

NPR tried Google's 20%-time with their developers - freejoe76
http://www.niemanlab.org/2011/08/npr-tries-something-new-a-day-to-let-managers-step-away-and-developers-play/

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wccrawford
"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.)

~~~
oacgnol
On the topic of company size and affordability, have you ever heard of any
smaller companies (read: startups) that have 20% time?

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iand
We're a small company of 40. If someone wants to take time out to learn
something or try an idea or work on a project of their own then they should do
that. We don't allocate a specific portion of time to do that but we don't
measure hours worked anyway. We only measure what people achieve. If they do
meet company objectives by only spending half a day a week hacking on
"directed" work then that's great. More time for them to invent something
really cool. It helps that everyone in the company has equity and feels like a
real owner which means timewasting and abuse is quickly pointed out and
stopped.

I'm the CTO. Feel free to ask me anything about the culture we have.

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molecule
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
You're right, thanks, I updated the headline.

~~~
andrewphelps
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
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
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.

~~~
cbs
>they should do the Silicon Valley long-weekend style hackathons

>Make it Thursday night - Sunday afternoon,

>8 days off/year instead of 52 should be much more doable for a smaller
operation like NPR.

Yeah, if I want to spend extra time at work I can focus on whatever the hell
I'd like to, too.

You seem to be missing the point of a "20% time" or "serendipity day" if you
think it can be duplicated by giving extra work to people in a salary exempt
position.

One provides periods of autonomy without asking any more from workers, it only
gives. The other asks for a huge time commitment. It shifts a big portion of
benefit from employee to employer.

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RandallBrown
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
> 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%?

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zethraeus
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
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.

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forkandwait
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
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.

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

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dan_swain
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.

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maeon3
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.

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rajpaul
Who is NPR? The article doesn't say.

~~~
sjs382
<http://www.npr.org/>

