Intrinsic motivation can be better than extrinsic motivation. Google won a lot of fans and dedicated employees with its original version of 20% time that encour

Intrinsic motivation can be better than extrinsic motivation. Google won a lot of fans and dedicated employees with its original version of 20% time that encouraged people to find stuff they were highly motivated to want to work on and could do so relatively safely in the company's sandbox. It is possible this sort "everything the company needs you to do can be done in one afternoon each week" could be an incredible "80% time" company. There are lots of people that would find "80% of my time at the company is my own" to be quite motivating. Of course, certainly not in the example scenario above where one layer of management is effectively lying to another layer. That's not a healthy "80% time" when it involves duplicity and covert play acting. But if you were feeling crazy enough to try to build an overt "80% time" company you likely wouldn't have a hard time finding some of the "most talented" people.