
Making 20% Time Work - begriffs
http://begriffs.com/posts/2016-01-29-making-twenty-percent-time-work.html
======
sqldba
Wow I would absolutely hate this.

I'm not doing 20% time to trend shit for YOU on GitHub so that YOU can feel
like you're doing something as a manager; intruding on and micromanaging "free
time" until it's anything but "free".

I'm doing it to answer a burning question I have about something and do some
exploration whether YOU think it's useful or not.

And before you whinge and bitch that I'm there to serve the company, a) if
that's what you want then don't fucking act like its free time because it's
not, and b) irrelevant disconnected ideas and the curiosity to pursue them are
not only the indicators of your smartest and best employees they're also a
precondition to keeping them happy and keeping them at all.

This time benefits me. There have been plenty of HN articles that
breakthroughs come from tying together these previously thought irrelevant
ideas. And in my experience researching some side project always comes to
provide needed knowledge somewhere else eventually, always.

Just not perhaps in the short 30 second timespan and timescale of an idiot
clueless irritating manager.

~~~
nathan_f77
I also had the same initial reaction, but also keep in mind that these guys
are paying your salary. You are literally there to serve the company in
exchange for money. If your manager wants to make your 20% time more
structured, then so be it. It's not free time, it's just a block of time set
aside for research, experimenting, and innovation. You're still being paid for
it, and it's not like you're being asked to work overtime or during your lunch
break. If you want a lot of free time, then you can find a part-time freelance
job and work from home.

~~~
quanticle
>If your manager wants to make your 20% time more structured, then so be it.
It's not free time, it's just a block of time set aside for research,
experimenting, and innovation.

Then don't call it 20% time. Fold it in as a "spike", in the normal sprint
planning process.

The visceral reaction you're seeing to this system stems from the disconnect
between the promise of "20% time" \- that I get to work on something that I
think is cool, without having to justify it to the company - and the reality,
which is that it's just normal sprint work by another name.

If 20% time is subject to the normal planning and prioritization processes
that the company uses for planning out the rest of its work, it raises the
question of why you're placing that time into a separate bucket in the first
place.

~~~
_delirium
> If 20% time is subject to the normal planning and prioritization processes
> that the company uses for planning out the rest of its work, it raises the
> question of why you're placing that time into a separate bucket in the first
> place.

A cynical answer: Other companies have heard that Google does this cool thing
called 20% time, and they want to be hip too, but don't want to give up any
actual employee-hours to institute it. So instead they just rebrand some
portion of their normal work as "20% time".

~~~
cinquemb
But who can resist the lure of paying down technical debt during one's
allocated "20% time" that was accrued in their job vs all the other things not
necessarily related to their job that one may find satisfying and might make
them more valuable as an employee or to other human beings outside of their
job?

------
nowarninglabel
We have successfully pulled off 20% for 5+ years now at Kiva, doing some of
the things suggested here.

However, the key thing we do is actually make the 20% be a full two-week
sprint, it just happens every 5th sprint. That way, you can have the time to
do some planning, suggesting, and documentation before setting out to build
something and you get the full amount of time you needed to build it. We
purposefully do try to keep features limited to something shippable during
that time period, though some folks will spread it out over a few for bigger
efforts. It's pretty great and a key part of our culture that I'm happy we've
been able to keep. It's also produced some of the best features Kiva has (as
well as served as a great time for engineers that like to tidy things to clean
up the codebase).

[http://pages.kiva.org/buildkivablog/2011/02/10/kiva-
engineer...](http://pages.kiva.org/buildkivablog/2011/02/10/kiva-engineering-
innovation-iteration)

~~~
developer2
If a developer places an idea up requiring only 4 points, can they pin their
own 4 points to it and work on it alone without having to answer to anyone?

The entire point of the 20% concept to me is that _I get to work on my own
idea_. I do not like your version that makes it a popularity contest between
developers and their separate ideas. Most of the fun that can be found in 20%
is the lack of constraints and oversight. The 20% should not have to be
justified to anyone, let alone planned out and required to fit within a single
sprint.

To be fair, I despise agile (or is it capitalized Agile?) in all its bullshit
incarnations. The most interesting aspect of a 20% project is that the
business keeps its filthy hands out of my time. Applying agile into the 20%
makes me sick.

~~~
mrow84
Out of interest, could you elaborate on what is it about agile methods that
you dislike/despise?

~~~
developer2
I've been through the agile process at 5 different companies, and it has never
been successful. My biggest issue is with the people who are brought in to
implement it. The scrum masters always try to spin the whole thing as a
positive for both the development team and the business. Both the team and the
business's management are supposed to be disciplined. But the scrum masters
always wind up being _scum masters_ , always bowing to the will of the
business's management. Meanwhile the team is left with nobody to defend their
right to have the process respected.

The primary selling point is always the removal of the "old waterfall method".
And yet every single sprint, 20-40-80 hours worth of "more urgent tasks" get
dropped in without proper grooming or advanced planning. Whether or not other
tasks get removed from the sprint to equalize the incoming work does nothing
to alleviate the frustration.

Every agile process I have seen always winds up being the same old bullshit of
management having no discipline to actually follow the rules. We call it
agile, but it's still just waterfall glossed over with a name - with none of
the actual principles being taken seriously.

~~~
mrow84
Ok, I can see why you might be jaded about it! I've had very different
experiences, and, as you say, it probably depends on the people who are
implementing it - the discipline is very important, and perhaps we were
fortunate in that regard without realising it, because it was something we
implemented as a group rather than being imposed on us from above.

------
codeonfire
How to make 20% time: Just do it. Don't tell anyone. Tell that asshole trying
to control your work to fuck off. When you've got something, tell the right
people about it. Watch the other assholes at your job trip over themselves as
they trash your work that you already got buy in from from the right people.
Publish it. Launch it. Put it on your resume. You'll probably get fired
because the assholes will resent that you're not under their control. So what?
Make getting fired part of your career progression plan. Start your new,
better job, rinse and repeat.

~~~
onion2k
So, if I'm understanding you correctly, you think the way to advance your
career is to spend 20% of your time working on unsanctioned side projects in
work time, writing code that will be owned by your employer that you can't
publish legally without permission, all the while taking longer to do your
assigned tasks and looking like you slack off for a day a week? And you think
that if that gets you fired you'll move _up_ your career ladder? Would you
seriously hire someone who'd done that?

I wouldn't do that. I'd take some of my spare time, a few weekends, to
document the idea and maybe hack together a prototype, and take that to "the
right people". If they're going to be happy with the project then it's better
to do it without pissing off everyone else.

~~~
js8
I agree with GP. Can't really answer the hiring question (because I am not
interested in being anyone's boss), but why not? Do _you_ think that the way
to advance your career is always do what you're being told? GP's suggestion,
at least, makes life a lot more interesting.. And people willing to take risks
and make their own projects typically will have better CVs.

I would rather see somebody genuinely advance in the organization by genuinely
improving something (and taking some risk), while taking time from a stupid
project, rather than by taking credit for work of someone else (but that never
happens, right?). And in fact it's the latter people who get angry, so for
that really doesn't matter on whose time you do it.

As for your suggestion, why is it OK for employer to steal employee's free
time and not OK for employee to steal employer's time? We are talking about
improvement to the employer's business, after all.

~~~
onion2k
_I would rather see somebody genuinely advance in the organization by
genuinely improving something (and taking some risk), while taking time from a
stupid project, rather than by taking credit for work of someone else (but
that never happens, right?)._

What you don't seem to realise is that _there are no stupid projects_. Someone
in the business believes that the "stupid project" is a good idea that's
worthwhile paying a developer to work on, and they've persuaded the people
higher up that this is the case. If you just decide that it's not worth your
time and something else is more important then you're effectively telling
everyone who has agreed to let the "stupid project" go ahead that they're all
wrong and you know best. That is not the best way to further your career.

Open a dialogue. Provide evidence. Don't just say "I know best!" and forge
ahead while ignoring everyone else's input. If you're right then people will
listen.

No one _ever_ succeeds on their own.

~~~
mbrock
I have at times needed to keep projects "secret" because I knew that there
would be a 95% chance that the idea would be shot down immediately in any
meeting due to being infeasible, politically/personally tricky in some way,
difficult to explain, and so on. So I have worked on these ideas sometimes at
off hours, or while also making progress on other tasks. Thus far, these
skunkworks have been very successful. There is an element to it in many things
I do... I often prefer a bit of vagueness around what I am actually doing,
since it gives me more freedom to consider solutions that might not be in line
with what everybody would expect. Which sometimes makes me wonder if I am
being a "cowboy coder" or something. Some of it is due to my skills of
persuasion and communication—if I were better at that, maybe I wouldn't need
secrecy. But I also just know that some good ideas will not fly in a group
meeting before a prototype exists. Then my duty and passion for the product
and company override my duty to clear everything with the whole team, I feel.
It's not an easy question.

~~~
douche
Asking forgiveness is usually easier than asking permission. Also, it's harder
to justify shaving the yak when you deliver it pre-shaved.

------
jmspring
The method seems interesting from the "help people be aware of what's out
there and how other people are working" perspective...However, personally, I
get lost on one major point in two ways:

\- Organized 20% time

First, for me, twenty percent time is that thing I work on when I'm blocked on
something, have an inspiration, or just need a distraction from my major
project.

Second, I can respect the organizational aspect and helping people understand
how to contribute, etc, but really formalizing it in a table / chart and
meeting to discuss it?

Maybe I am taking too strict of a view, but 20% time for me is that thing that
is fluid and fills in the gaps or gives energy when I need a break from the
day to day tasks.

~~~
HappyTypist
Exactly. I take 20% time to make my 80% time at least 25% more productive,
whether that's by tooling, using new approaches or frameworks, or just need a
small break.

------
eitally
This isn't bad, per se, and it's good to think about, but I want to throw it
out there that the only reason 20% time works decently at Google is because of
Google's culture. By virtue of empowering employees to find problems and solve
them, and being supportive of career dev & internal transfer, and making
boatloads of money, it makes it easy for the org to tolerate the slack this
forces in defined teams. Almost none of the kinds of things that encourage 20%
projects at Google typically exist in large enterprises, and when those
companies try things like this it typically ends up being much more forced and
much less organic, for better AND for worse.

I'm glad to read this post. I tried instituting 20% time in my previous job
and almost no one took advantage of it. They just didn't have an adequate
level of trust in exec mgmt that diverting their attention from core
responsibilities wouldn't cause adverse personal reactions down the road. So
sad. :(

------
melted
20% doesn't even work at Google. The reason being, if you care about your
career, it ends up being 20% _on top of_ 120% you're already putting in. And I
don't know about you, but I'd rather the company did not know about anything I
do on my own time and with my own resources, so that they couldn't lay any
intellectual property claims to it.

~~~
Veratyr
> 20% doesn't even work at Google. The reason being, if you care about your
> career, it ends up being 20% _on top of_ 120% you're already putting in.

From what I've heard from close friends who work at Google, this depends a lot
on the team you're on and the manager you have. If you Google around a bit
you'll see a lot of mixed feedback on the idea for this reason.

> And I don't know about you, but I'd rather the company did not know about
> anything I do on my own time and with my own resources, so that they
> couldn't lay any intellectual property claims to it.

They don't need to know about anything you do on your own time to lay IP
claims on it. In California at least, there are very clear rules [0] that
state that an employer can lay claim to IP under a number of conditions, none
of which is that the employer knew it was happening at the time.

If it's anything worthwhile, it's likely to come up on your employer's radar
at some point. It's better just to be upfront about such things instead of
sneaking around. If you can't trust your employer you should probably find a
new one.

[0]: [http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-
bin/displaycode?section=lab&gr...](http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-
bin/displaycode?section=lab&group=02001-03000&file=2870-2872)

------
mianos
Googler please chime in, but as far as I read it's been dead for years.
[http://qz.com/115831/googles-20-time-which-brought-you-
gmail...](http://qz.com/115831/googles-20-time-which-brought-you-gmail-and-
adsense-is-now-as-good-as-dead/)

~~~
gnachman
iTerm2 is my 20% project.

~~~
buttonsmasher
Hey man, I cannot understate this, iTerm2 is the best part of my dev
environment. I cannot thank you enough for this.

------
grecy
Another thing we did that really helped - make Monday 20% day not Friday.

On Friday there are always too many things remaining in the sprint, and 20%
time gets pushed off and continually forgotten about.

------
lacker
Having worked at both Google and Facebook I prefer Facebook's strategy of
"hackathons" and "hackamonths" to encourage people to sometimes work on
different projects than they usually do, to mix it up. Hackathons (1-3 days at
FB) are cool because they really encourage you to work with a new set of
people. Hackamonths are usually tied to, "this project is with a different
team and if it's going well I would join this other team". I think that is
cool because they make it explicit that maybe your side projecty thing is
going to turn into your real project. The setup is aimed at a similar thing to
20% time and I think it is overall more effective.

------
thebouv
There are IT departments inside of non-IT companies that would love to have
this sort of luxury. But with department heads that would have their heads
explode if you try to explain this to them.

 _sigh_

~~~
jupiter90000
Also, slightly off topic, but for similar reasons I can't figure out why
bosses want IT workers that mostly sit at their desk on a computer to work at
the office (instead of remote locations) for a full 40+ a week. It's like
there is distrusting management who thinks if they didn't walk the hallways
once per week at random and see people staring at their computers then the
same work wouldn't happen. Let these people work alot more wherever they want
if their work isn't location dependent.

~~~
sqldba
I saw a fascinating comment a few weeks ago that, why does a company think
it's fine for you to "work from home" when you're on call all the time to fix
their problems; but not the rest of the time when you're fixing their
problems?!

------
johnmaguire2013
I love this BASEDEF acronym. I have an IRC bot that I've been working on for 3
years on Github. I've also tossed it on up-for-grabs.net. About 7 people have
submitted contributions, I think because of up-for-grabs.

I think that acronym perfectly describes what a successful open-source project
needs to thrive.

------
moron4hire
I have 80% time, i.e. I only spend about 20% of my time on my clients.

To hell with this wage employment bullshit. Keep your productivity and the
fruits thereof for yourself. Don't give them away for a pittance to an
employer, who probably also made you sign an agreement that they get to take
anything you make, whether you made it on their time or not.

------
ErrantX
As an IT manager; the biggest problem with 20% time I've seen is people using
for 80% time stuff. Like, critical training they should have gotten as part of
normal work, etc.

That sucks, that's not 20% culture.

------
bobwaycott
There's a certain irony in the title, as this reads to be a how-to guide to
making 20% time _work_.

------
isoos
There are many, slightly different ways to describe innovation.

I have found that 20% of the time project is about personal motivation to show
on something different (than my usual tasks) that I can do it or make it
better. Managers only need to enable it, and shall not force it. If the
individual is not motivated to show that it can do better, let it be, because
they may be just fine with their normal work.

Groups working on things together for a week (~yearly 20% time) is more about
exploring the team's creativity, exploring business or product ideas. It can
be called internal pitch or demo days.

Some ideas need time to get some exploring, some trial and error, some
fiddling, some long discussions, and may not be doable in a week (wall clock
time). Due to their different nature, they will result in different products.

I have written a couple of other points that are related about product
development (e.g. moonshot, 10X, competitions), you may find them useful:

[https://drillio.com/en/2016/best-practices-in-product-
develo...](https://drillio.com/en/2016/best-practices-in-product-development/)

Re: article. I think the author is using the 20% projects as a team building
exercise. It could be working for that purpose, and maybe for some incremental
changes, but will not explore innovative ideas.

------
Rygu
Creative processes actually CAN be well-organized and fun at the same time.
Just look at hackathons, which teams get stuck halfway and which teams are
productive and take the prize home?

If you only care about code and learning new APIs, that's your right. (I'd say
do it at home.) If you want to ship something real with 20% company time? Get
your project organized.

------
k__
I don't get it...

They give you 20℅ 'off' to do stuff they need?!

Either they want me to solve their problems and plan this with me to do it
like normal work, which IT IS or they want me to do my own thing and don't
bother me if they can't use this......

Sounds like all this crap loke pingpong, Snacks and billiard tables to me :D

~~~
meric
Many jobs give you 28% time to do stuff _you_ need. It's called the weekend.

~~~
bobwaycott
Jobs don't _give_ workers 28% time to do what they need. Workers _exchange_
72% of their time to jobs for income, and retain that 28% to do as they wish.
It's worth noting there's a difference. Said your way, it's as if workers
ought to be grateful to their jobs for _allowing_ weekends. And that is
fucked.

Either way, it's still fucked that working and living isn't an even 50% split.
It should be.

~~~
meric
Hours of commuting and working per week: (2 + 8) * 5 = 50.

Hours of living on weekdays per week, exclude sleep: 6 * 5 = 30.

Hours of living on weekends per week, exclude sleep: 32.

Total hours living per week: 62

Total hours working per week: 50

You're right, it's not an even 50% split.

There's 6 hours of free time a day, plus 32 hours on the weekend.

Three nights a week I watch a movie or a couple of episodes on netflix (90
minutes), I play an hour or two of games (90 minutes), I write code for
another hour or two (90 minutes), and the rest of the time is spent eating
dinner.

Two nights a week, I forgo gaming and netflix to hangout with family and
friends. I still manage to code. It may be on the train, but I do it.

And there's the weekend.

You know what? I have a good life, and fucked or not, I _am_ grateful for it.

If a company is paying you for your time, what do you expect to be doing, if
not to do what the company wants you to do?

If you want to not do what others want you to do, and still receive a regular
pay check, that's called taking on welfare.

~~~
bobwaycott
Now you've moved the goalposts from your original 28% figure (2 days out of 7)
to trying to defend a stupidly made point by drilling into a hourly breakdown.
You can't have it both ways.

An even 50/50 split would be working no more days than you live--taking the
day itself as the unit of measure. By the week, that means recognizing there's
something inherently off with the notion that it's at all balanced to exchange
5 days to an employer so you can get 2 days to yourself in return.

If you want to make yourself feel better by counting how many hours you can
squeeze out of a day for yourself, that's fine. I doubt I'm the only person
who thinks that is no way to live.

In contrast to your example that, to me, seems insanely driven by the tyranny
of the clock, a different take:

There are 365 days per year. When I decided years ago I wanted to achieve
work-life balance, that left 182 days for working. By the typical American
work week, if I was working a job, I'd be expected to surrender 251 days (for
2016). That's 70 days too many.

So, there are 183 days of free time per year.

Some of those days, I binge-watch Netflix. I don't even know how much time
that totals.

Some days, I play games all night until the sun comes up.

Some days, I dabble with some code related to something I want to play around
with, experiment, learn, rebuild, whatever.

Some days, I see the computer and say, "Fuck you, computer. It's gorgeous
outside."

I wake up whenever by body wakes up. I shower. Grab some food or a meal shake.
Head to the gym for a couple hours. Maybe take a nap, read, or just sit and
breathe.

Some days I'm just sick of being at home, so I leave. I'm not counting any
hours here, so I call up some friends out of town and say I'm coming their way
for a couple days. I head out of state. I leave the country. I think of who I
haven't seen in a while and get together with them.

> _If a company is paying you for your time, what do you expect to be doing,
> if not to do what the company wants you to do? If you want to not do what
> others want you to do, and still receive a regular pay check, that 's called
> taking on welfare._

That's an oddly binary and ideologically ridiculous notion you have there. As
if there are no other ways to exist and subsist besides welfare and doing what
others want you to do to receive a paycheck. I mean, come on. This is HN.
_This place exists for people who don 't want to do what others want them to
do in exchange for a paycheck._

P.S. I never said you shouldn't be grateful for having a good life. I think
it's great when people recognize how good they have things, and are genuinely
grateful for it. I was picking on a very subtle but important nuance in your
original statement that I felt important to highlight. It's fine if you don't
get the nuance, or don't care for it. For me, I like to remember where the
agency and empowerment lies in my life. I'd never be able to stand a situation
in which I actually had to think that an employer _gave_ me a couple days of
_my life_ on the weekends before coming back to work.

~~~
meric
I agree with you, 183 days definitely is a more relaxed way to live. My point
was if people wanted to work on their company's stuff 4 days a week and
improve their technical knowledge 1 day a week, they ought to negotiate a 4
day work week rather than demand they be paid for the time they're doing their
own things. I understand you don't like the sound of 'employer _gave_ you. But
what I said was _jobs_ give you two days off. If you can find one that gives
you 183 days off then, great!

Main point aside, I think it's important to realise our entire lives are
_given_ to us by the circumstances and fate of the universe itself. My job is
one part of the universe.

------
jmbwell
I read this less as the company trying to control your 20% time, and more as
the company making your 20% a first-class citizen among its other projects, by
using the same resources and processes.

------
makecheck
20% time is important because not everyone has a ton of free time to improve
their skills and do whatever they want to.

People with families, hobbies (that aren't programming), classes to take, or
even extra-long commutes are not overflowing with time to devote to side
projects.

------
fibo
I already do that, and My boss is aware. When it is necessary to fix things
quickly or do scouting or in general problem solving your time invested
returns, but you are faster.

------
mattiemass
Love the idea of trying to a) make 20% time better and b) encourage it to be
open source. Wonderful stuff!

------
toto99
I work in a big corporation and I am doing 90%. no one seems to care and I am
enjoying it very much

------
rdiddly
Making 20% Time Work? But the 80% is already work.

------
IanCal
I've seen this tried in a few ways that didn't really work out and one that
worked well: (edit - this is always highly dependent on the people and small
differences, this is only my experience of 10/20% time that I've actually
participated in and the issues that appeared at my workplace)

# One day a week:

Cons: people are off more on fridays, feel like they're missing out. Some
things need more than one day, other priorities pop up a lot on fridays. Hard
to force people to suddenly switch for one day.

Pros: Simple, everyone gets time together. Easier to actually 'enforce' and
not see it just disappear.

# One week/similar per longer time period:

Cons: Lots of time to stop everyone working, doesn't line up with all
schedules, etc.

Pros: Longer to do things, everyone available together. Same pros as one day
per week.

# Organise it yourself, completely freestyle

Cons: People don't actually do it most of the time, seems like they're taking
time away from their main project.

Pros: Timing issues pretty much disappear, but things can always be put off.
Easy for it to just be forgotten.

\-----

The way I've seen it work well had these properties:

No fixed time or schedule, you booked off time to work on what you wanted.

Your manager can't indefinitely say "no", but if you're trying to book off the
day of a release when you're planning a big release then they'd ask you to
wait a bit.

To get it you have to say what it was you wanted to do, but this only needed
to be a brief sentence on a wiki somewhere (could be "play around with X" or
"try and make a Y"). You also needed to say if there was anything you
required, and they'd help you sort this out.

The time is considered like holiday. You don't pull in workers from holiday to
help out, you can't pull them away from the time they'd requested for the
project.

You were encouraged to go and work in a different building/office if you
wanted so you're not surrounded by people asking "quick questions".

You were required to put any code in a particular place.

You needed to briefly say how it went.

You had to be reasonably willing to say what you did in the next all-hands.

This was all fairly lightweight, booking time off wasn't a difficult thing and
getting approval was just a quick chat about what you were planning. You could
grab a few days or an afternoon, and they'd help out if you needed other
equipment/etc.

Overall I think what will work varies massively on your workers and current
workplace, it's vital to try a few different things and tweak as you go.

------
monk_e_boy
I've never met anyone who has this luxury, quick poll: Do you have 20% time?

~~~
its2complicated
Not 20%, but I got the manager to give us 2 hours every Friday. I guess that
would be 5% time. I was doing C# enterprise work at the time, so I would use
those 2 hours on totally different stuff; like brushing up on C++, or dicking
around with Perl.

~~~
ansgri
Are you joking? 2h is the time I need to just switch language/framework
contexts to write anything morecomplicated than helloworld, never mind
understand some code I've written a week ago.

------
aswanson
Just keeping it 100: if you come up with a really good idea, (orthogonal to
the companies business) that can make a lot of money in 20% time and give it
back to your company rather than starting your own shit with it, you're
stupid. Or just have low testosterone.

~~~
Retric
A lot of ideas fit somewhere between viable startups and obvious new features.
If you think in terms of the next 20 years being able to put, developed X
could easily be worth a few million. Even if X can't really be done as a
startup.

IMO, the biggest benefit from a companies standpoint is people can try out new
things without cluttering up the main product. Boring but works is often best
for a company and terrible on peoples resumes.

