CTO just confirmed they are letting go 5% with PIP(although real number is 10%) in the anticipation of hiring people who are laid off from big tech and hoping these new people will raise bar and in 6 months they will do it again to keep raising the bar. Homies please make sure you are good with your manager and skip, this is squid game now in here. #audible #amazon #pip
Someone educate my dumb ass. Where does audible need to improve besides networking for possible load?
voice ai maybe? wavenet sounds more pleasant than polly voices and ai can be cheaper than paying voice actors. alternately you can also train ai to sound like a certain voice actor so it does heavy lifting while voice actor just does flourishes
They are not that innovative buddy, they are still trying to add new ways of buying audiobooks
At least in squid game you knew exactly what to do to win 😭
When are they gonna let go of the proposed 5%
They already started. A lot of people are on pip
Remember there will be another 5% in next 3-4 months once the mid year review starts
What does this mean for someone that is planning to join in the beginning of August?
I know someone who joined in August last year and is in PIP now so the person is safe for few months before he/she will have a review
Where did CTO confirm? Never heard.
There was Consumer domain Fireside chat with Tim today
It’s laughable how the CTO said they are pipping the underperforming ppl who were basically hired by mistake in last couple of years when in reality the ppl who have been around for many years doing fuck-all or creating a ton of tech debt and spaghetti code are the ones that should be pipped. Audible is a political shithole. Can’t wait to get my stock to vest and gtfo.
The majority of the C-Levels in that org need to be PIPed. There’s no innovation or vision there. Sad.
There’s so much tech debt too and such little documentation
The way the CTO dismisses the potential disruption AI will have on the business is so shortsighted. They think just because they can pay millions to have celebrity names voice their books, people won’t switch to a much cheaper AI narrated option. They are focusing on a niche market and that will bite them in the ass eventually. Plus, Spotify and any one of the startups working on long-form, human-sounding TTS are definitely going to get a piece of that pie it’s only a matter of time. Not to mention how they continue to pay their creators offensively low royalties..again Spotify has the platform and exposure that would convince many to switch even for the same royalties if not more.
Audible is part of Amazon?
Since 2009
So Amazon is having another round of layoffs? Cto is the same as Amazon CTO?