
Why GitHub Hacks on Side Projects - holman
http://zachholman.com/posts/why-github-hacks-on-side-projects
======
krobertson
One of my previous employers had the attitude "if you have time for side
projects, there is always more to be done in our codebase." It didn't pan out
well for them in the long run. Everyone had side projects, they just never
talked about them for fear of the lame statement or the employer's IP
paranoia.

Now at a place where developers openly talk about their projects, collaborate
on them, and even talk with the CTO about them. Whether they have commercial
intent or not. A few of my own little "it'd be nice if we had a tool for X"
have actually been picked up, built upon, and used company wide.

Companies need to realize that devs hacking on side ideas or new technologies
can end up helping them in the long run. Makes for happier devs, brings new
ideas to the table, and creates a tighter culture.

~~~
kenjackson
_Companies need to realize that devs hacking on side ideas or new technologies
can end up helping them in the long run. Makes for happier devs, brings new
ideas to the table, and creates a tighter culture._

This is one of those things that I think is only true at small companies.
Places like Google have tried and largely failed at this. I wouldn't be
surprised if Page completely ends 20% time since pretty much everyone I know
personally at Google says that it became a way to do spin your wheels, but
provide no value.

At a small company, you're still figuring out how to make money. It's just as
likely that your next revenue stream will come from out of the blue.

With that said, as an employee, I'd never give my employer any of my side
project's IP. They can license it or buy it, but it's mine.

~~~
jonursenbach
If he's looking to bring Google back to its startup roots, ending 20% time
probably shouldn't be on his list.

~~~
khafra
I'd focus more on very carefully designed incentives for building cool stuff
during 20% time--bonuses and standard recognition/awards certainly wouldn't
work; I'm not sure what would.

------
frankdenbow
"Programmer productivity is not impacted by number of hours; it’s impacted by
the quality of those hours"

Truer words have not been spoken. Some companies really don't understand this
and are always watching the clock, or making sure you are pushing out a
certain amount of code.

Sometimes I need to just sit there and think instead of typing.

------
Hominem
I truly hope this works out for them. It's great to be able to jump into
something fun after hours of head down coding on something that may no be very
interesing.

Best code I've written were always little tools for myself or team to use plus
it keeps you sharp by allowing you to experiment with things you may never
have tried with code meant to go into production.

------
wippler
This is really cool, last week when I got bored of having lunch at the same
place, I decided to write an app that picks a place for me but then it kinda
got sidetracked. This gave me enough push to do it as my weekend project.

~~~
retlehs
This reminded me to put some more work into my lunch app (jQuery Mobile + Yelp
API + Google Maps API) I've worked on a little bit for the same reason. Thanks
:)

------
Gorm-Casper
This isn't, and shouldn't be, the focus, but an added bonus it that maybe,
just maybe, something valuable will come out of such projects.

Wasn't that how a Mining company from Minnesota (3M) ended up doing post-its?

~~~
eschapp
Nope. They still hate post it notes.

------
sudonim
One of our awesome devs made a campfire bot too. It spits out a pivotal
tracker ticket status, the weather, does a google image search among a few
other things. I don't want to give away everything since I didn't build it.

One hack we're talking about is adding a bathroom occupied red light so we
know not to get up and check if there's someone using it. Side projects are
great.

We're pretty cool with it and most of the time if a dev spends the day working
on a side project, they will stay a little late to do the other work they
have.

------
mdemare
Very cool! And if there's one company I admire, and would like to work for,
it's GitHub.

This may also work for web-apps, btw. Let your users modify something about
your web-app, or create something new, that is not just for them, and I'll bet
they'll become much more invested (like wikipedia).

