10 ms·

Making 20% Time Work

214 points by begriffs 11y ago

eitally 11y ago
This isn't bad, per se, and it's good to think about, but I want to throw it out there that the only reason 20% time works decently at Google is because of Google's culture. By virtue of empowering employees to find problems and solve them, and being supportive of career dev & internal transfer, and making boatloads of money, it makes it easy for the org to tolerate the slack this forces in defined teams. Almost none of the kinds of things that encourage 20% projects at Google typically exist in large enterprises, and when those companies try things like this it typically ends up being much more forced and much less organic, for better AND for worse. I'm glad to read this post. I tried instituting 20% time in my previous job and almost no one took advantage of it. They just didn't have an adequate level of trust in exec mgmt that diverting their attention from core responsibilities wouldn't cause adverse personal reactions down the road. So sad. :(
jmspring 11y ago
The method seems interesting from the "help people be aware of what's out there and how other people are working" perspective...However, personally, I get lost on one major point in two ways: - Organized 20% time First, for me, twenty percent time is that thing I work on when I'm blocked on something, have an inspiration, or just need a distraction from my major project. Second, I can respect the organizational aspect and helping people understand how to contribute, etc, but really formalizing it in a table / chart and meeting to discuss it? Maybe I am taking too strict of a view, but 20% time for me is that thing that is fluid and fills in the gaps or gives energy when I need a break from the day to day tasks.
- HappyTypist 11y ago
  Exactly. I take 20% time to make my 80% time at least 25% more productive, whether that's by tooling, using new approaches or frameworks, or just need a small break.
monk_e_boy 11y ago
I've never met anyone who has this luxury, quick poll: Do you have 20% time?
- monk_e_boy 11y ago
  Yes
- monk_e_boy 11y ago
  No
- designNERD 11y ago
  Yes
- zenogais 11y ago
  No
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- sethammons 11y ago
  If we are hitting targets, yes
- sethammons 11y ago
  If we are hitting targets, yes
- bcassedy 11y ago
  no
- paulddraper 11y ago
  If I sandbag estimates
- melvinmt 11y ago
  I don't even have 0% time.
- 11y ago
johnmaguire2013 11y ago
I love this BASEDEF acronym. I have an IRC bot that I've been working on for 3 years on Github. I've also tossed it on up-for-grabs.net. About 7 people have submitted contributions, I think because of up-for-grabs. I think that acronym perfectly describes what a successful open-source project needs to thrive.
mattiemass 11y ago
Love the idea of trying to a) make 20% time better and b) encourage it to be open source. Wonderful stuff!
nowarninglabel 11y ago
We have successfully pulled off 20% for 5+ years now at Kiva, doing some of the things suggested here. However, the key thing we do is actually make the 20% be a full two-week sprint, it just happens every 5th sprint. That way, you can have the time to do some planning, suggesting, and documentation before setting out to build something and you get the full amount of time you needed to build it. We purposefully do try to keep features limited to something shippable during that time period, though some folks will spread it out over a few for bigger efforts. It's pretty great and a key part of our culture that I'm happy we've been able to keep. It's also produced some of the best features Kiva has (as well as served as a great time for engineers that like to tidy things to clean up the codebase). http://pages.kiva.org/buildkivablog/2011/02/10/kiva-engineering-innovation-iteration http://pages.kiva.org/buildkivablog/2011/02/10/kiva-engineer...
- mstade 11y ago
  I like the idea of every 5th sprint being devoted to this – a day week is barely enough to just switch context and get into gear. I can see how getting a couple of days distance between "real" work and the 5th sprint would be beneficial just to clear your mind and start fresh, knowing there are two glorious weeks of focus ahead.
  - gnarbarian 11y ago
    Everyone is different. Some people stagnate without switching contexts frequently enough. That happens to me sometimes.
  - unquietcode 11y ago
    I worked at a large company which in its quest to deploy agile everywhere introduced an innovation sprint. The actual concept went well, and we even had some great show-and-tell sessions from it, but absolutely zero things created during those sprints were allowed to ship. So in the end it was more of a blow-off valve for engineers before sending them back to another 10 weeks of normal engineering drudgery, while their innovative projects collected dust on a manager's shelf somewhere. If these were research spikes I feel like they would have gotten a little more respect from the higher-ups.
k__ 11y ago
I don't get it... They give you 20℅ 'off' to do stuff they need?! Either they want me to solve their problems and plan this with me to do it like normal work, which IT IS or they want me to do my own thing and don't bother me if they can't use this...... Sounds like all this crap loke pingpong, Snacks and billiard tables to me :D
- meric 11y ago
  Many jobs give you 28% time to do stuff you need. It's called the weekend.
  - ilostmykeys 11y ago
    Like have a life, do your laundry, tidy up your place, that sort of thing? What does it have to do with work supporting 20% of your time for coding something of interest to you or learning a new language/framework?
    - meric 11y ago
      I do all of those things and code something of interest to me and my company has no 20% time. I understand, you'd like more time to do those things, but time when we get to do whatever we want is called a day off.
      - ilostmykeys 11y ago
        That's a terrible attitude.
        meric 11y ago
        Look, if you want to study web frameworks, tell your employer you want to work 4 days a week and spend a day studying for yourself. How's the conversation going to go? "Can I spend every Friday learning this new web framework? No, we don't use it, but I think you should be supporting me increasing my skill set. Yes I still expect to be paid." Really?
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
aswanson 11y ago
Just keeping it 100: if you come up with a really good idea, (orthogonal to the companies business) that can make a lot of money in 20% time and give it back to your company rather than starting your own shit with it, you're stupid. Or just have low testosterone.
- msoad 11y ago
  Not all good ideas make money
- Retric 11y ago
  A lot of ideas fit somewhere between viable startups and obvious new features. If you think in terms of the next 20 years being able to put, developed X could easily be worth a few million. Even if X can't really be done as a startup. IMO, the biggest benefit from a companies standpoint is people can try out new things without cluttering up the main product. Boring but works is often best for a company and terrible on peoples resumes.
- amedstudent1 11y ago
  >Or just have low testosterone. Huh? You're getting paid for it. The company isn't stupid, they wont let you use their resources just so you can take all the credit.
grecy 11y ago
Another thing we did that really helped - make Monday 20% day not Friday. On Friday there are always too many things remaining in the sprint, and 20% time gets pushed off and continually forgotten about.
thebouv 11y ago
There are IT departments inside of non-IT companies that would love to have this sort of luxury. But with department heads that would have their heads explode if you try to explain this to them. sigh
- Spooky23 11y ago
  Good managers will give employees the latitude to do this sort of thing, formally or not. Fetishism of metrics and ITSM bullshit makes it harder to do these days, but it's still worth it for morale alone.
- jupiter90000 11y ago
  Also, slightly off topic, but for similar reasons I can't figure out why bosses want IT workers that mostly sit at their desk on a computer to work at the office (instead of remote locations) for a full 40+ a week. It's like there is distrusting management who thinks if they didn't walk the hallways once per week at random and see people staring at their computers then the same work wouldn't happen. Let these people work alot more wherever they want if their work isn't location dependent.
  - sqldba 11y ago
    I saw a fascinating comment a few weeks ago that, why does a company think it's fine for you to "work from home" when you're on call all the time to fix their problems; but not the rest of the time when you're fixing their problems?!
mianos 11y ago
Googler please chime in, but as far as I read it's been dead for years. http://qz.com/115831/googles-20-time-which-brought-you-gmail-and-adsense-is-now-as-good-as-dead/ http://qz.com/115831/googles-20-time-which-brought-you-gmail...
- hb42 11y ago
  20% at Google is a big joke: it's basically picking up low priority tasks and bugs from other teams backlogs (low priority = will never do).
- saltylicorice 11y ago
  It's still alive.
- drunkpotato 11y ago
  Not a googler, but I'm related to one, and I'm told that it's dependent on your ability to set boundaries for yourself. Nobody should dock you for saying "hey, I'm working on my 20% time now". If 20% time is dying, it may be partly that there are some bad managers who will dock you for it, and it may also be partly that programmers would like it but don't feel empowered to use it (for political/personal/personality reasons).
- darren_ 11y ago
  It's not dead. It's manager dependent, I guess - It's not carte blanche to do whatever you want (was it ever?), so whatever you're doing needs to have, or potentially have, _some_ value to Google, but the bar for that value is pretty low. It also isn't necessarily just "picking up other team's bugs" (I mean, you can if you want) - just last week my teammate finished up a 20% project to make a new UIView templating/auto-layout system for iOS, for the first example I can think of. This sort of thing is pretty common.
- thrownaway2424 11y ago
  I've had a number of different managers at Google and I've never had one that ever tried to tell me not to do anything, and even when they wanted me to do something their direction wasn't particularly strong. As far as my experience goes you can do anything you want at Google as long as it appears to have some value.
codeonfire 11y ago
How to make 20% time: Just do it. Don't tell anyone. Tell that asshole trying to control your work to fuck off. When you've got something, tell the right people about it. Watch the other assholes at your job trip over themselves as they trash your work that you already got buy in from from the right people. Publish it. Launch it. Put it on your resume. You'll probably get fired because the assholes will resent that you're not under their control. So what? Make getting fired part of your career progression plan. Start your new, better job, rinse and repeat.
- modarts 11y ago
  Id be happy to hire anyone who got fired under these circumstances
  - jes5199 11y ago
    classic Id
  - _delirium 11y ago
    I think most functioning engineering groups in large companies depend on a degree of it, and it's not even really a big secret, so people aren't actually often fired for it, except at the most dysfunctional places. Large companies tend to accumulate a certain degree of organizational "difficulty", but one thing that keeps everything from going to shit is that there is also usually enough flex in the system that engineers can fairly easily carve out some percentage of their total time to do things that, in their own estimation, actually need to get done, without having to get a bunch of management approvals for it. Management usually looks the other way (if they notice at all), except maybe to occasionally investigate whether anything good came out of these side projects so they can retroactively claim they commissioned it on purpose.
- esaym 11y ago
  post of the year, seriously. That is what I was going to say. Just do it. A few hours a day, just do it.
- preordained 11y ago
bobwaycott 11y ago
There's a certain irony in the title, as this reads to be a how-to guide to making 20% time work.
sqldba 11y ago
Wow I would absolutely hate this. I'm not doing 20% time to trend shit for YOU on GitHub so that YOU can feel like you're doing something as a manager; intruding on and micromanaging "free time" until it's anything but "free". I'm doing it to answer a burning question I have about something and do some exploration whether YOU think it's useful or not. And before you whinge and bitch that I'm there to serve the company, a) if that's what you want then don't fucking act like its free time because it's not, and b) irrelevant disconnected ideas and the curiosity to pursue them are not only the indicators of your smartest and best employees they're also a precondition to keeping them happy and keeping them at all. This time benefits me. There have been plenty of HN articles that breakthroughs come from tying together these previously thought irrelevant ideas. And in my experience researching some side project always comes to provide needed knowledge somewhere else eventually, always. Just not perhaps in the short 30 second timespan and timescale of an idiot clueless irritating manager.
- nathan_f77 11y ago
  I also had the same initial reaction, but also keep in mind that these guys are paying your salary. You are literally there to serve the company in exchange for money. If your manager wants to make your 20% time more structured, then so be it. It's not free time, it's just a block of time set aside for research, experimenting, and innovation. You're still being paid for it, and it's not like you're being asked to work overtime or during your lunch break. If you want a lot of free time, then you can find a part-time freelance job and work from home.
  - quanticle 11y ago
    >If your manager wants to make your 20% time more structured, then so be it. It's not free time, it's just a block of time set aside for research, experimenting, and innovation. Then don't call it 20% time. Fold it in as a "spike", in the normal sprint planning process. The visceral reaction you're seeing to this system stems from the disconnect between the promise of "20% time" - that I get to work on something that I think is cool, without having to justify it to the company - and the reality, which is that it's just normal sprint work by another name. If 20% time is subject to the normal planning and prioritization processes that the company uses for planning out the rest of its work, it raises the question of why you're placing that time into a separate bucket in the first place.
melted 11y ago
20% doesn't even work at Google. The reason being, if you care about your career, it ends up being 20% _on top of_ 120% you're already putting in. And I don't know about you, but I'd rather the company did not know about anything I do on my own time and with my own resources, so that they couldn't lay any intellectual property claims to it.
- Veratyr 11y ago
  > 20% doesn't even work at Google. The reason being, if you care about your career, it ends up being 20% _on top of_ 120% you're already putting in. From what I've heard from close friends who work at Google, this depends a lot on the team you're on and the manager you have. If you Google around a bit you'll see a lot of mixed feedback on the idea for this reason. > And I don't know about you, but I'd rather the company did not know about anything I do on my own time and with my own resources, so that they couldn't lay any intellectual property claims to it. They don't need to know about anything you do on your own time to lay IP claims on it. In California at least, there are very clear rules [0] that state that an employer can lay claim to IP under a number of conditions, none of which is that the employer knew it was happening at the time. If it's anything worthwhile, it's likely to come up on your employer's radar at some point. It's better just to be upfront about such things instead of sneaking around. If you can't trust your employer you should probably find a new one. [0]: http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=lab&group=02001-03000&file=2870-2872 http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=lab&gr...
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
isoos 11y ago
There are many, slightly different ways to describe innovation. I have found that 20% of the time project is about personal motivation to show on something different (than my usual tasks) that I can do it or make it better. Managers only need to enable it, and shall not force it. If the individual is not motivated to show that it can do better, let it be, because they may be just fine with their normal work. Groups working on things together for a week (~yearly 20% time) is more about exploring the team's creativity, exploring business or product ideas. It can be called internal pitch or demo days. Some ideas need time to get some exploring, some trial and error, some fiddling, some long discussions, and may not be doable in a week (wall clock time). Due to their different nature, they will result in different products. I have written a couple of other points that are related about product development (e.g. moonshot, 10X, competitions), you may find them useful: https://drillio.com/en/2016/best-practices-in-product-development/ https://drillio.com/en/2016/best-practices-in-product-develo... Re: article. I think the author is using the 20% projects as a team building exercise. It could be working for that purpose, and maybe for some incremental changes, but will not explore innovative ideas.
lacker 11y ago
Having worked at both Google and Facebook I prefer Facebook's strategy of "hackathons" and "hackamonths" to encourage people to sometimes work on different projects than they usually do, to mix it up. Hackathons (1-3 days at FB) are cool because they really encourage you to work with a new set of people. Hackamonths are usually tied to, "this project is with a different team and if it's going well I would join this other team". I think that is cool because they make it explicit that maybe your side projecty thing is going to turn into your real project. The setup is aimed at a similar thing to 20% time and I think it is overall more effective.
ErrantX 11y ago
As an IT manager; the biggest problem with 20% time I've seen is people using for 80% time stuff. Like, critical training they should have gotten as part of normal work, etc. That sucks, that's not 20% culture.
IanCal 11y ago
I've seen this tried in a few ways that didn't really work out and one that worked well: (edit - this is always highly dependent on the people and small differences, this is only my experience of 10/20% time that I've actually participated in and the issues that appeared at my workplace) # One day a week: Cons: people are off more on fridays, feel like they're missing out. Some things need more than one day, other priorities pop up a lot on fridays. Hard to force people to suddenly switch for one day. Pros: Simple, everyone gets time together. Easier to actually 'enforce' and not see it just disappear. # One week/similar per longer time period: Cons: Lots of time to stop everyone working, doesn't line up with all schedules, etc. Pros: Longer to do things, everyone available together. Same pros as one day per week. # Organise it yourself, completely freestyle Cons: People don't actually do it most of the time, seems like they're taking time away from their main project. Pros: Timing issues pretty much disappear, but things can always be put off. Easy for it to just be forgotten. ----- The way I've seen it work well had these properties: No fixed time or schedule, you booked off time to work on what you wanted. Your manager can't indefinitely say "no", but if you're trying to book off the day of a release when you're planning a big release then they'd ask you to wait a bit. To get it you have to say what it was you wanted to do, but this only needed to be a brief sentence on a wiki somewhere (could be "play around with X" or "try and make a Y"). You also needed to say if there was anything you required, and they'd help you sort this out. The time is considered like holiday. You don't pull in workers from holiday to help out, you can't pull them away from the time they'd requested for the project. You were encouraged to go and work in a different building/office if you wanted so you're not surrounded by people asking "quick questions". You were required to put any code in a particular place. You needed to briefly say how it went. You had to be reasonably willing to say what you did in the next all-hands. This was all fairly lightweight, booking time off wasn't a difficult thing and getting approval was just a quick chat about what you were planning. You could grab a few days or an afternoon, and they'd help out if you needed other equipment/etc. Overall I think what will work varies massively on your workers and current workplace, it's vital to try a few different things and tweak as you go.
toto99 11y ago
I work in a big corporation and I am doing 90%. no one seems to care and I am enjoying it very much
Rygu 11y ago
Creative processes actually CAN be well-organized and fun at the same time. Just look at hackathons, which teams get stuck halfway and which teams are productive and take the prize home? If you only care about code and learning new APIs, that's your right. (I'd say do it at home.) If you want to ship something real with 20% company time? Get your project organized.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
naijanewsrave 11y ago
please visit my blog http://naijanewsrave.com http://naijanewsrave.com
moron4hire 11y ago
I have 80% time, i.e. I only spend about 20% of my time on my clients. To hell with this wage employment bullshit. Keep your productivity and the fruits thereof for yourself. Don't give them away for a pittance to an employer, who probably also made you sign an agreement that they get to take anything you make, whether you made it on their time or not.
fibo 11y ago
I already do that, and My boss is aware. When it is necessary to fix things quickly or do scouting or in general problem solving your time invested returns, but you are faster.
jmbwell 11y ago
I read this less as the company trying to control your 20% time, and more as the company making your 20% a first-class citizen among its other projects, by using the same resources and processes.
makecheck 11y ago
20% time is important because not everyone has a ton of free time to improve their skills and do whatever they want to. People with families, hobbies (that aren't programming), classes to take, or even extra-long commutes are not overflowing with time to devote to side projects.
rdiddly 11y ago
Making 20% Time Work? But the 80% is already work.

214 points by begriffs 11y ago

This isn't bad, per se, and it's good to think about, but I want to throw it out there that the only reason 20% time works decently at Google is because of Google's culture. By virtue of empowering employees to find problems and solve them, and being supportive of career dev & internal transfer, and making boatloads of money, it makes it easy for the org to tolerate the slack this forces in defined teams. Almost none of the kinds of things that encourage 20% projects at Google typically exist in large enterprises, and when those companies try things like this it typically ends up being much more forced and much less organic, for better AND for worse. I'm glad to read this post. I tried instituting 20% time in my previous job and almost no one took advantage of it. They just didn't have an adequate level of trust in exec mgmt that diverting their attention from core responsibilities wouldn't cause adverse personal reactions down the road. So sad. :(

jmspring 11y ago

The method seems interesting from the "help people be aware of what's out there and how other people are working" perspective...However, personally, I get lost on one major point in two ways: - Organized 20% time First, for me, twenty percent time is that thing I work on when I'm blocked on something, have an inspiration, or just need a distraction from my major project. Second, I can respect the organizational aspect and helping people understand how to contribute, etc, but really formalizing it in a table / chart and meeting to discuss it? Maybe I am taking too strict of a view, but 20% time for me is that thing that is fluid and fills in the gaps or gives energy when I need a break from the day to day tasks.

HappyTypist 11y ago
Exactly. I take 20% time to make my 80% time at least 25% more productive, whether that's by tooling, using new approaches or frameworks, or just need a small break.

monk_e_boy 11y ago

I've never met anyone who has this luxury, quick poll: Do you have 20% time?

monk_e_boy 11y ago
Yes
monk_e_boy 11y ago
No
designNERD 11y ago
Yes
zenogais 11y ago
No
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
sethammons 11y ago
If we are hitting targets, yes
sethammons 11y ago
If we are hitting targets, yes
bcassedy 11y ago
no
paulddraper 11y ago
If I sandbag estimates
melvinmt 11y ago
I don't even have 0% time.
11y ago

johnmaguire2013 11y ago

I love this BASEDEF acronym. I have an IRC bot that I've been working on for 3 years on Github. I've also tossed it on up-for-grabs.net. About 7 people have submitted contributions, I think because of up-for-grabs. I think that acronym perfectly describes what a successful open-source project needs to thrive.

mattiemass 11y ago

Love the idea of trying to a) make 20% time better and b) encourage it to be open source. Wonderful stuff!

nowarninglabel 11y ago

We have successfully pulled off 20% for 5+ years now at Kiva, doing some of the things suggested here. However, the key thing we do is actually make the 20% be a full two-week sprint, it just happens every 5th sprint. That way, you can have the time to do some planning, suggesting, and documentation before setting out to build something and you get the full amount of time you needed to build it. We purposefully do try to keep features limited to something shippable during that time period, though some folks will spread it out over a few for bigger efforts. It's pretty great and a key part of our culture that I'm happy we've been able to keep. It's also produced some of the best features Kiva has (as well as served as a great time for engineers that like to tidy things to clean up the codebase). http://pages.kiva.org/buildkivablog/2011/02/10/kiva-engineering-innovation-iteration http://pages.kiva.org/buildkivablog/2011/02/10/kiva-engineer...

mstade 11y ago
I like the idea of every 5th sprint being devoted to this – a day week is barely enough to just switch context and get into gear. I can see how getting a couple of days distance between "real" work and the 5th sprint would be beneficial just to clear your mind and start fresh, knowing there are two glorious weeks of focus ahead.
- gnarbarian 11y ago
  Everyone is different. Some people stagnate without switching contexts frequently enough. That happens to me sometimes.
- unquietcode 11y ago
  I worked at a large company which in its quest to deploy agile everywhere introduced an innovation sprint. The actual concept went well, and we even had some great show-and-tell sessions from it, but absolutely zero things created during those sprints were allowed to ship. So in the end it was more of a blow-off valve for engineers before sending them back to another 10 weeks of normal engineering drudgery, while their innovative projects collected dust on a manager's shelf somewhere. If these were research spikes I feel like they would have gotten a little more respect from the higher-ups.

k__ 11y ago

I don't get it... They give you 20℅ 'off' to do stuff they need?! Either they want me to solve their problems and plan this with me to do it like normal work, which IT IS or they want me to do my own thing and don't bother me if they can't use this...... Sounds like all this crap loke pingpong, Snacks and billiard tables to me :D

meric 11y ago
Many jobs give you 28% time to do stuff you need. It's called the weekend.
- ilostmykeys 11y ago
  Like have a life, do your laundry, tidy up your place, that sort of thing? What does it have to do with work supporting 20% of your time for coding something of interest to you or learning a new language/framework?
  - meric 11y ago
    I do all of those things and code something of interest to me and my company has no 20% time. I understand, you'd like more time to do those things, but time when we get to do whatever we want is called a day off.
    - ilostmykeys 11y ago
      That's a terrible attitude.
      - meric 11y ago
        Look, if you want to study web frameworks, tell your employer you want to work 4 days a week and spend a day studying for yourself. How's the conversation going to go? "Can I spend every Friday learning this new web framework? No, we don't use it, but I think you should be supporting me increasing my skill set. Yes I still expect to be paid." Really?

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

aswanson 11y ago

Just keeping it 100: if you come up with a really good idea, (orthogonal to the companies business) that can make a lot of money in 20% time and give it back to your company rather than starting your own shit with it, you're stupid. Or just have low testosterone.

msoad 11y ago
Not all good ideas make money
Retric 11y ago
A lot of ideas fit somewhere between viable startups and obvious new features. If you think in terms of the next 20 years being able to put, developed X could easily be worth a few million. Even if X can't really be done as a startup. IMO, the biggest benefit from a companies standpoint is people can try out new things without cluttering up the main product. Boring but works is often best for a company and terrible on peoples resumes.
amedstudent1 11y ago
>Or just have low testosterone. Huh? You're getting paid for it. The company isn't stupid, they wont let you use their resources just so you can take all the credit.

grecy 11y ago

Another thing we did that really helped - make Monday 20% day not Friday. On Friday there are always too many things remaining in the sprint, and 20% time gets pushed off and continually forgotten about.

thebouv 11y ago

There are IT departments inside of non-IT companies that would love to have this sort of luxury. But with department heads that would have their heads explode if you try to explain this to them. sigh

Spooky23 11y ago
Good managers will give employees the latitude to do this sort of thing, formally or not. Fetishism of metrics and ITSM bullshit makes it harder to do these days, but it's still worth it for morale alone.
jupiter90000 11y ago
Also, slightly off topic, but for similar reasons I can't figure out why bosses want IT workers that mostly sit at their desk on a computer to work at the office (instead of remote locations) for a full 40+ a week. It's like there is distrusting management who thinks if they didn't walk the hallways once per week at random and see people staring at their computers then the same work wouldn't happen. Let these people work alot more wherever they want if their work isn't location dependent.
- sqldba 11y ago
  I saw a fascinating comment a few weeks ago that, why does a company think it's fine for you to "work from home" when you're on call all the time to fix their problems; but not the rest of the time when you're fixing their problems?!

mianos 11y ago

Googler please chime in, but as far as I read it's been dead for years. http://qz.com/115831/googles-20-time-which-brought-you-gmail-and-adsense-is-now-as-good-as-dead/ http://qz.com/115831/googles-20-time-which-brought-you-gmail...

hb42 11y ago
20% at Google is a big joke: it's basically picking up low priority tasks and bugs from other teams backlogs (low priority = will never do).
saltylicorice 11y ago
It's still alive.
drunkpotato 11y ago
Not a googler, but I'm related to one, and I'm told that it's dependent on your ability to set boundaries for yourself. Nobody should dock you for saying "hey, I'm working on my 20% time now". If 20% time is dying, it may be partly that there are some bad managers who will dock you for it, and it may also be partly that programmers would like it but don't feel empowered to use it (for political/personal/personality reasons).
darren_ 11y ago
It's not dead. It's manager dependent, I guess - It's not carte blanche to do whatever you want (was it ever?), so whatever you're doing needs to have, or potentially have, _some_ value to Google, but the bar for that value is pretty low. It also isn't necessarily just "picking up other team's bugs" (I mean, you can if you want) - just last week my teammate finished up a 20% project to make a new UIView templating/auto-layout system for iOS, for the first example I can think of. This sort of thing is pretty common.
thrownaway2424 11y ago
I've had a number of different managers at Google and I've never had one that ever tried to tell me not to do anything, and even when they wanted me to do something their direction wasn't particularly strong. As far as my experience goes you can do anything you want at Google as long as it appears to have some value.

codeonfire 11y ago

How to make 20% time: Just do it. Don't tell anyone. Tell that asshole trying to control your work to fuck off. When you've got something, tell the right people about it. Watch the other assholes at your job trip over themselves as they trash your work that you already got buy in from from the right people. Publish it. Launch it. Put it on your resume. You'll probably get fired because the assholes will resent that you're not under their control. So what? Make getting fired part of your career progression plan. Start your new, better job, rinse and repeat.

modarts 11y ago
Id be happy to hire anyone who got fired under these circumstances
- jes5199 11y ago
  classic Id
- _delirium 11y ago
  I think most functioning engineering groups in large companies depend on a degree of it, and it's not even really a big secret, so people aren't actually often fired for it, except at the most dysfunctional places. Large companies tend to accumulate a certain degree of organizational "difficulty", but one thing that keeps everything from going to shit is that there is also usually enough flex in the system that engineers can fairly easily carve out some percentage of their total time to do things that, in their own estimation, actually need to get done, without having to get a bunch of management approvals for it. Management usually looks the other way (if they notice at all), except maybe to occasionally investigate whether anything good came out of these side projects so they can retroactively claim they commissioned it on purpose.
esaym 11y ago
post of the year, seriously. That is what I was going to say. Just do it. A few hours a day, just do it.
preordained 11y ago

bobwaycott 11y ago

There's a certain irony in the title, as this reads to be a how-to guide to making 20% time work.

sqldba 11y ago

Wow I would absolutely hate this. I'm not doing 20% time to trend shit for YOU on GitHub so that YOU can feel like you're doing something as a manager; intruding on and micromanaging "free time" until it's anything but "free". I'm doing it to answer a burning question I have about something and do some exploration whether YOU think it's useful or not. And before you whinge and bitch that I'm there to serve the company, a) if that's what you want then don't fucking act like its free time because it's not, and b) irrelevant disconnected ideas and the curiosity to pursue them are not only the indicators of your smartest and best employees they're also a precondition to keeping them happy and keeping them at all. This time benefits me. There have been plenty of HN articles that breakthroughs come from tying together these previously thought irrelevant ideas. And in my experience researching some side project always comes to provide needed knowledge somewhere else eventually, always. Just not perhaps in the short 30 second timespan and timescale of an idiot clueless irritating manager.

nathan_f77 11y ago
I also had the same initial reaction, but also keep in mind that these guys are paying your salary. You are literally there to serve the company in exchange for money. If your manager wants to make your 20% time more structured, then so be it. It's not free time, it's just a block of time set aside for research, experimenting, and innovation. You're still being paid for it, and it's not like you're being asked to work overtime or during your lunch break. If you want a lot of free time, then you can find a part-time freelance job and work from home.
- quanticle 11y ago
  >If your manager wants to make your 20% time more structured, then so be it. It's not free time, it's just a block of time set aside for research, experimenting, and innovation. Then don't call it 20% time. Fold it in as a "spike", in the normal sprint planning process. The visceral reaction you're seeing to this system stems from the disconnect between the promise of "20% time" - that I get to work on something that I think is cool, without having to justify it to the company - and the reality, which is that it's just normal sprint work by another name. If 20% time is subject to the normal planning and prioritization processes that the company uses for planning out the rest of its work, it raises the question of why you're placing that time into a separate bucket in the first place.

melted 11y ago

20% doesn't even work at Google. The reason being, if you care about your career, it ends up being 20% _on top of_ 120% you're already putting in. And I don't know about you, but I'd rather the company did not know about anything I do on my own time and with my own resources, so that they couldn't lay any intellectual property claims to it.

Veratyr 11y ago
> 20% doesn't even work at Google. The reason being, if you care about your career, it ends up being 20% _on top of_ 120% you're already putting in. From what I've heard from close friends who work at Google, this depends a lot on the team you're on and the manager you have. If you Google around a bit you'll see a lot of mixed feedback on the idea for this reason. > And I don't know about you, but I'd rather the company did not know about anything I do on my own time and with my own resources, so that they couldn't lay any intellectual property claims to it. They don't need to know about anything you do on your own time to lay IP claims on it. In California at least, there are very clear rules [0] that state that an employer can lay claim to IP under a number of conditions, none of which is that the employer knew it was happening at the time. If it's anything worthwhile, it's likely to come up on your employer's radar at some point. It's better just to be upfront about such things instead of sneaking around. If you can't trust your employer you should probably find a new one. [0]: http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=lab&group=02001-03000&file=2870-2872 http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=lab&gr...
- deleted 11y ago
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isoos 11y ago

There are many, slightly different ways to describe innovation. I have found that 20% of the time project is about personal motivation to show on something different (than my usual tasks) that I can do it or make it better. Managers only need to enable it, and shall not force it. If the individual is not motivated to show that it can do better, let it be, because they may be just fine with their normal work. Groups working on things together for a week (~yearly 20% time) is more about exploring the team's creativity, exploring business or product ideas. It can be called internal pitch or demo days. Some ideas need time to get some exploring, some trial and error, some fiddling, some long discussions, and may not be doable in a week (wall clock time). Due to their different nature, they will result in different products. I have written a couple of other points that are related about product development (e.g. moonshot, 10X, competitions), you may find them useful: https://drillio.com/en/2016/best-practices-in-product-development/ https://drillio.com/en/2016/best-practices-in-product-develo... Re: article. I think the author is using the 20% projects as a team building exercise. It could be working for that purpose, and maybe for some incremental changes, but will not explore innovative ideas.

lacker 11y ago

Having worked at both Google and Facebook I prefer Facebook's strategy of "hackathons" and "hackamonths" to encourage people to sometimes work on different projects than they usually do, to mix it up. Hackathons (1-3 days at FB) are cool because they really encourage you to work with a new set of people. Hackamonths are usually tied to, "this project is with a different team and if it's going well I would join this other team". I think that is cool because they make it explicit that maybe your side projecty thing is going to turn into your real project. The setup is aimed at a similar thing to 20% time and I think it is overall more effective.

ErrantX 11y ago

As an IT manager; the biggest problem with 20% time I've seen is people using for 80% time stuff. Like, critical training they should have gotten as part of normal work, etc. That sucks, that's not 20% culture.

IanCal 11y ago

I've seen this tried in a few ways that didn't really work out and one that worked well: (edit - this is always highly dependent on the people and small differences, this is only my experience of 10/20% time that I've actually participated in and the issues that appeared at my workplace) # One day a week: Cons: people are off more on fridays, feel like they're missing out. Some things need more than one day, other priorities pop up a lot on fridays. Hard to force people to suddenly switch for one day. Pros: Simple, everyone gets time together. Easier to actually 'enforce' and not see it just disappear. # One week/similar per longer time period: Cons: Lots of time to stop everyone working, doesn't line up with all schedules, etc. Pros: Longer to do things, everyone available together. Same pros as one day per week. # Organise it yourself, completely freestyle Cons: People don't actually do it most of the time, seems like they're taking time away from their main project. Pros: Timing issues pretty much disappear, but things can always be put off. Easy for it to just be forgotten. ----- The way I've seen it work well had these properties: No fixed time or schedule, you booked off time to work on what you wanted. Your manager can't indefinitely say "no", but if you're trying to book off the day of a release when you're planning a big release then they'd ask you to wait a bit. To get it you have to say what it was you wanted to do, but this only needed to be a brief sentence on a wiki somewhere (could be "play around with X" or "try and make a Y"). You also needed to say if there was anything you required, and they'd help you sort this out. The time is considered like holiday. You don't pull in workers from holiday to help out, you can't pull them away from the time they'd requested for the project. You were encouraged to go and work in a different building/office if you wanted so you're not surrounded by people asking "quick questions". You were required to put any code in a particular place. You needed to briefly say how it went. You had to be reasonably willing to say what you did in the next all-hands. This was all fairly lightweight, booking time off wasn't a difficult thing and getting approval was just a quick chat about what you were planning. You could grab a few days or an afternoon, and they'd help out if you needed other equipment/etc. Overall I think what will work varies massively on your workers and current workplace, it's vital to try a few different things and tweak as you go.

toto99 11y ago

I work in a big corporation and I am doing 90%. no one seems to care and I am enjoying it very much

Rygu 11y ago

Creative processes actually CAN be well-organized and fun at the same time. Just look at hackathons, which teams get stuck halfway and which teams are productive and take the prize home? If you only care about code and learning new APIs, that's your right. (I'd say do it at home.) If you want to ship something real with 20% company time? Get your project organized.

deleted 11y ago

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moron4hire 11y ago

I have 80% time, i.e. I only spend about 20% of my time on my clients. To hell with this wage employment bullshit. Keep your productivity and the fruits thereof for yourself. Don't give them away for a pittance to an employer, who probably also made you sign an agreement that they get to take anything you make, whether you made it on their time or not.

fibo 11y ago

I already do that, and My boss is aware. When it is necessary to fix things quickly or do scouting or in general problem solving your time invested returns, but you are faster.

jmbwell 11y ago

I read this less as the company trying to control your 20% time, and more as the company making your 20% a first-class citizen among its other projects, by using the same resources and processes.

makecheck 11y ago

20% time is important because not everyone has a ton of free time to improve their skills and do whatever they want to. People with families, hobbies (that aren't programming), classes to take, or even extra-long commutes are not overflowing with time to devote to side projects.

rdiddly 11y ago

Making 20% Time Work? But the 80% is already work.