https://www.jamestgreen.com/thoughts/115

[ ]
The Studio of James T. Green
James T. Green is an audio producer by trade and an artist by
practice.
The Studio of James T. Green
James T. Green is an audio producer by trade and an artist by
practice.

thoughts + feelings

~ that may or may not exist ~

115: Glass Walls

I - Transparent

In December of 2015, Gimlet Media, a budding startup with a quirky
name, was valued at $30 million. The company closed a Series A round
of funding, after spending the last couple of months raising capital
from investors accustomed to Uber-like returns.

But Gimlet wasn't selling food delivery infrastructure, or
proprietary algorithms--the company's value was the promise of
industrializating storytelling at scale. The engineering adage goes:
"Faster, better, cheaper--pick two." Having been at the company, it
was clear that Gimlet believed they could achieve all three, and that
hubris was the original sin.

April 2017, Brittany Luse and Eric Eddings asked if I was interested
in helping out with their new show at Gimlet. The piloting process
was complete and officially green lit. They had a senior producer,
editor, and a producer on staff, and they needed additional help to
get them over the finish line. The project was called Capital B. I
was a producer at MTV, and after our unionization effort was picking
up steam, it was looking likely that layoffs were about to happen.
Five months prior, I moved to New York for that position, so I needed
a backup plan. 

K, director of People Ops at the time, emailed me to gauge my
interest working on Capital B. I took a walk down the street to James
Walker Park and took the call. The air sucked out of the park when
she informed me that it was a contract position. At the time, I had
two offers building at other production houses, but I was definitely
willing to prioritize working on a show by and for Black people. I
asked how likely it seemed that a contract position would move into
full time, and she assured me that Gimlet was a growing company and
it was a good risk to make.

A couple days later, I took a video chat with my would-be editor in a
closet studio at MTV's office. Then I produced an unpaid edit test
while completing an episode of Speed Dial, and later, took time off
for an in-person interview with my would-be senior producer. I put in
one more PTO day to meet K for a final in-person chat.

At the time, Gimlet's offices were in Gowanus, a neighborhood of
Brooklyn known for a canal that smells like pennies. They were in a
large loft building, leasing space above Genius, a startup known for
its culture of extraction. All the offices were glass, a striking
difference from the beige cube farm of MTV. I hoped the glass walls
mirrored the values of the company--transparency and openness.

K's office was in the back of the glass fortress on the third floor.
She informed me that she wanted to extend me the position. I asked
again why this position was contract rather than full time. She
closed her laptop and spoke candidly about the company's financials.
Basically, since Capital B was brand new, the success of the show
would determine if I would get hired on full time. Once the show got
over the imaginary hump of financial stability, a secure job would be
likely. I told her about the two budding offers, which had then
become actual offers, and the potential financial risk of working
with a startup. She assured me to trust her--Gimlet is growing, and
getting in the door is the best thing I could do for my career. She
also mentioned that the route of working as a development producer
could be a possibility, and she would help me out if I was
interested. According to her, if I "showed my value" and the show
became the success it needed to be, I had a great chance to stay on
staff, either at Capital B or as a development producer.

Looking back, I wish I got her assurance in writing. Looking back, I
realized she was a great marketer. I told the other two offers that I
found another position, and took a pay cut for a vocal promise.
$1,300 a week. No stipend for health insurance. Because I was a
contractor, I would miss out on stock options, which would normally
be an enticing factor to ease the risk. I hadn't realized that my
labor would grease the wheels towards an acquisition of the company,
and begin a months long dependence on contract labor to line the
pockets of private investors. But the value, according to the
company, was not in my take home pay, but the promise that you would
be a part of something greater.

II - Fogged

We had six months to prove ourselves. I had been part of a hiring
spree of contract producers at Gimlet. This was the period in which
Reply All and Science VS were rocket ships. The company was flying
high after the success of Mystery Show. Surprisingly Awesome was deep
in production, and The Habitat was merely batches of tape logged in
Google Sheets. Gimlet Creative was ramping up its second branded show
back when branded shows were a new concept. It was also when the
divide between Full Timers and Contractors began to take shape. I
took walks with my other contractor colleagues. One who worked on The
Pitch recalled a similar conversation with K.

Gimlet was a risk worth taking. Prove your worth, and you'll stay on.

We believed it, or at least we tried to. We noticed the new batch of
contractors were Black and Brown like us, and the Full Timers were
mostly white.

Capital B was on the floor below the glass fortress. Floor 2. We
shared desk space with Gimlet Creative and the newly developed
Business and Marketing team. Looking back, silently soaking the
information that oozed out of Gimlet Creative and Marketing was the
truest insight into how the company ran. On the floor above, Weekly
All Staffs run by CEO's A and M showed bar graphs of download numbers
organized by show in front of the whole company, gamifying each
show's success against each other. There, in bright pixels, were the
power dynamics on display. Those with the tall bar graphs held the
most power in decision making. It was telling during these all
staffs, many of tall bar graphers stayed in their glass boxes, backs
turned, eating their chicken and rice bowls. There was no reason to
participate in this peacocking when your bar graphs were consistently
the longest.

Over the next six months, I threw myself into my work. Abacus
confirmations informed me that reimbursements for late night Seamless
deliveries and 1am Lyft ride homes were paid in full. We worked on
key art, theme songs, and reporting stories--building a nice
head-start for what would become a weekly production. We found a new
name, The Nod. 

Usually, those also waiting for cabs home were the other Black and
Brown contractors. We believed the promise. Desk mates at Gimlet
Creative commended me for staying late. They cheered me on, telling
me that hopefully staff would see my worth. Pro Tools sessions burned
into my eyes. October 13th, 2017, I was sent to the hospital for a
pulmonary embolism. Mount Sinai removed the clots from my lungs.
October 17th, I went back to work. At least I got a three day
weekend.

Weeks before my contract was up, I asked my team about the
possibility of my contract becoming a full time position. Everyone on
The Nod wanted to keep me on, but according to the CFO, financials
were preventing that decision. I approached K about her suggestion
from April, that being brought on if I showed my worth would actually
become a reality. I saw the bar graphs growing each All Staff. Write
ups of the show were appearing in the New Yorker. The show was
building a buzz. She shrugged and apologized, and suggested I reach
out to C, who was Head of Development at the time. I asked why she
couldn't do it, and she informed me that it would be more impactful
if I reached out myself. It was becoming clear that there was no road
to development at the company, especially if you were a contract
employee. We were fending for ourselves, picking up scraps while
pulling the second shift of fighting for a slot. 

After a few Slack messages, the office manager was able to get me on
C's calendar. We had a few minutes to meet in the glass box of the
development office, which was on floor 2, along with The Nod and
Gimlet Creative. In that meeting, I explained how upon hiring, I was
told that the success of The Nod could determine if I was kept on as
a full time producer, but since the show's success wasn't translating
financially, I might have a better shot being brought into the fold
of development.

There were few times in that conversation which C's eyes met mine.
The majority of it, her eyes were locked on her iPhone, the purple of
Slack blurring between the red of Gmail and the blue of Google
Calendar--flipping between apps like a deck of cards. She looked at
me when she stated that she'd "look into it" but development wasn't
hiring at the moment. Weeks later at an All Staff, new hires were
announced on the development side. The shows became We Came to Win
and The Habitat.

After the company closed a $15 million Series B round of investment,
A and M began to hold open office hours on Fridays after the All
Staff meetings. They would sit in the largest glass box on the third
floor, and anyone could walk in and talk candidly with them. I
thought about the side conversations I had with colleagues on some of
the newer productions--Uncivil on floor 1 and Crimetown on floor 3.
Other Black and Brown folks were sharing with me their experiences as
interns and contractors. How we were brought in the door with this
promise of a meritocracy, and how it was slowly revealing itself as
exploitation. An increase of a valuation price built on our backs.

I sat across from A and M during one of these office hours, and
shared my time at Gimlet. How I was brought in on a promise. How I
literally sacrificed my body for the growth of a show's success. How
other contract employees--both in editorial and Gimlet
Creative--shared my experience of being brought in on a dream, and
are leaving feeling shriveled and extracted. And how it suspiciously
seemed to be majority Black and Brown people on the tail end of this
process.

A rubbed his face continually. M adjusted his glasses. Both flipped
their phones face down on the table. M expressed his apologies. A
expressed his regrets. A stated how thankful he was that I brought
this to his attention, and how they would do better by their
employees. I believed them.

Every Friday on, I'd look at The Nod's bar. It appeared to be the
ticket to my hiring. If it grew, my chances grew. Unfortunately, the
threshold of sustainability never materialized. I realized I was led
to believe that my non-hiring was due to my own merits and not a
series of destructive practices hidden in the foundation of the
company's birth. 

On my last day, The Nod team surprised me with a thank you note and a
gift card to B&H to pick up my own recording equipment since I was
hopping back on the job market. It was then I realized how much your
show team determines your destiny and experience at Gimlet. I felt
more supported and cared for by the people on that team, than any
formal development process that was promised or encouraged. They were
my buffer from the company's failings--Rain-X for institutional
bullshit.

At a happy hour weeks later, everyone who worked on The Nod--from
Brittany and Eric, to the producers and editors--made sure to tell me
how they saw how the company screwed me over, and how they wished
they could have helped me more.

III - Opaque

Nearly a year later, August 2018, the desk-mate at Gimlet Creative
that commended me for working late on The Nod emailed me asking if I
was looking for contract work on the branded content side. I was
working at another media company where rumblings of layoffs were
surfacing like earthquake aftershocks--the sisyphean state of working
in media. I thought about the conversation in the glass box with A
and M. I hoped the environment changed. I hoped they listened. I gave
them another chance, and took another pay cut.

By this point, Gimlet moved from Gowanus to Downtown Brooklyn. A new
development down the street was covered with window decals,
advertising its rooftop garden. "Spend a day at the park without
leaving home." The Gowanus glass fortress made way for the new
office's decor of concrete pillars and reclaimed wood. Freshly
unpackaged Article furniture smelled like new money. The only glass
fortresses that remained were two--the center of the office with
sliding garage doors, and the other, on the east side of the office,
a traditional conference room to where the shareholders were whisked
away. You could tell who were the shareholders: slender white men
wearing expensive backpacks and brown beads on their wrist. The
remnants of their wealth were represented by mountains of half eaten
sandwiches and fruit left behind. It was later reclaimed by
workers--their footsteps towards the plates in lockstep with the
echoing Knock Brush of an @here emanating from MacBooks across the
office.

In 2018, Gimlet fully embraced contract work as a dependable source
of extractive cheap labor. We joked that you were either a Justworks
employee or a TargetCW employee--your status determined by your HR
software. These grievances manifested in a private Slack channel for
contractors, which especially lit up during All Staffs, which still
trotted the gamified bar charts subconsciously pitting shows against
another. The power dynamics were still on display, now with wider
leads in accordance to those that were around the company the
longest.

At the side of the office where Gimlet Creative sat, the contract
employees sat at a different table than the full time employees.
Weekly GC team meetings were full time staff only, in conference
rooms that were directly in front of the contractor's table. The
contractors Slack filled with stories of the same promises.

We can't bring you on full time, but maybe a slot will open up.

It was clear the onus was placed on us. It wasn't spelled out, but it
was implied by actions and institutional gestures--if we weren't
hired full time, it was our fault. We didn't work hard enough to
prove our worth or we weren't a culture fit. I had another pulmonary
embolism on September 30th 2018, stayed in the hospital until October
2nd, and went back to work on October 3rd. PTO was slim for TargetCW
employees.

Someone in the contractor's Slack brought up money. We passed around
a spreadsheet to share our weekly rates, demographic information, and
levels of experience. Of course they were uneven, with trends
revealed along typical lines of pay discrepancies. Among Gimlet
Creative contractors at the Producer level, the highest paid was a
cis-white woman. She was initially offered $1500 a week, and her
negotiations landed at $1750. I was the lowest paid, initially
offered $1200 a week, with my negotiations landing at $1600.
Cis-white women held the majority of positions of power at Gimlet
Creative, and the company as a whole.

Whispers of a sale to Spotify echoed around the office. A union
effort whispered on the same frequency. The contractor's Slack
pondered how much value we provided towards the company's valuation,
and how we would see none of the fruits of the windfall payout that
possibly loomed in the coming year.

My contract was coming to a close, and I juggled three offers from
outside production houses. Weeks prior, a Black woman was brought
onto Gimlet Creative under a brand new position as Creative Director.
Finally, there was someone I could speak to candidly and directly
about my experience. I shared with her how my development was at a
standstill, like spinning a cul de sac expecting to reach the main
road. She pushed the CMO that my hiring was imperative. She stepped
up when my managers blinked. She did what everyone else promised, and
advocated for my work. She gave the department an ultimatum for
making a decision on my hiring.

The day before Thanksgiving break, I wheeled my suitcase into work to
take a flight for the holidays. I told my colleagues goodbye and left
the office to pick up a charger before taking a cab to the airport. I
got a Slack from my manager asking if I left already. I told her I
did, and she asked if I could come back to the office. We met in a
studio. She closed her laptop, and offered me a full time position at
Gimlet Creative. I accepted the offer, left the office, and went on
holiday.

2019 flipped into focus, and the union whispers morphed into a
scream. I joined the organizing committee. Slack conversations moved
to Whatsapp. One of colleagues opened her home to become our
unofficial headquarters. The glass walls had ears.

Once it came time to sign cards, those with more power and clout in
the company shoved their weight around. Those with tall bars on the
All Staff charts posted Slack messages dampening the union efforts.
Perhaps there was fear their shares would be in jeopardy. It wasn't
enough to stop our momentum. The union went public. The sale went
public. Million and thousandaires were made overnight. I noticed A's
sweaters increase in quality. I noticed more Seamless orders flooding
the office. I noticed tall bar chart colleagues split off to the left
of the elevators to wait for their Ubers, while the rest of us split
to the right to walk to the train. The organizing committee pushed
that contractors at the time of the sale should be hired on, and at
least receive a small payout to acknowledge their efforts towards the
company's sale. The TargetCW producers on Gimlet Creative became
Justworks producers. A check appeared in my direct deposit, and I got
a taste of new money. I bought some sneakers from a boutique in NoHo
to celebrate.

IV - Shattered

When the Green Dot spread across the office, there were no more
TargetCW and Justworks producers--we all became Workday producers.
Spotify was solidifying the foundations that Gimlet built. I imagined
concrete pouring into the glass walls. Eventually, the walls would
shatter, and the concrete would take its shape, revealing the boxes
set in stone. Spotify invested in the infrastructure and formula that
Gimlet created--industrializing at scale the art of storytelling.

Before podcasting, I worked in the general quotation marks of "arts
and technology." I saw the flood of private equity bolstering
startups into the stratosphere. Pillaging ideas with the speed of
venture capital. Revisiting early episodes of Startup, these
predatory practices were built in the early days of the company's
funding. It was by design, the rush of day trading cloaked in the
Everlane threads of public radio. The perfect trojan horse. I started
reading Anna Wiener's Uncanny Valley on January 14, 2020, and left
the company soon after. Around that time, many Black employees were
slowly leaving the company. We jokingly referred to it as the
Blexodus.

Even though I'm at a new company, I've noticed how much I've
internalized the gaslighting I've experienced during my two tenures
at Gimlet. I've developed a shorthand with my therapist--Gimlet PTSD.
If Gimlet PTSD made its way into the DSM-5, you would see its
criteria in many people of color that left the company: unconscious
curtailing to white colleagues, and silently holding your tongue in
fear of retribution.

I think about sitting in that glass box with A and M in 2018, telling
them about the issues I saw on the horizon based on how contract
employees of color were treated at the company. I thought about how
in that same glass box, weeks prior, A taught an internal skillshare.
He shared his story formula, which was widely shared among the
industry as the how-to for narrative storytelling. 

"This is a story about X, and it's interesting because Y."

He shared an example of a story that is not interesting.

"I'm doing a story about a homeless guy who lived on the streets for
10 years, and what's interesting is, he didn't get off the streets
until he got into a treatment program."

Then, he shared how that story can be pivoted into something that is
interesting.

"I'm doing a story about a homeless guy who lived on the streets for
10 years, and what's interesting is, he learned valuable and
surprising life lessons while homeless, lessons he applies regularly
in his current job as an account manager for Oppenheimer mutual
funds."

I found it interesting that his definition of an interesting story
hinged on the idea that a homeless person would only provide lessons
that the listener could relate to, only if we know that this person
now "productively" contributes to society, in the financial sector of
all things. This very idea of extractive storytelling without the
investigation of power dynamics, was the value that investors bought
into and mechanized into a hyper-growth assembly line with extractive
processes that left husks of people of color in its wake. 

I imagined this skillshare was actually a slide from the initial
pitch of Gimlet to investors. And I imagined rather than producers
around the table, were investors--beads clanking on reclaimed wood,
notifications pinging aloud from their phones. The promise that the
messiness and inefficiencies of storytelling could be simplified and
reproduced as a formula. That promise, much like WeWork's attempt to
industrialize human connection, was enticing--salivating even--to any
investor bored of smartphone-based infrastructure pitches. You have
the possibility to scale empathy.

Faster, sure.

Cheaper, probably.

Better, not so much.

James T. GreenFebruary 28, 2021
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116: Hidden in Plain Sight

James T. GreenMarch 7, 2021
 
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114: augmented audio realities

James T. GreenDecember 15, 2020

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~ what I'm up to /now ~
 
Mar 28, 2021
3/28/2021
Mar 28, 2021

This morning, I caught up with a group of friends on Zoom. I perched
my phone against a coffee container and continually removed and
replaced my gloves, only exposing a thumb, in order to interact with
the floating heads of my loved ones. The umbrella outside of the cafe
was futile against the rain--the speed accelerating with the prescion
of a shower attachment. The droplets that escaped the barrier of
plastic eventually bounced onto my screen and obscured the faces of
my friends shortly before rolling off onto the table--blurring their
facial features into magnified RGB pixels. In my physical body, I
took up public space. I gestured with the intensity that comes from
talking with three friends about passionate topics, but passersby
merely witnessed a solitary, masculine-presenting human gesticulating
into a handheld device.

Hours later, Joelle sent me an essay in which I felt immense kinship
towards. The author, Daniel, penned a letter to the joys of biking at
night. To him, "pedaling felt like a celebration of kinetic energy,
of blood, cartilage, and bone," and this act brought him peace as
someone who lives with a preexisting heart condition. The pleasure of
movement became a way to free the body from the prison that fate
constructed around it.

Reading this essay, I thought back to sitting outside during a
rainstorm. I thought back to yesterday, sitting in the grass at
Brower Park, resting the legs that propelled me over nine miles. I
thought back to that same day, even hours earlier, where a
conversation with Adriene traversed the speed of hyperobjects. Even
as my body currently sits on a couch in my living room, I think about
the energy it expels. Harshali, one of my friends whom I gesticulated
towards this morning--referred to this idea of our bodies as "living
fossils."

Towards the end of the essay, Daniel referred to the potholes he'd
hit on his bike, the "jolts in the road", and how they reminded him
that he "still existed in these streets." I couldn't help but
reverberate that clause as I imagined my living fossil eventually
depleting--the ideas I've shared and reverberating actions of my body
during my time on Earth being the only renewable resource that
outlives me. When my body eventually leaves, we'll [sic] still be in
these streets.

Mar 28, 2021
 
Jan 10, 2021
1/10/2021
Jan 10, 2021

I came into 2021 thinking things would be fairly different, but its
more of the same, while the Earth gets slightly older in age.

The end of my 2020 felt like a scramble. My blood pressure was a
warning sign. My systolic pressure reminded me of my transition into
my thirties--a special club for Black folks. The pace of work I
chased since I was 18, working the second shift of moonlighting
projects, is no longer sustainable. I needed to slow down. I decided
into this year, inspired by Chiquita, to take a project sabbatical
for the foreseeable future. My brain and body is worth much more than
the pressures the outside world places on it.

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about extraction, especially in this
industry. The sneaky ways in which people, who recognize what you
have, find ways to get it from you. Picking your brain. Let's have a
quick call. What are you up to? Especially Black artists, we seem to
be especially expected to give this type of labor. These
wolves--dressed in the clothing of modern liberalism, bangs, and a
love for Run the Jewels--find ways to prop themselves on the backs of
our minds.

Other than that, I recently put some thoughts to paper about the
relationship between augmented reality and audio storytelling. If you
have any thoughts about it, I'd love to hear from you. Also, I
recently read this book, Transcendent Waves by Lavender Suarez, and
it was utterly fantastic.

Jan 10, 2021
 
Aug 13, 2020
8/13/2020
Aug 13, 2020

It's been a particularly quiet season of reflection that is slowly
building to a hum. With that, a lot of my obsessions over the year
are starting to bloom.

I wrote an essay that attempted to capture the thoughts I've been
grasping about in my journal--particularly around both the collapsing
of space thanks to digital technologies and the desire of privacy in
public spaces.

In the shadow of that essay, I released an album that I've been
working on for the last seven years. It's titled MOLTEN  and
captured the mania and depression I've experienced over that time
period through voice memos, original compositions, and lyric demos
from friends.

Both of these projects were reawakened from a recent trip to Vermont
for my birthday. Gazing out at the Adirondacks from the kitchen
table, my wife and I noticed four ravens in lockstep, gravitating
towards the window. They shuffled as if they were a high school
marching band, alerting us of their presence. It felt like a sign
from the grave. In the last seven years, I lost four loved ones in
gruesome and sudden ways. They've occupied permanent space in my
molten heart, and I wish nothing more than to simply FaceTime them
right now. Just seeing their faces move behind glass in my palm would
be enough for me.

Coming back to Brooklyn as a 31 year old felt like dumping the water
from a old vase, the roses already wilted, waiting for me to either
press the flowers or throw them away. As the colder months of this
extended March are creeping towards me, I wish to both capture these
memories forever and also let go of the unsalvageable leaves.

Aug 13, 2020
 

       (c) 2009 - , a house alongside the river of the internet.