Musings on my time at SiriusXM

[atrainradio]

I'll put this in context. I first logged in to HFUnderground way back in 2012 or 2013. I was still in high school. And many years later in May of 2022, having always wanted to work in radio (in a legitimate capacity) I landed a real job at SiriusXM.

And now, yesterday, I got fired. Which, y'know, certainly came as a shock to me. Never been fired before! But I wasn't the only one it seems who went to work for SXM yesterday and came home sans-employment. "we're tightening our belts" as it were.

I was getting paid peanuts, especially living here in NYC. But I loved who I worked with dearly. They were wonderful people, and I'll miss seeing them daily. My boss - I genuinely am not upset with him. I don't believe he was some sadist who got off on firing people. They did it on a Zoom meeting, and he just read off of a script. No personal message or anything. I would've appreciated a little phone call afterwards from him, sure, a little "hey Anthony I'm sorry about all this" or whatever. But, it is how it is.

I worked specifically on our Beatles Channel (my favorite band). I got to be a few feet away from Macca himself. I got to meet Sean Lennon in personal multiple times. Micky Dolenz, lots more. I feel eternally lucky to have had this experience and it's a shame it ended abruptly. At least I don't think I burnt any bridges.

Trying to not think too much anymore about the embarrassment and shock. Signing up for what I need to, freshening up the ol' Resume (Resume Mucho) and finding humor where I can.

Would I recommend someone work at SiriusXM? Yeah, if you can afford the dismal pay. But truthfully, you would work with some great people in a fancy skyscraper in Midtown, and isn't that alone worth it? In all seriousness, it was, for now, the best job I ever had.

Shoutout Dennis, Bill, Tom, Donika, Carl. You guys were a blessing in my life.

[NJQA]

Sorry to hear about how they handled this.  Layoffs by VTC or e-mail (that seem to be the norm these days), leave me unhappy.  This is a time when people need emotional support and even if corporate does this as a disinterested third party, any good first level manager should talk to you face to face.  At least that was the way I did it when I was working (I retired a while ago).

I got a tour of the XM radio setup in Washington DC not too long after they started operations.  I was working for the government at the time and also had a personal XM account.  I mentioned during the tour to the VP of Engineering that I was seeing some puzzling things about how my Sony XM radio was working.  I described the issue and he smiled and said he would have someone call me about that.  Sure enough, a week later I got a call from one of his engineers who explained what was happening in detail - nothing wrong with the Sony, it was designed to behave just like I was seeing.

I also remember them telling me they bought two copies of each CD for their massive music server.  All the music was loaded on the server and each channel built their  playlist and pulled from the same server real time.  That’s probably how everyone does things today, but back then it seemed impressive to me considering how many channels were running simultaneously.  (This was when Windows 98/NT/XP were common.)

[atrainradio]

Cheers NJQA for your input. Yeah, one of the biggest things I learned during my time there was Zetta automation. I only worked with RCS AudioVault and MusicMaster beforehand. Oh and Scott Studios (who remembers that???).

And true to what you heard, on the Beatles Channel specifically, we did have two cuts of (almost) each song. The entirety of all the music on the servers counts for dozens of terabytes of space. All WAV 16kbs 44.1k. I'm proud to say I put in some original mono mixes they were missing though, including a few Saucerful of Secrets mono mixes.

A few weeks removed now and feeling a lot more on track. It's up to the Big Man upstairs if I ever get back in the radio industry. I still run WZML-LP 92.9 "Where the Zenith of Music Lives" which is honestly my dream come true, being fully in charge of a little community station, getting to be the antithesis of commercial radio. This is all to say that this firing is a bit of a blessing as I now have more time to dedicate to WZML.

[NQC]

Hey Atrainradio,

I am very sorry to hear about how they handled this.

NYC is a big market and I am sure something else will come along.

I am “ semi” retired and took a low pay, but easy job as a “ placeholder “ for the next year or two.

Quite cool to hear about the FM LP.

I have done several Pt. 15 ( and “ plus “ ) on the AM band.

I wish very good luck on your job search.

de NQC