bad vibes. The past several years are a rinse/repeat of the following: The CEO becomes enamored with a number of extremely large projects, and other leaders have many smaller pet initiatives. The company bites off more than it can chew – committing to too many projects (and micro-managing them), under-resourcing them, and then either killing them right before launch or eviscerating the lower level employees when the projects don’t immediately succeed upon initial release. This is bad for morale in many ways – Employees lack trust in each other, and in leadership. One minor new feature released every 6 months or so is considered acceptable for a company of 800 with more than 300 engineers and dozens of designers.