What does it take to design and run one of the world’s largest sales compensation organizations, paying out nearly half a billion dollars in commissions?
In this episode of Uncappd Insider, we sit down with John Lee, Senior Director of Sales Compensation at LinkedIn, who leads a team that manages compensation for 5,000+ sales reps.
Presented by: Everstage • Uncappd Insider Podcast
Guest: John Lee, Senior.Director of Sales Compensation, LinkedIn ( / johnlee49ers )
Host: Shiva, CEO & Co-founder, Everstage ( / sivasrajamani )
If you’re in RevOps, Sales Ops, or SaaS leadership, this is your masterclass on how sales comp becomes a growth engine. John Lee shares 25 years of lessons from spreadsheets to AI agents on scaling compensation systems, driving growth, and turning governance from red tape into trust.
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YouTube Chapters
00:00 – Intro: The hardest part of building a modern revenue engine
02:20 – From analyst to architect: John’s journey into sales comp
05:10 – From spreadsheets to systems: the rise of cloud-based comp
08:55 – Designing plans that drive the right behavior
10:30 – How LinkedIn scaled comp for 5,000+ reps
14:45 – The art of agility: how priorities shift during the year
22:00 – Building one of the largest global comp teams
27:20 – Inside LinkedIn’s comp org structure
32:00 – Building resilient systems and processes
37:40 – AI in sales comp: the first inning
38:30 – How John’s team uses AI agents to flag and automate
40:20 – Why AI won’t replace judgment—it’ll scale it
44:30 – What future leaders in sales comp need to master
48:10 – Storytelling and stakeholder influence as core skills
50:30 – The biggest lesson learned in 25 years
52:00 – Why execution beats perfect strategy
56:40 – Lightning round: metrics that matter
1:00:20 – The most underrated enablement artifact
1:04:00 – Closing analogy: run comp like a Michelin-star restaurant
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