[jasongrishkoff]

I did a 20% project for Google Music back its early days, circa 2012. I was working on the Executive Compensation team at the time, but running a music blog called Indie Shuffle on the side. It's a long time ago, but I seem to recall naïvly hoping they'd embrace me with arms wide open and invite me to join their team + revamp their strategy.

I met with a couple members of their team who were open to entertaining me given my background with a music blog. I remember being really excited about it - and I spent a lot of time preparing a deck about how exposure provided by the Google Music blog could be used as leverage to give the platform legitimacy in the eyes of independent artists (something that SoundCloud was doing really well at the time).

A few senior leaders agreed to let me pitch my ideas, and after a fair bit of head-nodding, nothing actually happened.

I ended up leaving Google about 3 months later to take my music blog full-time (still up and running at https://www.indieshuffle.com, and eventually started a much-more successful music venture called SubmitHub - https://www.submithub.com). I count myself fortunate to say I have no regrets leaving Google.

Reflecting on the idea of 20% projects, I do appreciate that my managers gave me the opportunity to explore alternate opportunities within the company, and that the Google Music team was receptive to me poking my head into their affairs. I think it holds a lot of potential when it comes to retaining top talent that's at risk of jumping ship for something different, and made me feel like I was part of the larger company rather than simply stuck in a silo.

[jcdavis]

Oh shit you created indieshuffle?

We're getting way off topic here, but I'm curious what your thoughts on the current state of the world on music blogging is. I was pretty big into following the music blog/hype machine scene in 2010-2014ish, and it seems like the other streaming services (particularly Spotify) have more or less killed that world with the exceptions of the biggest blogs, which seems pretty unfortunate to me.

[jasongrishkoff]

Loaded question! I've done a lot of podcasts/interviews lately where I touch on this subject.

Spotify did indeed take away a lot of the "regular listeners" from music blogs, but they're not alone in the downfall of music blogs as a whole. I think a lot of that can be pegged on the way the internet has shifted in general. Music blogs lost a lot of things in that 2013-2015 era, including (but not limited to):

- A steep drop in advertising revenue (we used to charge $5+ CPM - but folks learned Google/Facebook were far more effective). This wasn't specific to the music blogging industry - pretty much all independent publishers went through this.

- Google giving 50% of their real-estate for song searches to a giant YouTube thumb. Killed SEO for music blogs overnight.

- Technology: Spotify just does music-listening tech better than any independent music blog could ever hope to.

So, in an age where Spotify is king and everyone's buzzing about TikTok, where do music blogs fit? And are they even relevant?

Heck yes they are! Thing is, music blogs are where people actually go to discover music. Spotify, on the flip side, caters toward "passive" listening experiences where they make sure you never have to think about it for yourself.

Net result is that for artists a targeted blog promotion campaign is still quite important as it can lead to valuable exposure within the industry: A&R teams at labels, Spotify editorial staff, and festival bookers (RIP) still look to music blogs to do the grunt work of sifting through the 25,000+ new songs coming out daily.

In 2015 I launched https://www.submithub.com/ to help music blogs deal with the hundreds of music submissions they were receiving daily. That platform has since taken off - recently passing its 16 millionth submission (in less than 5 years).

We allow artists to easily connect with blogs, Spotify playlisters, YouTube channels, Instagram/TikTok influencers and more -- and compensate those curators for the time they spend listening to and considering each submission. And believe it or not, one of the most-targeted outlet types on there is still the humble "blog".

I could go on for hours, but I'll leave it at that for now :)

[yowlingcat]

Love this back and forth. I think I remember submitting a track with a collaborator to SubmitHub years ago and thinking it was neat that it even existed.

[jcdavis]

Thanks for the explanation, make sense.

[specialist]

Was there an exit interview? Was any one curious about your plans?

In my future perfect alternate reality:

Google Ventures, GoogleX, or even just thwarted & bored midlevel manager aspiring to become an angel investor, would offer seed capital to any one turning in their badge.

"Hey @jasongrishkoff, if you ever need some cash for an idea, please talk to me first."

In my mind, that parting offer is central to Silicon Valley's magic. There's an apocryphal tale about a much disliked boss offering seed money to mutinous employees. I thought it was Shockley and the Traitorous Eight, but I can't find a cite.

[jasongrishkoff]

They were very supportive of my departure to pursue my own business, and I've kept in touch with a number of folks there over the years. I was offered a "sabbatical" of sorts (assuming things didn't work out), but I declined that on grounds that accepting it would convey that I didn't have full faith in my ability to make it on my own. Thank goodness it all worked out in the end :-D

[graderjs]

That's brave, congrats! I like that.

[jldugger]

> Executive Compensation team at the time

What exactly does that work entail?

> A few senior leaders agreed to let me pitch my ideas, and after a fair bit of head-nodding, nothing actually happened.

I suspect successful 20% time projects are the ones where permission is not required, and don't need someone else to implement?

[jasongrishkoff]

> What exactly does that work entail

We helped the CEO and SVPs figure out how much to pay the company's top ~100. That meant we were hands on with performance bonuses, equity packages, hiring negotiations, promotions, and more.

> I suspect successful 20% time projects are the ones where permission is not required, and don't need someone else to implement?

Part of my proposal was that they bring me on to help them run their fledgling music blog, so it wasn't so much that they needed to execute much themselves -- more that they needed to decide the music blog was worth having a dedicated employee. At the time I think they were more focused on trying to get all their licensing ducks in a row.

[hackitup7]

The executive compensation team is really interesting – if you read this and have a moment, I'd love to hear anything that you're up for sharing such as:

* Was the purview of the team to craft a compensation "system," or to handle specific decisions / one-offs for exec comp?

* Was there a technical/quantitative aspect to this, ie were you all trying to make data-driven decisions on how to pay executives based upon pulling data, testing what comp packages worked etc, or was it more of a general analyze-the-market-and-make-recommendations process?

* To what extent were you advising CEOs/SVPs vs. actually making a call on what their reports would make comp-wise?

I didn't realize that teams like this (specialized comp analysis for top executives) existed, I always figured that it was baked into existing compensation-focused teams.

[texasbigdata]

Some of this, for the top 5 to 7, is public in the annual proxy; not just at Google but everywhere. Due to the principal agent problem the public data conforms homogeneously due to the retention of consultants to “benchmark”. However it would be fascinating to hear the OPs answer.

[Roritharr]

Your (former) main job sounds like a treasure trove of valuable career advice!

[cambalache]

Many many years ago I started as a junior employee in a big company together with a close friend. I was in finance, she was in HR. From time to time we had a drink to catch up and while I was doing unglamorous grunt work she was dealing with things like compensation packages for VPs, a short-list for a new regional CEO, the yearly ranking of all employees, etc. From time to time she gave me morsels of confidential information (like the salary a VP was getting or where they were planning to move the offices).It was a totally different ball game. That's why (among other things) it is very very unwise to cross off or even to confess stuff to HR, they are at a different level.

A petty thing I noticed with the years is that in HR, even very junior people will treat you with condescension and a sort of disdain. They know your salary and know where you were in the corporate ladder,they deal with the CEO packages so you are just a mediocre fish in the pond for them.

Skillful HR people also create a pretty solid network so if they leave the company they usually land sweet gigs in other companies or they can start a consulting agency. Out all the places of a corporation HR must be one of the best to be. (Cue hundreds of actual HR managers refuting me)

[PeterisP]

It's kind of interesting that the ~100 people would have a whole full-time support team just for assisting the decisions (not even making them) of their compensation.

[texasbigdata]

Legally, you’d hire consultants anyways, so the cost basis is irrelevant. If you are required to have insurance or a specific license but you could avoid it through a costly self education process, you end up in the same place.

Going back, let’s say the top is $100M, let’s say the bottom is....(not sure how to guess this)....

Ok, so, the 7th executive made $20M based on this dated public doc (1). So let’s say the top slate is $250M. Going from $20M to $1M for everyone else is ... $900M? Anyways so $1.15B.

The real thing though it’s probably not the cash expenditure part. It’s probably the GROWTH you can get by designing it correct. You’d be okay to spend for results.

Anyways at a high level, let’s say you have 5 FTEs at $200k, plus overhead at 100%, that’s $2M on $1B or 0.5%? Meh, it’s a transaction cost.

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1288776/000130817913...

[beaconstudios]

I just wanted to say thank you for creating Indie Shuffle - I discovered some of my favourite songs on there! I've found music discovery to be quite hard, and Indie Shuffle has been a great source for my taste.

[hamburglar]

Glad you plugged indieshuffle. I checked it out and love it so far. I'm going to make a point to listen to music through it for a bit and see what I find. So far all the songs I've heard are Soundcloud and it's hard to find any information on how/where you source the material. Is it soundcloud-only? Any interest or plans for integrating a site like Bandcamp that's more oriented around me eventually supporting the artist by buying something?

[ultimoo]

Great story, thanks for sharing. What is it like being on google’s exec compensation team? I had no idea that was a thing and would love to listen to any more fun stories (only if you’re allowed to share).

[jasongrishkoff]

Exec comp is definitely a little-known function of most major companies. Normally folks would outsource that type of work to consultants, but Google was big enough that it needed 2 of us full-time.

We helped the CEO and SVPs figure out how much to pay the company's top ~100. That meant we were hands on with performance bonuses, equity packages, hiring negotiations, promotions, and more.

The coolest part about it was getting to frequently join Laszlo Bock (head of People Ops at the time) when he met face-to-face with the CEO (first Eric, then Larry) and the SVPs to discuss all of the above. It got to the point where they all began to recognize me, which was pretty darn cool as a 20-something-year-old.

A byproduct of all that exposure was that I ended up being privy to a huge chunk of the "corporate drama" taking place in the upper ranks. It's been 7 years since I left, but as I'm sure you can understand, getting into details is probably a bit of a no-no :)

[specialist]

I'm so envious of your experiences. Geek me was completely oblivious to all that practical stuff.

Scott Galloway (?) has observed that successful entrepreneurs and CEOs are nurtured, just like all other professionals. So 20 somethings doing leadership stuff are more likely to be pretty good once they're 40 somethings. Steve Jobs, Larry Page, Michael Dell, many others are pretty good examples.

[ultimoo]

This was a great read! Thank you for sharing :-)

[swyx]

(OP here) thanks for the response!

so the tricky question is - why stop at 20% - why not 40% - or 80%? could you make a case for that?

[tigger0jk]

You could argue that Valve' s stated policy is 100% time. I'm not sure what the reality of it is but it seems like they really do want to let you work on whatever, although it might be more directed towards things that are valuable for the company and that you're good at, not just anything you desire to do on a whim. Employee Handbook: https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/apps/valve/Valve_NewEmployee...

[wtracy]

Both Google and Valve use stack ranking for performance reviews, which is a pretty brutal system.

So the picture I get of Valve is that yes, you can pick whatever you want to work on, but choosing poorly will bite you in the ass.

[mondoshawan]

It depends on the need/success of the project. My first 20% project was a disconnected caching filesystem back in 2005 and it was rapidly shifted to my 80% project as it solved a real need in our infrastructure.

[donbrae]

SubmitHub is awesome! Used it to promote my last couple of EPs.