7 ms·

Today is Goof Off at Work Day

126 points by MarlonPro 14y ago

DigitalSea 14y ago
I wish more places operated like this here in Australia. Sadly the consensus at every single company I've ever worked for is if you don't have an IDE, debugger or textpad instance open on your screen you're slacking off. You don't succeed in business by burning out the talent that drives your company, you nurture it and if 20% of spare time yields you no result 80% of the time you'll be getting better output from your team because they're focused.
- rimantas 14y ago
  —What are you doing there? —Thinking. —Can't you think at home?
  - nopassrecover 14y ago
    Sure, I can work at home too
  - pbhjpbhj 14y ago
    --I never had you down as so progressive, sure I'll work from home the rest of the week, here's my number ...
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
Nursie 14y ago
Great idea in principle. In practice there's always too much to do to respect this in a lot of places, even where it's nominally part of operating policy.
- michaelochurch 14y ago
  In practice there's always too much to do to respect this in a lot of places, even where it's nominally part of operating policy. That's not the problem. Most companies operate at about 30 to 40 percent efficiency. That's not to say that most workers could achieve as much working 2/5 as much, because a lot of the inefficiency is structural and intrinsic, but the idea that long hours and high managerial demands come from "too much to do" rather than deep structural problems with the modern corporation is hogwash.
- EvilTerran 14y ago
  There will always be too much to do, even if everyone worked on the urgent stuff 100% of the time. As such, taking some time every week to work on the stuff you think is important-but-not-urgent isn't going to change that. That's my thinking, anyway.
shutton 14y ago
Thought this was going to be about watching the London Olympics at your desk!
- nicholassmith 14y ago
  I sat and watched the mens time trials yesterday whilst working, the commentary seemed to help my brain focus on doing a really, really tedious task and I got it done without messing round on the internet and taking twice as long.
  - aerique 14y ago
    I need music when doing a tedious task at work, otherwise I get distracted too easily.
    - MaysonL 14y ago
      I'm taking a few CS courses online, and find that I have to play solitaire while listening to them (usually at overspeed) to keep from zoning out.
Ygor 14y ago
Can anybody confirm if the 20% in google still stands? And, if it does, is it really 20% of the regular work hours? In my experience, 20% usually comes to something like: "Work on the important project 100% of the work week. After that, work 20% more on something you like." Everybody I know that works in Google, works far more than the standard 40h per week. Even if you cut of 20% of that time, they still work more than usual. Ofc, that doesn't mean it is generally the case, that's why I'm asking.
- jc123 14y ago
  While something like gmail may have come from 20% time, Google's 20% time is a marketing ploy. I don't think we're going to find a response where it is really 20% instead of 120% at Google.
- _delirium 14y ago
  To make it "stick" I think you really have to block out a specific part of the schedule, if that's possible, like designating Thursdays for only 20%-project work (barring emergencies). Sort of like the way Richard Hamming blocked out a specific 10% of his schedule (past noon on Fridays) in which he refrained from working on his regular projects, and only discussed blue-skies research.
- rachelbythebay 14y ago
  My "moles" have been telling me it's dead. What it meant in practice during my tenure (which predated most of the corporate hell courtesy of the new CEO) was this: if you want to go noodle around with someone else's code, you have a built-in excuse... and a limiter. That by itself was useful since you could go play around in other parts of the company and nobody could give you grief for it. Now it seems to have joined many other things which effectively are no more. The old reputation is hard to shake, and that's why you still see these PR pieces about how lovely it is to work there. Of course, this only makes sense when the code depots are actually open to viewing or modification. When you start having more and more things closed off (how's that components thing going, anyway?), there are fewer opportunities to randomly hack on stuff. Also, if your manager hates you, forget it. It's seen as goofing off.
coffeeaddicted 14y ago
I'm doing this as well as freelancer. Mostly I work on an opensource project that day, sometimes I use it for learning something new. Reason I started this was that I do not have the energy to do such things on the weekend (otherwise I'm constantly tired at work) and I still did want some productive spare-time. Unfortunately as freelancer this means 20% less pay (at least in the short run) and you need a client allowing for that, but after doing that for more than year now I still feel it's worth it.
hxf148 14y ago
Rackspace is making it easy for me right now.. Ironically I suppose, it's the first outage I've had with them while actively working in a long time.
lloeki 14y ago
Relevant TED talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html
aufreak3 14y ago
The other part of making the "20% time" idea work I suppose is the ability of a company to rally behind what shows potential.
- Cyranix 14y ago
  In two places that I've worked, the pendulum swung quite far in the other direction -- 20% time was instituted because the people whose roles involved creating a product vision (business development, management, etc.) were unable to introduce successful changes. Not only would the company leadership rally behind any promising output from 20% time, they were practically counting on it, putting additional responsibility on the developers without any additional reward -- and naturally, the stagnant creative/leadership roles would subsume a successful project. To any managers/leaders out there thinking of instituting 20% time: please, please don't do it if it's a last-ditch effort to innovate. Your employees may put up with it if they value job security, but they can tell that the resulting power dynamics within the organization are unfavorable to them.
aufreak3 14y ago
The other part of making the "20% time" idea work I suppose is the ability of a company to rally behind what shows potential.
michaelochurch 14y ago
I wish that 20%-time policies worked, but they don't. I think they're actually quite bad for morale in the long run. Why? People who have good rapport with their managers and are implicitly trusted will graduate to self-directed work within less than a year and be full-fledged "intrapreneurs" (i.e. have most of the autonomy that a startup founder would have, if not the same upside) within 2 or 3. You don't need a 20%-time policy to back that up. It naturally happens. So 20%-time policies exist to set a minimum on the allowance for self-directed work, but here's the problem: people who don't win the implicit trust of their managers get pissed off and disgusted-- regardless of whether they're working 32 or 40 or 50 hours per week-- and no side project can fix that: the only solution is for the employee to transfer before he burns out and gets fired. A 20%-time policy dangles a carrot. It reminds the people who don't have autonomy and implicit trust of what their work lives would be like if they had better managers. 20%-time often becomes a negative space and a justification for reducing employee autonomy during the other 80%. You want to mentor interns? Maintain a legacy module you depend on? Work on a cross-hierarchical project (from a cynical manager's PoV, this looks like a careerist attempt to become a "socialite" within the company rather than remaining under one thumb)? That's what 20% time is for. Also, 20% time might have been a real benefit in 1975 when average people didn't have access to a computer, but in 2012, most people would be happier just taking a day off to work on a side project. If you get fired or quit, you still have your side projects, but your 20%-time project ends up in /dev/null. Finally, here's a dirty secret about what has happened in the professions. Until about 1980, it was typically understood that metered work (i.e. what your boss is directly asking you do to) expectations in the professions would be about 20 to 25 hours per week. A boss who asked for more than that, except with an aggressive once-in-a-career type deadline, was setting an unreasonable expectation. The other 20-25 hours were to be spent on off-meter work, such as networking, continued education, and research-oriented side projects that might not work out but would teach something in the process, all of which were intended to keep the professional current and improve his or her long-term career. After the slow-motion terrorist attack that was the Reagan era and aggressive corporate cost-cutting, that devolved. The new expectation, after that, became 40+ hours of metered work, and any off-meter work was to happen on your own time. (The consequence of this is that most professionals don't learn much and are replaced by younger versions of themselves when they burn out.) So "20% time" is just a ghost to remind us of what things were like back when the professions really were professions.
cpenner461 14y ago
Lots of comments on the effectiveness of a 20% policy - I'm curious what other folks experience is like with an internal hack day? It seems that if a company's culture isn't suitable for 20% time (for whatever reason), that an internal hack day might be a useful alternative (scratching developer itches but not "wasting" 20% of developer time on non-core projects). Any insight/recommendations from anyone who's done this?
- jonstjohn 14y ago
  We do an internal hack day modeled after Atlassian ShipIt (or as they called it and we do 'Fedex Day'). We've only had two since we started (year and a half) but aim to have one per quarter or every other quarter. In our experience, they were a major boost to morale and some really interesting ideas came out of them, several of which have been implemented fully in our core products. I'm a big advocate for these. We couldn't really pull off 20% but giving developers opportunities to work on their ideas within the company is really important.
cletus 14y ago
Reading some of the comments on this thread and others about Google (disclaimer: I work for Google), I feel it necessary to point out that much of the time when people criticise Google that: 1. They're pushing their own agenda; 2. Such comments are typically one-sided Google can't or won't comment; and 3. That observation or opinion is often selective, misrepresentative, biased or a combination thereof. So the next time you read a post about, oh I don't know, how someone's Adwords account was unfairly banned for no good reason and you see that the person claiming such just so happens to sell Valentine's Day gifts and it's the week of Valentine's Day then maybe just maybe that post is a misrepresentative PR stunt. Likewise if you see people who worked for Google for a matter of months posting on every Google-related thread as some kind of self-proclaimed expert you should realize that they're pushing a particular viewpoint that paints the company in a worse light and them in a better light. Chances are it didn't work out for them. Perhaps they have legitimate gripes. Perhaps they just didn't fit in. Maybe they even self-destructed and burned all their bridges. Whatever the case, their accounts of Google should at least be viewed skeptically. So please apply some filters to such comments like: - does this person know what they're talking about? - what agenda are they pushing? Now I'm no expert on Google (having worked here <2 years now) but let me give you my observations. 20% does still exist although from what I gather the nature of it has changed somewhat. It's probably fair to say that 20% time is less used now and when it is it's more for trying out or auditioning for a new team. Personally I find it difficult to split my focus this way. This kind of compartmentalization is not my strong suit. I have the same issue with personal projects. When not at work I'll often think about work anyway. YMMV. That all being said, I know of recent examples of people doing 20% time and I know of some cases where those 20% ideas turned into 100% time (if you will) on something new. As far as daydreaming and other "lateral thinking" time goes, I'd say Google is by far the most accepting of this than any other company I personally have worked for. There are massage chairs, pool tables, tennis tables, consoles, etc around and people use them. They're not just decorative. Google also as far as I've seen tolerates failure. I mean don't get me wrong, you're still better off succeeding than failing :) but you won't get fired if your project fails. As far as individual experimentation goes I'll say this: Google is an example of something that I believe holds true for life in general: you get out of it as much as you put in. This goes to the "individual experimentation" point. If you want to check out someone else's code, fix or add something and raise a CL for it you can. The other side will need to accept it of course. If you just want to dick around with something you can do that too.
rickmb 14y ago
In my experience, all these formal 20% things are just too artificial, and usually just marketing. The only important thing (but also the most challenging) is to ensure that there is enough slack in the schedule. If you can manage that, well, you've got a bunch of hackers with some hardware, an internet connection and time on their hands. The rest will pretty much sort itself out.
zwieback 14y ago
I've worked for HP (one of the examples in the article) since 1999 and even back then the free-time thing has been talked about as something from the "old days" when the HP way was still intact. I also did a stint at HP labs in 1988 and back then I remember my mentor showing me labstock and he told me that if I needed any stuff for a side project, even outside of work, I could use what was there. However, I never witnessed anyone taking advantage of that, people were way too busy on their main projects and had other hobbies outside of work (not many PCs and no internet back then). On the other hand I'm extrememly fortunate that I've always worked on projects where 80% of the time felt like working on my favorite hobby - building prototypes, coding, working with other HP sites across the globe. I think if I had to look for 20% of "fun" time I'd surely look for a different job. I think a better strategy for large companies would be to get your employees to spend 20% on learning new stuff and I'm not talking about online classes or touchy-feely offsites.
mindcrime 14y ago
He didn't - IIRC - talk about "20% time" specifically, but Tom DeMarco wrote a whole book about the importance of "slack" time at work. One point he makes is that if everyone is too busy doing the routine stuff 100% of the time, then the firm can't adapt quickly, because nobody has time to learn anything new, do exploratory / speculative work, etc. His book Slack is a fascinating read, and I'd recommend it to any HN'er who hasn't read it yet: http://www.amazon.com/Slack-Getting-Burnout-Busywork-Efficiency/dp/0767907698 http://www.amazon.com/Slack-Getting-Burnout-Busywork-Efficie...
- codinghorror 14y ago
  damn, I totally should have mentioned that in the post. I'll add it via an edit.
alanfalcon 14y ago
On my team at Blizzard we really did have "good off" time, in that it was dedicated to playing games. Any games: mobile games, the latest Call of Duty, classic Nintendo games on the 50" TV behind the bar in the break room, pool, volleyball. It amounted to more like 4% time than 20% time, but still, there was no expectation of people coming up with new products as a result of it. I do wonder of it was seen as an additional motivator to ensure people were getting their work completed on time and without needing to stay late working overtime... But I think it was probably just what it seemed like: a fun perk.
niels_olson 14y ago
Brief report of the work rules I have had: - On this ships, we had to be in for Officer's call at 0700, then Quarters at 0730 to deliver the plan to the troops, but from there it was off to the races. Leave when done. Manpower studies said my job in port was 69 hours a week. Underway? Add 12 hours of watch daily. - When I checked in on staff at the Academy, I was told "I don't care what you're schedule is, just get the work done." I was in the office from 7:30 to 5:30, but often did homework before heading to night school. - Medical school. No rules, no assigned work. Pass the tests. - Internship: Only 80 hours a week, but every second was accounted for and usually assumed you were wearing running shoes. - Current job: doing QA on Navy corpsmen trained to something between an EMT and a nurse, assigned to small ships (300-400 mostly young healthy people). show up by 8, see clinic, get the work done. - Pathology residency (next job, knock on wood): have to get to work by 0645 because that's when parking fills up. People are usually around until 5. Get the work done. Side projects are required to graduate.
dromidas 14y ago
We have something similar at Microsoft... but only on the SQL team. It's called 'No Meeting Wednesdays', while it's not really a goof off day, it does let you focus entirely on whatever you want to focus on for an entire (relatively) uninterrupted day.

126 points by MarlonPro 14y ago

I wish more places operated like this here in Australia. Sadly the consensus at every single company I've ever worked for is if you don't have an IDE, debugger or textpad instance open on your screen you're slacking off. You don't succeed in business by burning out the talent that drives your company, you nurture it and if 20% of spare time yields you no result 80% of the time you'll be getting better output from your team because they're focused.

rimantas 14y ago
—What are you doing there? —Thinking. —Can't you think at home?
- nopassrecover 14y ago
  Sure, I can work at home too
- pbhjpbhj 14y ago
  --I never had you down as so progressive, sure I'll work from home the rest of the week, here's my number ...
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]

Nursie 14y ago

Great idea in principle. In practice there's always too much to do to respect this in a lot of places, even where it's nominally part of operating policy.

michaelochurch 14y ago
In practice there's always too much to do to respect this in a lot of places, even where it's nominally part of operating policy. That's not the problem. Most companies operate at about 30 to 40 percent efficiency. That's not to say that most workers could achieve as much working 2/5 as much, because a lot of the inefficiency is structural and intrinsic, but the idea that long hours and high managerial demands come from "too much to do" rather than deep structural problems with the modern corporation is hogwash.
EvilTerran 14y ago
There will always be too much to do, even if everyone worked on the urgent stuff 100% of the time. As such, taking some time every week to work on the stuff you think is important-but-not-urgent isn't going to change that. That's my thinking, anyway.

shutton 14y ago

Thought this was going to be about watching the London Olympics at your desk!

nicholassmith 14y ago
I sat and watched the mens time trials yesterday whilst working, the commentary seemed to help my brain focus on doing a really, really tedious task and I got it done without messing round on the internet and taking twice as long.
- aerique 14y ago
  I need music when doing a tedious task at work, otherwise I get distracted too easily.
  - MaysonL 14y ago
    I'm taking a few CS courses online, and find that I have to play solitaire while listening to them (usually at overspeed) to keep from zoning out.

Ygor 14y ago

Can anybody confirm if the 20% in google still stands? And, if it does, is it really 20% of the regular work hours? In my experience, 20% usually comes to something like: "Work on the important project 100% of the work week. After that, work 20% more on something you like." Everybody I know that works in Google, works far more than the standard 40h per week. Even if you cut of 20% of that time, they still work more than usual. Ofc, that doesn't mean it is generally the case, that's why I'm asking.

jc123 14y ago
While something like gmail may have come from 20% time, Google's 20% time is a marketing ploy. I don't think we're going to find a response where it is really 20% instead of 120% at Google.
_delirium 14y ago
To make it "stick" I think you really have to block out a specific part of the schedule, if that's possible, like designating Thursdays for only 20%-project work (barring emergencies). Sort of like the way Richard Hamming blocked out a specific 10% of his schedule (past noon on Fridays) in which he refrained from working on his regular projects, and only discussed blue-skies research.
rachelbythebay 14y ago
My "moles" have been telling me it's dead. What it meant in practice during my tenure (which predated most of the corporate hell courtesy of the new CEO) was this: if you want to go noodle around with someone else's code, you have a built-in excuse... and a limiter. That by itself was useful since you could go play around in other parts of the company and nobody could give you grief for it. Now it seems to have joined many other things which effectively are no more. The old reputation is hard to shake, and that's why you still see these PR pieces about how lovely it is to work there. Of course, this only makes sense when the code depots are actually open to viewing or modification. When you start having more and more things closed off (how's that components thing going, anyway?), there are fewer opportunities to randomly hack on stuff. Also, if your manager hates you, forget it. It's seen as goofing off.

coffeeaddicted 14y ago

I'm doing this as well as freelancer. Mostly I work on an opensource project that day, sometimes I use it for learning something new. Reason I started this was that I do not have the energy to do such things on the weekend (otherwise I'm constantly tired at work) and I still did want some productive spare-time. Unfortunately as freelancer this means 20% less pay (at least in the short run) and you need a client allowing for that, but after doing that for more than year now I still feel it's worth it.

hxf148 14y ago

Rackspace is making it easy for me right now.. Ironically I suppose, it's the first outage I've had with them while actively working in a long time.

lloeki 14y ago

Relevant TED talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html

aufreak3 14y ago

The other part of making the "20% time" idea work I suppose is the ability of a company to rally behind what shows potential.

Cyranix 14y ago
In two places that I've worked, the pendulum swung quite far in the other direction -- 20% time was instituted because the people whose roles involved creating a product vision (business development, management, etc.) were unable to introduce successful changes. Not only would the company leadership rally behind any promising output from 20% time, they were practically counting on it, putting additional responsibility on the developers without any additional reward -- and naturally, the stagnant creative/leadership roles would subsume a successful project. To any managers/leaders out there thinking of instituting 20% time: please, please don't do it if it's a last-ditch effort to innovate. Your employees may put up with it if they value job security, but they can tell that the resulting power dynamics within the organization are unfavorable to them.

aufreak3 14y ago

The other part of making the "20% time" idea work I suppose is the ability of a company to rally behind what shows potential.

michaelochurch 14y ago

I wish that 20%-time policies worked, but they don't. I think they're actually quite bad for morale in the long run. Why? People who have good rapport with their managers and are implicitly trusted will graduate to self-directed work within less than a year and be full-fledged "intrapreneurs" (i.e. have most of the autonomy that a startup founder would have, if not the same upside) within 2 or 3. You don't need a 20%-time policy to back that up. It naturally happens. So 20%-time policies exist to set a minimum on the allowance for self-directed work, but here's the problem: people who don't win the implicit trust of their managers get pissed off and disgusted-- regardless of whether they're working 32 or 40 or 50 hours per week-- and no side project can fix that: the only solution is for the employee to transfer before he burns out and gets fired. A 20%-time policy dangles a carrot. It reminds the people who don't have autonomy and implicit trust of what their work lives would be like if they had better managers. 20%-time often becomes a negative space and a justification for reducing employee autonomy during the other 80%. You want to mentor interns? Maintain a legacy module you depend on? Work on a cross-hierarchical project (from a cynical manager's PoV, this looks like a careerist attempt to become a "socialite" within the company rather than remaining under one thumb)? That's what 20% time is for. Also, 20% time might have been a real benefit in 1975 when average people didn't have access to a computer, but in 2012, most people would be happier just taking a day off to work on a side project. If you get fired or quit, you still have your side projects, but your 20%-time project ends up in /dev/null. Finally, here's a dirty secret about what has happened in the professions. Until about 1980, it was typically understood that metered work (i.e. what your boss is directly asking you do to) expectations in the professions would be about 20 to 25 hours per week. A boss who asked for more than that, except with an aggressive once-in-a-career type deadline, was setting an unreasonable expectation. The other 20-25 hours were to be spent on off-meter work, such as networking, continued education, and research-oriented side projects that might not work out but would teach something in the process, all of which were intended to keep the professional current and improve his or her long-term career. After the slow-motion terrorist attack that was the Reagan era and aggressive corporate cost-cutting, that devolved. The new expectation, after that, became 40+ hours of metered work, and any off-meter work was to happen on your own time. (The consequence of this is that most professionals don't learn much and are replaced by younger versions of themselves when they burn out.) So "20% time" is just a ghost to remind us of what things were like back when the professions really were professions.

cpenner461 14y ago

Lots of comments on the effectiveness of a 20% policy - I'm curious what other folks experience is like with an internal hack day? It seems that if a company's culture isn't suitable for 20% time (for whatever reason), that an internal hack day might be a useful alternative (scratching developer itches but not "wasting" 20% of developer time on non-core projects). Any insight/recommendations from anyone who's done this?

jonstjohn 14y ago
We do an internal hack day modeled after Atlassian ShipIt (or as they called it and we do 'Fedex Day'). We've only had two since we started (year and a half) but aim to have one per quarter or every other quarter. In our experience, they were a major boost to morale and some really interesting ideas came out of them, several of which have been implemented fully in our core products. I'm a big advocate for these. We couldn't really pull off 20% but giving developers opportunities to work on their ideas within the company is really important.

cletus 14y ago

Reading some of the comments on this thread and others about Google (disclaimer: I work for Google), I feel it necessary to point out that much of the time when people criticise Google that: 1. They're pushing their own agenda; 2. Such comments are typically one-sided Google can't or won't comment; and 3. That observation or opinion is often selective, misrepresentative, biased or a combination thereof. So the next time you read a post about, oh I don't know, how someone's Adwords account was unfairly banned for no good reason and you see that the person claiming such just so happens to sell Valentine's Day gifts and it's the week of Valentine's Day then maybe just maybe that post is a misrepresentative PR stunt. Likewise if you see people who worked for Google for a matter of months posting on every Google-related thread as some kind of self-proclaimed expert you should realize that they're pushing a particular viewpoint that paints the company in a worse light and them in a better light. Chances are it didn't work out for them. Perhaps they have legitimate gripes. Perhaps they just didn't fit in. Maybe they even self-destructed and burned all their bridges. Whatever the case, their accounts of Google should at least be viewed skeptically. So please apply some filters to such comments like: - does this person know what they're talking about? - what agenda are they pushing? Now I'm no expert on Google (having worked here <2 years now) but let me give you my observations. 20% does still exist although from what I gather the nature of it has changed somewhat. It's probably fair to say that 20% time is less used now and when it is it's more for trying out or auditioning for a new team. Personally I find it difficult to split my focus this way. This kind of compartmentalization is not my strong suit. I have the same issue with personal projects. When not at work I'll often think about work anyway. YMMV. That all being said, I know of recent examples of people doing 20% time and I know of some cases where those 20% ideas turned into 100% time (if you will) on something new. As far as daydreaming and other "lateral thinking" time goes, I'd say Google is by far the most accepting of this than any other company I personally have worked for. There are massage chairs, pool tables, tennis tables, consoles, etc around and people use them. They're not just decorative. Google also as far as I've seen tolerates failure. I mean don't get me wrong, you're still better off succeeding than failing :) but you won't get fired if your project fails. As far as individual experimentation goes I'll say this: Google is an example of something that I believe holds true for life in general: you get out of it as much as you put in. This goes to the "individual experimentation" point. If you want to check out someone else's code, fix or add something and raise a CL for it you can. The other side will need to accept it of course. If you just want to dick around with something you can do that too.

rickmb 14y ago

In my experience, all these formal 20% things are just too artificial, and usually just marketing. The only important thing (but also the most challenging) is to ensure that there is enough slack in the schedule. If you can manage that, well, you've got a bunch of hackers with some hardware, an internet connection and time on their hands. The rest will pretty much sort itself out.

zwieback 14y ago

I've worked for HP (one of the examples in the article) since 1999 and even back then the free-time thing has been talked about as something from the "old days" when the HP way was still intact. I also did a stint at HP labs in 1988 and back then I remember my mentor showing me labstock and he told me that if I needed any stuff for a side project, even outside of work, I could use what was there. However, I never witnessed anyone taking advantage of that, people were way too busy on their main projects and had other hobbies outside of work (not many PCs and no internet back then). On the other hand I'm extrememly fortunate that I've always worked on projects where 80% of the time felt like working on my favorite hobby - building prototypes, coding, working with other HP sites across the globe. I think if I had to look for 20% of "fun" time I'd surely look for a different job. I think a better strategy for large companies would be to get your employees to spend 20% on learning new stuff and I'm not talking about online classes or touchy-feely offsites.

mindcrime 14y ago

He didn't - IIRC - talk about "20% time" specifically, but Tom DeMarco wrote a whole book about the importance of "slack" time at work. One point he makes is that if everyone is too busy doing the routine stuff 100% of the time, then the firm can't adapt quickly, because nobody has time to learn anything new, do exploratory / speculative work, etc. His book Slack is a fascinating read, and I'd recommend it to any HN'er who hasn't read it yet: http://www.amazon.com/Slack-Getting-Burnout-Busywork-Efficiency/dp/0767907698 http://www.amazon.com/Slack-Getting-Burnout-Busywork-Efficie...

codinghorror 14y ago
damn, I totally should have mentioned that in the post. I'll add it via an edit.

alanfalcon 14y ago

On my team at Blizzard we really did have "good off" time, in that it was dedicated to playing games. Any games: mobile games, the latest Call of Duty, classic Nintendo games on the 50" TV behind the bar in the break room, pool, volleyball. It amounted to more like 4% time than 20% time, but still, there was no expectation of people coming up with new products as a result of it. I do wonder of it was seen as an additional motivator to ensure people were getting their work completed on time and without needing to stay late working overtime... But I think it was probably just what it seemed like: a fun perk.

niels_olson 14y ago

Brief report of the work rules I have had: - On this ships, we had to be in for Officer's call at 0700, then Quarters at 0730 to deliver the plan to the troops, but from there it was off to the races. Leave when done. Manpower studies said my job in port was 69 hours a week. Underway? Add 12 hours of watch daily. - When I checked in on staff at the Academy, I was told "I don't care what you're schedule is, just get the work done." I was in the office from 7:30 to 5:30, but often did homework before heading to night school. - Medical school. No rules, no assigned work. Pass the tests. - Internship: Only 80 hours a week, but every second was accounted for and usually assumed you were wearing running shoes. - Current job: doing QA on Navy corpsmen trained to something between an EMT and a nurse, assigned to small ships (300-400 mostly young healthy people). show up by 8, see clinic, get the work done. - Pathology residency (next job, knock on wood): have to get to work by 0645 because that's when parking fills up. People are usually around until 5. Get the work done. Side projects are required to graduate.

dromidas 14y ago

We have something similar at Microsoft... but only on the SQL team. It's called 'No Meeting Wednesdays', while it's not really a goof off day, it does let you focus entirely on whatever you want to focus on for an entire (relatively) uninterrupted day.