6 ms·

NPR tried Google's 20%-time with their developers

126 points by freejoe76 15y ago

binarymax 15y ago
Every manager in the world needs to spend 10 minutes and watch that video.
rajpaul 15y ago
Who is NPR? The article doesn't say.
- sjs382 15y ago
  http://www.npr.org/ http://www.npr.org/
- anigbrowl 15y ago
  National Public Radio, source of much good reportage and interesting infographics.
wccrawford 15y ago
"Lumbard said the managers had toyed with the idea of adopting Google’s 20 percent time, but they concluded it wouldn’t work for NPR. Google has thousands of employees and extraordinarily deep pockets, which mean it can afford to let employees take a day every week for side projects. Plus, Lumbard says, 20-percent time puts the emphasis on individuality, whereas NPR’s approach values teamwork." I often hear the 'Google is bigger, so they can afford it' argument... Bigger means they have MORE PEOPLE. That means it costs more. I can understand a startup saying they can't do it, but an established company with profits? They could, if they wanted to. (Not that it would necessarily make sense, mind you. It depends on the industry.) And the teamwork thing is nonsense, too. Googlers can work on other peoples' 20% projects in their 20% time. So it encourages teamwork as well. (And I'd likely be one of those, as I have few good ideas, but enjoy helping others flesh theirs out.)
- svmegatron 15y ago
  I think the "extraordinarily deep pockets" has much more to do with Google being able to afford it than the "thousands of employees" part. Although the thousands of employees might be a help in terms of providing coverage for time-sensitive projects.
  - kfir 15y ago
    Google 20% time is very much a myth
    - ak217 15y ago
      Google 20% time is a way for engineers to provide justification for resource which they may otherwise be unable to get from their managers, and would have to keep secret (as some managers will object to you doing it in your spare time, too). It's a way to mitigate the productivity drain from managerial micromanagement. Whether or not it works for any given project is subject to many other variables.
    - mdwrigh2 15y ago
      Completely disagree. While I was at Google I was encouraged to find another project that I was interested in contributing to in my 20% time. I ended up working on some internal tools, but there's plenty of options.
    - cpeterso 15y ago
      None of the Google engineers I've met have had 20% projects. They said 20% projects were uncommon in product groups (that have shipping deadlines), but more common in the web teams.
      - mdwrigh2 15y ago
        As I commented above, I was encouraged to find a 20% project while there, and I worked on the Android team. Only a few people on my team had 20% projects, but none of them actually wanted a 20% project as far as I can tell. Anyone that did, had one.
molecule 15y ago
Not really "tries," per submission headline, but rather "tried, one day." "Lumbard said the managers had toyed with the idea of adopting Google’s 20 percent time, but they concluded it wouldn’t work for NPR. Google has thousands of employees and extraordinarily deep pockets, which mean it can afford to let employees take a day every week for side projects. Plus, Lumbard says, 20-percent time puts the emphasis on individuality, whereas NPR’s approach values teamwork."
- freejoe76 15y ago
  You're right, thanks, I updated the headline.
  - andrewphelps 15y ago
    NPR is not trying Google's 20% time, per se; what they call "Serendipity Day" is simply their adaptation of the idea. The next one is planned for September, and the goal is to make it a quarterly event.
    - tensafefrogs 15y ago
      Yeah I wouldn't call that 20% time at all, it's just a quarterly hack day, which I think is also a cool way to get employees excited about working on cool things and ideas.
      - SkyMarshal 15y ago
        Yeah, internal hackathon. But if they want to make it really work, they should do the Silicon Valley long-weekend style hackathons: 1. Let your employees decide/vote on the weekend, so as few miss it due to vacation and whatnot as possible. 2. Make it Thursday night - Sunday afternoon, and give them Monday off to recuperate/run errands/catch up on life. 8 days off/year instead of 52 should be much more doable for a smaller operation like NPR. 3. Schedule it far in advance, encourage people/teams to brainstorm ideas and have a rough project plan or three ready to go Thursday night. 4. Provide all the junk food, health food, and caffeine they can eat, free. Let them choose the menu when they're voting on the dates. Set up an internal website for all of this. 5. Make sure they've got all the hardware and software they could anticipate needing all on-site and ready go at the start. Minimize setup time. 6. Have something for planned for families as well, involve them if possible. Imagine, instead of going to watch a baseball game on the weekend with your mom and/or dad, going to a hackathon with them. Have a mini-hackathon on the side for the kids. 7. Have demo night Sunday at the end, fun/funny awards as well. For example, I dig Foursquare's 'Bender' badge for someone who goes out 4+ nights in a row. A hackathon equivalent would be whoever worked on site the longest and slept the least. 8. etc. I don't think one work day every quarter is going to do much for them, but if they set it up like a hackathon sprint party over a very long weekend, they might get some interesting results.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
RandallBrown 15y ago
Where I work, TechSmith, we've been trying the 20% time thing on different teams. We call it "TechSmith Fridays" and the goal is to make TechSmith better by Monday. That goal is pretty loose and many people have spent their time working on their own cool ideas as well as internal tools that our sales team can use to make their lives easier. I've found having a "free day" to look forward to makes it easier to focus on my regular tasks the first 4 days of the week.We also have the rule that the project needs to be shown off so you're accountable for the time. Nobody uses it just to goof off. I know at least one new product is likely to come from this already and we've only been doing it for a few months. I'm really excited to see what comes out of it in the future.
- masklinn 15y ago
  > Where I work, TechSmith, we've been trying the 20% time thing on different teams. We call it "TechSmith Fridays" and the goal is to make TechSmith better by Monday. Soo... it has fuck-all to do with Google's 20%?
zethraeus 15y ago
Could a Googler give their input on this? Having spoken to a couple of Google fulltimers on this note, the general impression I've received is that 20% time is largely a myth and that spending this time working on alternate projects is widely acknowledged to not being conducive to moving up the company hierarchy.
- cpeterso 15y ago
  I assumed that 20% time was a clever way to harness engineers' idle time and redirect it from "dickin' around" (and Hacker News ;) to projects that may benefit the company.
- jrockway 15y ago
  Where does one "move up" to at Google?
dan_swain 15y ago
I just posted a blog post related to this. My company has done a similar thing to NPR, we call it "build it in a day". I see it as a step towards 20% time projects being encouraged. I know one of the contractors with us at the moment has what they call "innovation friday" every 2nd friday. So be it a spin on the idea, I find it encouraging companies are realising there's better ways to motivate people and increase their productivity.
maeon3 15y ago
If your company ever tries this, please try harder so word gets out that it causes your developers to try harder, so I will get 20% time as well.
forkandwait 15y ago
Not to be cynical, but I bet the devs at NPR are already working on interesting side projects about 20% of their time, because if they don't they quickly become obsolete, and if they are grown ups their managements isn't monitoring them so closely they would even know. It's just that management (often) likes to pretend that they are completely in charge; "giving" devs 20% is sort of like "letting" a teen age son or daughter drink an occasional beer at a party.
- yason 15y ago
  Exactly. It's estimated that out of a eight-hour day only four hours of actual work gets done. I can easily believe that figure. The other four hours get dissolved into various events and distractions, including coding something that nobody asked but you just have to do so that you can do something else better and easier.

126 points by freejoe76 15y ago

binarymax 15y ago

Every manager in the world needs to spend 10 minutes and watch that video.

rajpaul 15y ago

Who is NPR? The article doesn't say.

sjs382 15y ago
http://www.npr.org/ http://www.npr.org/
anigbrowl 15y ago
National Public Radio, source of much good reportage and interesting infographics.

wccrawford 15y ago

"Lumbard said the managers had toyed with the idea of adopting Google’s 20 percent time, but they concluded it wouldn’t work for NPR. Google has thousands of employees and extraordinarily deep pockets, which mean it can afford to let employees take a day every week for side projects. Plus, Lumbard says, 20-percent time puts the emphasis on individuality, whereas NPR’s approach values teamwork." I often hear the 'Google is bigger, so they can afford it' argument... Bigger means they have MORE PEOPLE. That means it costs more. I can understand a startup saying they can't do it, but an established company with profits? They could, if they wanted to. (Not that it would necessarily make sense, mind you. It depends on the industry.) And the teamwork thing is nonsense, too. Googlers can work on other peoples' 20% projects in their 20% time. So it encourages teamwork as well. (And I'd likely be one of those, as I have few good ideas, but enjoy helping others flesh theirs out.)

svmegatron 15y ago
I think the "extraordinarily deep pockets" has much more to do with Google being able to afford it than the "thousands of employees" part. Although the thousands of employees might be a help in terms of providing coverage for time-sensitive projects.
- kfir 15y ago
  Google 20% time is very much a myth
  - ak217 15y ago
    Google 20% time is a way for engineers to provide justification for resource which they may otherwise be unable to get from their managers, and would have to keep secret (as some managers will object to you doing it in your spare time, too). It's a way to mitigate the productivity drain from managerial micromanagement. Whether or not it works for any given project is subject to many other variables.
  - mdwrigh2 15y ago
    Completely disagree. While I was at Google I was encouraged to find another project that I was interested in contributing to in my 20% time. I ended up working on some internal tools, but there's plenty of options.
  - cpeterso 15y ago
    None of the Google engineers I've met have had 20% projects. They said 20% projects were uncommon in product groups (that have shipping deadlines), but more common in the web teams.
    - mdwrigh2 15y ago
      As I commented above, I was encouraged to find a 20% project while there, and I worked on the Android team. Only a few people on my team had 20% projects, but none of them actually wanted a 20% project as far as I can tell. Anyone that did, had one.

molecule 15y ago

Not really "tries," per submission headline, but rather "tried, one day." "Lumbard said the managers had toyed with the idea of adopting Google’s 20 percent time, but they concluded it wouldn’t work for NPR. Google has thousands of employees and extraordinarily deep pockets, which mean it can afford to let employees take a day every week for side projects. Plus, Lumbard says, 20-percent time puts the emphasis on individuality, whereas NPR’s approach values teamwork."

freejoe76 15y ago
You're right, thanks, I updated the headline.
- andrewphelps 15y ago
  NPR is not trying Google's 20% time, per se; what they call "Serendipity Day" is simply their adaptation of the idea. The next one is planned for September, and the goal is to make it a quarterly event.
  - tensafefrogs 15y ago
    Yeah I wouldn't call that 20% time at all, it's just a quarterly hack day, which I think is also a cool way to get employees excited about working on cool things and ideas.
    - SkyMarshal 15y ago
      Yeah, internal hackathon. But if they want to make it really work, they should do the Silicon Valley long-weekend style hackathons: 1. Let your employees decide/vote on the weekend, so as few miss it due to vacation and whatnot as possible. 2. Make it Thursday night - Sunday afternoon, and give them Monday off to recuperate/run errands/catch up on life. 8 days off/year instead of 52 should be much more doable for a smaller operation like NPR. 3. Schedule it far in advance, encourage people/teams to brainstorm ideas and have a rough project plan or three ready to go Thursday night. 4. Provide all the junk food, health food, and caffeine they can eat, free. Let them choose the menu when they're voting on the dates. Set up an internal website for all of this. 5. Make sure they've got all the hardware and software they could anticipate needing all on-site and ready go at the start. Minimize setup time. 6. Have something for planned for families as well, involve them if possible. Imagine, instead of going to watch a baseball game on the weekend with your mom and/or dad, going to a hackathon with them. Have a mini-hackathon on the side for the kids. 7. Have demo night Sunday at the end, fun/funny awards as well. For example, I dig Foursquare's 'Bender' badge for someone who goes out 4+ nights in a row. A hackathon equivalent would be whoever worked on site the longest and slept the least. 8. etc. I don't think one work day every quarter is going to do much for them, but if they set it up like a hackathon sprint party over a very long weekend, they might get some interesting results.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

RandallBrown 15y ago

Where I work, TechSmith, we've been trying the 20% time thing on different teams. We call it "TechSmith Fridays" and the goal is to make TechSmith better by Monday. That goal is pretty loose and many people have spent their time working on their own cool ideas as well as internal tools that our sales team can use to make their lives easier. I've found having a "free day" to look forward to makes it easier to focus on my regular tasks the first 4 days of the week.We also have the rule that the project needs to be shown off so you're accountable for the time. Nobody uses it just to goof off. I know at least one new product is likely to come from this already and we've only been doing it for a few months. I'm really excited to see what comes out of it in the future.

masklinn 15y ago
> Where I work, TechSmith, we've been trying the 20% time thing on different teams. We call it "TechSmith Fridays" and the goal is to make TechSmith better by Monday. Soo... it has fuck-all to do with Google's 20%?

zethraeus 15y ago

Could a Googler give their input on this? Having spoken to a couple of Google fulltimers on this note, the general impression I've received is that 20% time is largely a myth and that spending this time working on alternate projects is widely acknowledged to not being conducive to moving up the company hierarchy.

cpeterso 15y ago
I assumed that 20% time was a clever way to harness engineers' idle time and redirect it from "dickin' around" (and Hacker News ;) to projects that may benefit the company.
jrockway 15y ago
Where does one "move up" to at Google?

dan_swain 15y ago

I just posted a blog post related to this. My company has done a similar thing to NPR, we call it "build it in a day". I see it as a step towards 20% time projects being encouraged. I know one of the contractors with us at the moment has what they call "innovation friday" every 2nd friday. So be it a spin on the idea, I find it encouraging companies are realising there's better ways to motivate people and increase their productivity.

maeon3 15y ago

If your company ever tries this, please try harder so word gets out that it causes your developers to try harder, so I will get 20% time as well.

forkandwait 15y ago

Not to be cynical, but I bet the devs at NPR are already working on interesting side projects about 20% of their time, because if they don't they quickly become obsolete, and if they are grown ups their managements isn't monitoring them so closely they would even know. It's just that management (often) likes to pretend that they are completely in charge; "giving" devs 20% is sort of like "letting" a teen age son or daughter drink an occasional beer at a party.

yason 15y ago
Exactly. It's estimated that out of a eight-hour day only four hours of actual work gets done. I can easily believe that figure. The other four hours get dissolved into various events and distractions, including coding something that nobody asked but you just have to do so that you can do something else better and easier.