Audible was only a few years old in July 2000, when Oren Levin joined us as a developer. “When I interviewed, Audible had half a floor in the building, and by the time I was hired, we had a whole floor.” Eventually we moved our headquarters from Wayne, New Jersey, to Newark, where the Audible campus now comprises multiple buildings, plus offices all over the world.

As Audible continued to grow and expand, so did Oren’s career. He likes to joke that he’s on his fifth career at Audible. “In the beginning, Audible was a small start-up, so everyone did a little of everything. I was a developer, working on the back end. At some point, my manager said we needed help with the data warehouse, so I spent three years on that. Then I spent about three years doing QA testing. I was the lead developer for Audible on Amazon for a while, and I’ve also built internal-facing business tools.” Now he’s a Director of Software Development, using his valuable experience to help lead other developers at Audible. 

In his 25 years with us, Oren has played a part in several key developments, including integrating Audible into the Amazon experience and setting up our integration with Apple’s iTunes store, where Audible was the sole provider of audiobooks. 

Oren’s also been able to witness some incredible moments in Audible’s history, such as when Robin Williams signed on to host an exclusive talk show for us, in 2000. “It was a podcast before there were podcasts,” Oren says. “Every two weeks he’d interview someone, like Christopher Reeve and Saturday Night Live’s Father Guido Sarducci. The list of who Robin Williams interviewed was phenomenal.” The actor and comedian’s enthusiasm for Audible even had some unforeseen results. “Whenever Robin talked about Audible on TV, we’d see a huge spike in traffic to Audible.com. It sometimes caused pain,” Oren laughs. “We have a much more robust site today.”

One of the biggest game-changers for tech teams at Audible was becoming part of Amazon and being able to take advantage of Amazon’s best-in-class technology. “That let us focus on more Audible-specific experiences that make us unique.” Experiences like Whispersync for Voice, launched in 2012, which lets users seamlessly switch between Kindle reading and Audible listening without losing their place. Oren got to help test and develop the feature while he was on the QA team, and was so proud when it launched. He sees that same pride whenever he works with Audible’s college interns, and they contribute to a feature or product that’s released to the public. “They get to go back to school and say ‘I built this’, which is really cool.” 

After several years of supporting a variety of Audible’s web experiences, Oren saw that mobile was rapidly expanding and would offer him even more opportunities to learn and innovate. He decided to take advantage of Audible’s professional development resources, and with support from his manager, completed a mobile “boot camp.” He’s been on our iOS development teams ever since, working across several features of the Audible app for iPhone, from search and discovery to product detail pages to the library. 

Oren is proud of how far Audible has come since our founder, Don Katz, had the vision of being able to listen to a book without cumbersome cassettes and CDs. Today our customers are able to stream and download several books’ worth the content on their phones, cars, and watches. “ Audible has grown far beyond the 80 people who were there when I started, and yet we all still have that common goal. Audible came out of Don's vision of making spoken word more accessible, and I think that’s something that remains true today.”

As a manager, Oren draws inspiration from his own past managers. “What I've tried to emulate, and what I try to model as a manager today, is trusting the people around me to have better ideas than I do.” He also uses his perspective to help his reports in their careers. Starting out, he says, “I had this naive assumption that if I did what I was asked and I was good at it, my career growth would just kind of automatically ‘happen.’ But it wasn't until I took ownership of my career that I really saw the growth that I wanted. I want to see my reports succeed and grow, and I need their active engagement to do that. I would have asked for more critical feedback to see the areas where I could grow.”

Reflecting on what’s kept him at Audible for 25 years, Oren says, “The people keep me here. I switched to doing mobile development because I liked the team. I still work with awesome people, and I've had the opportunity to grow and and try lots of new things over the course of my career here at Audible.”