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...
iTerm2 is my 20% project.
Making 20% Time Work
61–70 of 142 posts
Re: Making 20% Time Work
#62We 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 tr…
I like the idea of every 5th sprint being devoted to this – a day week is barely enough to just switch context and get into gear. I can see how getting a couple of days distance between "real" work and the 5th sprint would be beneficial just to clear your mind and start fresh, knowing there are two glorious weeks of focus ahead.
Everyone is different. Some people stagnate without switching contexts frequently enough. That happens to me sometimes.
Re: Making 20% Time Work
#63I've never met anyone who has this luxury, quick poll: Do you have 20% time?
I have 10%, the Friday at the end of every two-week sprint (today in fact).
Re: Making 20% Time Work
#64I 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
Many jobs give you 28% time to do stuff you need. It's called the weekend.
Getting some tomatoes thrown your way, but I think your sentiment has merit. In what other industry is it really a thing to feel deprived if you don't get to spend 20% of your working hours exercising your creativity? I think it's worth recognizing that defending the sanctity of your personal creative time is a pretty nice problem to have. For many, it's not even up for discussion.
Re: Making 20% Time Work
#65How 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 y…
post of the year, seriously. That is what I was going to say. Just do it. A few hours a day, just do it.
Re: Making 20% Time Work
#66How 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 y…
Rinse and repeat? I could be missing something, but are we saying we should adopt the mentality that we are too good for any job we might find ourselves in? It sounds a bit arrogant to automatically assume that what you've chosen to divert your attention to has merit, and anyone who thinks otherwise is an asshole... I could be misreading, but your tone seems to veer more towards self-centeredness than empowerment.
Re: Making 20% Time Work
#67Re: Making 20% Time Work
#68Wow 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.
Re: Making 20% Time Work
#69How 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 y…
Agreed. I like the cut of your jib. IMHO denying orders to focus on what you're told rather than what you know is important is not only a hallmark to a good employee, nobody cares that you pissed off some random boss at work when you have something worthwhile on the resume (assuming you have a good reference though).
Re: Making 20% Time Work
#7020% 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.