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Independent Developer Projects in the Workplace? 337

Posted by Cliff from the if-it-works-for-Google... dept.
An anonymous reader asks: "My company wants to increase creativity and innovation, we our thinking of implementing a Google like policy of 20% of your time for independent projects but I can't find any details on how Google actually implements this. I am curious how they divvy up their time (1 day a week or 1 week a month)? How do you keep your real project from impacting it? At what point are the projects reviewed? Has anybody experienced other successful ways to stimulate creativity at their workplace?"
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Independent Developer Projects in the Workplace? More

Independent Developer Projects in the Workplace?

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  • Heh (Score:5, Funny)

    by Neil Blender ( 555885 ) <neilblender@gmail.com> on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @04:33PM (#11399948)
    Who doesn't spend at least 20% of their workday doing things other than work?

    • Re:Heh (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Peyna ( 14792 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @04:35PM (#11400006) Homepage
      They probably figured: "We can let our employees slack off 20% of the time, or pretend like we're 'encouraging' their independent works while at the same time eliminating that slack time."

      So you've made your employees happier which makes them more productive, and you've taken something wasted (slack time) and turned into something useful (creative/moral boosting time).

    • Re:Heh (Score:5, Funny)

      by Cheesy Fool ( 530943 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @04:36PM (#11400020) Homepage
      Probably more than that. To quote Office Space:

      ~ Well, generally I come in at least twenty minutes late, I sneak in through the backdoor so Lumberg won't see me, then for the next hour I just kinda space out.
      ~ Space out?
      ~ Yeah, I just kinda stare at my desk, but it looks like I'm working... I'd say in a given week I do about, oh, 15 minutes of real, actual work.

    • Does Slashdot count as work?

    • Re:Heh (Score:5, Funny)

      by EvilTwinSkippy ( 112490 ) <yoda AT etoyoc DOT com> on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @04:54PM (#11400335) Homepage Journal
      Are you kidding? My job description includes "...Stay up to date on network and techology developments..."

      It just so happens that most of my leads include "Userfriendly", Fark.com, and /.

    • Re:Heh (Score:5, Insightful)

      by joabj ( 91819 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @05:02PM (#11400487) Homepage
      Google has a bit of a specialized workforce--people who are creative and smart. I'm not sure how well it would work elsewhere, with people who are just punching the clock and holding no interest in work-related projects.

    • Re:Heh (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )
      Who doesn't spend at least 20% of their workday doing things other than work?

      Seriously. Humans are not designed to do the same thing for 8+ hours strait. Even Mastadon hunting parties probably stopped to bathe in the brook and wrestle each other under water.

      • Re:Heh (Score:5, Funny)

        by hoggoth ( 414195 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @05:18PM (#11400738) Journal
        > Mastadon hunting parties probably stopped to bathe in the brook and wrestle each other under water

        I, for one, welcome our new homo-erotic Elephant killing cavemen overlords.

        • Re:Heh (Score:3, Informative)

          by magefile ( 776388 )
          You, sir, have redeemed what was a dead joke (confirmed by Netcraft - that'll show them!). My hat is off to you.

        • Re:Heh (Score:3, Funny)

          by Tablizer ( 95088 )
          I, for one, welcome our new homo-erotic Elephant killing cavemen overlords.

          Be careful. Mr. Goatse? A Mastadon mating injury.

  • Google is pretty unique. (Score:5, Informative)

    by FortKnox ( 169099 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @04:33PM (#11399958) Homepage Journal
    I don't see any major corporations thinking this is a good investment. I don't see many PHB's going along with this idea, regardless of how successful Google is with it.
    • Especially if open-source and free software are explicitly banned, as they are at my current contract. Yes, Perl and Apache and others are not allowed here, and so the solution is proprietary, nonfunctional, and expensive!

    • Re:Google is pretty unique. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Fnkmaster ( 89084 ) * on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @04:39PM (#11400076)
      Umm, not all bosses have pointy hair. I've certainly heard of small companies with similar, if slightly less radical incentives to employees to do creative, entrepreneurial kinds of things. Basically, the issue is the more freedom you give your employees, the better they need to be. If you tell a slacking idjit that he can spend 20% of his time pursuing his "own interests" you can forget about that 20% of his time doing anything useful for the company.

      Major corporations don't usually have the calibre of employees across the board to make this sort of system work. They have evolved large bureaucracies as a way of extracting valuable workproduct from extremely mediocre talent.

      So I'd agree with a PHB at a major corporation, this probably would be a bad idea for his company.

      • Re:Google is pretty unique. (Score:4, Insightful)

        by cubicledrone ( 681598 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @04:58PM (#11400425)
        They have evolved large bureaucracies as a way of extracting valuable workproduct from extremely mediocre talent.

        Not quite. Large bureaucracies prevent work and progress which results in "mediocre talent." Such employees could also easily be described as "intelligent, capable and bored."

        • Re:Google is pretty unique. (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Jerf ( 17166 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @05:41PM (#11401098) Journal
          You're both right.

          Bureaucracies are a way of slamming everybody to a common standard with reasonable reliability. It is a low, but predictable level of capability, and frankly, that has its uses. It is also easy to set up, and we seem to have some almost instinctual knowlegde of how to set them up.

          They aren't optimal in all situations and they are overapplied, but they have their place. I for one wouldn't care to have a criminal justice system that wasn't a bureaucracy; predictability in a legal system is very important. Yes, even when it is wrong... then you at least know something needs to be fixed. To use a Slashdot-type example, at least we know the patent system is broken. If the rulings were more random (at all levels, from the Patent Office to judges), it would be even harder to tell... and ultimately we'd be even worse off and the first order of business would be to establish some consistency! (Consistency is one of those things that you can have contempt for because you're so used to it, you don't realize how important it is; "familiarity breeds contempt". I'd rather have the current system than a random one, and I hate the current system. For instance, a random system would give an even greater advantage to the deep-pocketed company; they could just keep re-trying various suits until the dice came up their way. The system as it is allows some of that, but you'd see even more in a random world.)

          The big problem with Bureaucracies is that one of the biggest counter-indications for its use is "managing a creative enterprise", and that's where we hear most of the bitching about it. The problem here, ultimately, isn't truly Bureaucracy itself; it is working as it always does. It is the application of an inappropriate organization system; you always pay for that, no matter what. Unfortunately, all other forms are more expensive (thought of in the proper economic terms, even Anarchy is more expensive; the communication issues necessary to behave in a coordinated fashion become intractable), and like I said, we seem to have some sort of Bureaucracy instinct, so they also have to be learned explicitly, which is another barrier to their use.

          But ultimately, "[large bureaucracies evolved] as a way of extracting valuable workproduct from extremely mediocre talent" and "they prevent work and progress which results in 'mediocre talent.'"... when misused, which they probably are a majority of the time.
      • To get the same results of creativity, larger corporations wouldn't necessarily have to follow the process of just giving 20% free time for pursuing their own interest. I work for a large corporation and our process involves submitting a request for a research and development project. You submit info to justify the research as well as a budget request. If approved, you'll have a work package to charge against and that could essentially be your 20% (more or less depending on your research proposal). Trac
    • For many (including military subcontractors and automotive) you bill your time to a contract. Being creative on that is not part of your scope so if you get caught doing something out of your scope with that time you can get in big legal trouble.
    • Are you kidding? Its a great investment, they get free ideas with the pretense of it being some creative outlet. The Google Suggest for example was an idea created during one of these 20% time periods. They don't get to use the 20% to create a better search engine to compete with Google, they spend the 20% to come up with ideas for Google that are not explicitly assigned to them.

    • Re:Google is pretty unique. (Score:4, Informative)

      by Kevin_Cedrone ( 415009 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @04:52PM (#11400305) Homepage
      I think 3M has a program similar to this. They call it their "15 Percent rule". It's not clear whether the employees are paid for the research, but it's pretty clear from this link [3m.com] that employees are encouraged to work on independent projects.

      One of my engineering profs worked for 3M and said that there was no push to identify or disclose the projects you worked on in this 15%, much less justify them to superiors.
    • Can you think of a better way to discover your employee's true skills? Almost everyone is hired to fill an immediate need, but that doesn't mean that they should stay in the same position indefinitely.

      Any sane person would use this opportunity to 1) develop new skills (esp. if that positions them for a "better" job in the company) and 2) showcase their current skills.

      This seems like a reasonable investment considering the average cost of hiring a new developer is something like $20k. For about the same
    • 20% of your time on creative projects? This would be great for creative, talented people. Everyone else would just be browsing /.

      (ducks)

      Mod Funny, not Flamebait!
    • 3M has been doing this for years, and I would hardly say 3M is a small business. They will fund this work (within reason) and give about 6 months of "free time" before you have to pitch this independent project to someone. Not a bad deal...
    • It's fairly common amongst R&D companies, or R&D divisions of large companies, for researchers to have this exact deal - 20% of time, or thereabouts, on their own projects. The only thing unusual that Google has apparently done is extended this deal to people involved in more directly product-related development. However, software development is an unusual sort of business which has a lot in common with R&D, especially at a place like Google. In short, the main innovation here is that Google
  • really! :D

    is this a first post?

  • I just start doing it (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Botunda ( 621804 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @04:34PM (#11399979)
    And then when they see the results they usually are quite happy.

  • Way to go (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Sean the Impaler ( 799604 )
    I wish more companies would implement something like this, those fascists SOBs.

  • Simple.... (Score:3, Funny)

    by GeneralEmergency ( 240687 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @04:35PM (#11399992) Journal


    Just mandate that all /. surfing time be surrendered and devoted to the outside projects.

    I crack me up.

  • Fantastic idea, but enforce it from the start (Score:5, Interesting)

    by suso ( 153703 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @04:35PM (#11399993) Journal
    That is a great idea and I think you will get a lot of brownie points from your employees that care about such things. But make sure you enforce what they can work on. Some people might use it as an oppurtunity to start another business that competes with your own, which might not be what you had in mind.

    I think that if a lot of businesses had this kind of open mind it would surely help open source software.

    • Re:Fantastic idea, but enforce it from the start (Score:5, Insightful)

      by eln ( 21727 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @04:38PM (#11400060)
      Of course, if they're starting their own business on company time with company equipment, even if the activity is nominally "independent," they'll soon find out that their new side business is actually their employer's new side business.

      • Re:Fantastic idea, but enforce it from the start (Score:5, Insightful)

        by tverbeek ( 457094 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @04:53PM (#11400330) Homepage
        Mod parent up.

        If you do this, you need to make it crystal clear ahead of time who will own the results of their time spent noodling. Ordinarily, what you do with company resources on company time while an employee belongs to the company. The situation of a company formally giving employees "permission" to do whatever they want might muddy the waters legally, but it certainly muddies them in people's minds. Put the policy in writing and make people sign off on it.

        Likewise, you need guidelines for what kinds of projects they can spend that 20% on; i.e. obvious dead-ends with no value to the company?, surfing the web?, etc.

        • I've heard of Cisco letting its developers have the rights for some of their projects, or let them open source their projects. The assumption is of course that Cisco owns it when you start out, but sometimes employees get a "bonus" of the rights to their project.
      • Not necessarily. Unless they have something in their employment contract about side projects being under subject to ownership by the employer.

        Of course, I'm of the opinion that if you're giving people time to work on side projects 20% of the time and then saying that anything they do outside of work is also owned by them (like Exxon or HP), then you are just being a jackass.

        What I was getting at in my first post was that this person needs to enforce the time spent on other projects (only 20%) and make su
        • Not necessarily. Unless they have something in their employment contract about side projects being under subject to ownership by the employer.

          The case law on this question isn't quite so cut-and-dried. A salaried employee* using company resources** and acting under instructions from management*** to work on innovative new projects in their field****... sounds like a pretty good description of Work For Hire, and anything produced as WFH belongs entirely to the company, without any contract whatsoever. Th

    • But make sure you enforce what they can work on.

      Thus making it a non-independent project by definition.

      Some people might use it as an oppurtunity to start another business that competes with your own, which might not be what you had in mind.

      The horror of it all. Why, people might invent something really useful and employ more people! Can't have that. Better to just install another time clock and take away some more benefits.

  • Fridays are your day! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by chris09876 ( 643289 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @04:35PM (#11399999)
    I worked at a company in Quebec awhile back that had a similar policy. Each Friday, you were allowed to work on your own projects. About once each month, we had a small group presentation where we told other people in our group what we'd been working on, and how it's progressing. When the group decided that the idea was mature enough to tell others about, we gave a small presentation to the managers. They talked it over for a bit, and decided if it would be pursued further, or if we should find something else to work on. I found it quite nice to be able to work on my own things. I never made anything great, but a number of people had small teams put under them to help them work on their idea :)
    • Specific days might not meet your needs, and might be disruptive to completion of your regular projects.

      What you need to do is to establish a level of productivity that you expect out of your employees, and hold them to that. If you want to allow for them to work on other projects 20% of the time, then factor that into your expected productivity level. Don't base it on anything else. If a guy gets his stuff done even though he spends 25% of his time on free stuff, who cares? Don't make your employees f

  • Few people deserve something like this (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Crowhead ( 577505 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @04:35PM (#11400000)
    Most people I have worked with can't get what they're supposed to get done with 100% of their workday.

    • Re:Few people deserve something like this (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Gyorg_Lavode ( 520114 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @04:46PM (#11400228)
      Most people I've worked with say they can't get what they're supposed to get done with 100% of their workday and really spend most of the day looking at pictures, talking to friends, or doing anything BUT work.

  • Time Management for Dummies (Score:5, Insightful)

    by eln ( 21727 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @04:35PM (#11400005)
    If you have management that will actually allow you to do this, then it's real simple. The project manager will take projected timelines for your required projects, and add 20%. If you work efficiently, you'll end up with 20% of your time free to work on independent projects.

    As for managing your own time, it's easy: The required projects always come first. If you slack on your required projects, or you badly underestimate your timeline, then you don't get any time to work on your independent stuff. On the other hand, if you bust your ass on your required project and end up ahead of schedule, then you may get more than 20% of your time to work on independent projects.

    After that, the only difficult thing is to convince upper management that it's worthwhile to let people work on independent projects rather than just piling on more requirements when it looks like people are ahead of schedule. Depending on the upper management, this may range from easy to completely impossible to do.
    • As for managing your own time, it's easy: The required projects always come first. If you slack on your required projects, or you badly underestimate your timeline, then you don't get any time to work on your independent stuff. On the other hand, if you bust your ass on your required project and end up ahead of schedule, then you may get more than 20% of your time to work on independent projects.

      What you get from this is people who pad their time a lot to have more free time.
    • The project manager will take projected timelines for your required projects, and add 20%.

      Yes, he probably will, which is why it's important to explain to him why he needs to add 25%. If you spend 20% of your time on unrelated projects, it will actually take you 25% more calendar time to complete the original project. Suppose a project requires 160 hours of work (i.e. 4 weeks). If you spend 20% of each week doing other things, that leaves 32 hours each week for the project. 160/32 = 5 weeks, a 25% inc

  • Two words (Score:5, Funny)

    by savagedome ( 742194 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @04:36PM (#11400012)
    My company wants to increase creativity and innovation

    Two words: Massage Bunnies

    Nothing much. They just rub your shoulders after you've been sitting there pondering on the problem at hand (no pun) for long. It relaxes you.

    It helps if they are wearing a tutu.
    • Two words: Massage Bunnies

      During the boom (I feel so old when I say that) I was on a "soft perks" team. The idea of in cube massage came up often (as did beanbag chairs). I went so far as to find a local place that offered corporate programs where you could buy x hours of massage a month, for company use. People would then just put their name on the list and get an appointment.

      We never got them. And, I got kicked off the committee.

    • check out urbandictionary.com if you don't know what it is.
    • Two words: Massage Bunnies

      Two more words: With Release

  • You need a research department. Some stucture to make sure working on independent projects that make sense to the business (so time research time doesn't become "create battlebot" or check my ebay business time.).

    Big companies call this 6sigma or TQM or some other such things. Projects not central to core, to make everything work better.

    Also having employees sign something indicating inventions done on company time belong to the company. Otherwise great ideas will walk out of your business to start there
  • I don't think Google is the only place that does this. When I was working in the Bay Area several of the Biotech shops lured scientists by giving them time and resources to work on pet projects. I think it comes down to your people. If you give someone who is talented the greenlight to follow some of their mind's myriad pathes, they'll work cheaper for the greater freedom. In the long run you could not only keep the payroll down, but get some truly innovative products to market.

  • Your company has deeper problems (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @04:37PM (#11400045)
    Let me get this straight... Your company wants to increase creativity and innovation yet can't even decide for itself how to "implement" independent thinking time?

    And you go as far as asking slashdot how to copy google's infrastructure... how original and creative!
  • I find it really interesting, and suprising, how many companies attempt to clone what\how Google does. Not all of Google's methods\soloutions are appropriate for other companies. I really think this can be seen simply in the data driven nature of google. It is impossible for some companies to impliment such methods because their infrastructure does not provide for it. Just as a company can't give "creative time" to their people and expect dramatic results.

    • Re:Google's Methods.... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by cubicledrone ( 681598 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @05:05PM (#11400535)
      Just as a company can't give "creative time" to their people and expect dramatic results.

      Dramatic results are quite rare. Why must every business pursue "dramatic" results? Why not pursue something more realistic, like plain results?

      When farmers plant wheat, they don't call a meeting to announce they expect their new crop to conduct The Brandenburg Concertos in Vienna. But they do have bread for sandwiches.
  • This way should appeal to both PHB's and employees alike:

    a) Employee can work on personal projects during X hours of a day.
    b) Contract states that company is allowed to use product of employee's work freely, but not resell
    c) Contract states that employee is given rights to resell product

    The issues I can see come in where the project produces the component of a larger project. The company may wish to resell the larger project, so some allowance might need to be made, or maybe a close for xx percent pro

  • Make it part of the review/rewards process (Score:3, Interesting)

    by gandalf_grey ( 93942 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @04:40PM (#11400095) Homepage
    Give people, and their bosses, rewards/reconition based on these "extra" activites.

  • TPS Reports (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Saxerman ( 253676 ) * on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @04:40PM (#11400099) Homepage
    I worked for a company where we needed to write up weekly time accounting reports. These WTA (TPS?) reports were expected to account for 40 hours, of which around 8 should be on personal 'horizon expansion' projects. This could be anything from surfing web sites related to new information, reading books, attending classes, writing code in new languages, etc.

    The idea being it was time devoted to thinking outside the box, such as trying new ways to do old things. Billable projects still came first, so this wasn't a hard and fast rule, and for the most part I just used it to account for my time spent on /. :)

  • Innovation vs. Laziness (Score:5, Interesting)

    by _Sambo ( 153114 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @04:40PM (#11400105)
    Our company framed this concept a little differently so that it was more palatable to management. Each of us was to spend 20% of our time in "Process Improvement" initiatives. (Sounds very dry and corporate)

    In reality it was a nice juicy chance to make great changes that would help the company in operations. We measured the time by hours per day. One hour per eight hour day was to be used independently. At our weekly meetings, ideas were discussed and progress was measured.

    The nice thing about this was that it was voluntary. As there was no fincial incentive or reward for creativity, the time itself became the incentive. You could do whatever you wanted for that hour be it surf slashdot or play everquest.

  • Opposite is more common in USA (Score:3, Interesting)

    by KarmaBlackballed ( 222917 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @04:43PM (#11400180) Homepage Journal
    Every employeer I've worked for since 1995 has asked me to sign paperwork that effectively claims anything I think up as their own. Under such conditions where is really no such thing as "your own project." (Not moral and only arguably legal. People do need to work to eat, etc.)

    The irony is that instead of protecting their business investments that kind of garbage just shuts the smart people in tech departments down. The smart folks know they should bite their lip sometimes rather than share all their creative energy.

    Now if Google does not make sure claims on what their employees think up and work up, then bravo! Let them set an example that bean counters elsewhere might discover.

  • I'm guessing a flexi-time system. (Score:5, Informative)

    by jd ( 1658 ) <imipak@yahoGINSBERGo.com minus poet> on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @04:44PM (#11400183) Homepage Journal
    The simplest flexi-time system you can implement is a time-card system. You swipe into a specific role and then the work you do is considered within that role. Alternatively, you can do much the same thing with time-cards.


    At NASA, I was on a time-card system, and specified how much time I put in for each of the projects I was doing. The total time had to come to 80 hours for the fortnight. Overtime was prohibited, so if you worked over the 80 hours, you had to take a negative amount of vacation. (The total amount of vacation left went up as a result.) Also, if you left an hour early one day, you left an hour late sometime in the fortnight and simply "borrowed" that hour of vacation until you paid it back.


    Projects also had a certain number of hours alloted to them, so if one project was running behind and another ran ahead, it was common practice to "borrow" time.


    I imagine Google does something similar, where you have pools of time and can transfer between pools in order to obtain the time you need to do your independent project.


    Such mechanisms are very primitive, largely because businesses have almost always operated on a very formal, rigid structure. Person A does task B for C hours a day, rain or shine. With no need for fancier time-management tools, nothing much has been developed. Flexi-time is probably the best system out there for this kind of thing, right now.

  • Don't let people manage there own 20% creative time. There is no telling what people would actually do with that time.

    Instead, try something like a brainstorming session a couple of times a month.

    People have different ways of doing this, but here is an example of how we did it at my work. The person holding the meeting had each of us just blurt out some ideas for our business. Not putting much thought into it. Just whatever came to mind. After that was done we would weed through intresting ideas an

  • I hate to be an ass but.... (Score:3, Funny)

    by dave1g ( 680091 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @04:46PM (#11400214) Journal
    "....and innovation, we our thinking of implementing a Google like policy of 20% of yo....."

    Maybe you should spend 20% of your time proofreading.

    Heh, I'm just being mean, we all make mistakes.
  • Has anybody experienced other successful ways to stimulate creativity at their workplace?
    Easy!
    Just provide me a free coca-cola supply, latest and fastest computer with a big flat LCD screen, pretty girls in the office to flirt with, and thats all!

    (ps: a salary which allows me to buy a new Lexus every six month whould be also nice)

  • -1, Obvious (Score:2, Funny)

    by Keck ( 7446 )
    (1 day a week or 1 week a month)?

    One day a week = 20%
    One week a month =~ 25%

    I'll take one week a month, please!

  • More like 2h a day. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by SharpFang ( 651121 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @04:53PM (#11400322) Homepage Journal
    Arbitrarily picked. You work on your current task. You get tired, nervous, stressed. You make yourself a coffee and switch to your pet project. You calm down. once you calmed down, you go back to your current work. Repeat twice a day, for a hour.

  • I used to do this anyway... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by haplo21112 ( 184264 ) <haplo@epithnaFREEBSD.com minus bsd> on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @04:57PM (#11400403) Homepage
    ..until the company shut off the bulk of the outbound network ports so now I can't do much more than browse /. to get my mind on other things to relax about the work I am doing.

    This is one of the reasons that Google allows its employees to do the 20% on your own projects. It stimulates the mind subcociously to seek answers to the problems you are working on the other 80% of the time. I used to do this at work, primary by working on projects (My web site, new software ideas, etc) on my home system while I was at work if I got stuck or fustrated. They have pretty much deneied my ability to do this shutting off most outboand and inbound ports below 1024 (according to a friend in security there ar only 5 below 1024 now), and all ports above 1024.

    Result huge drop in net productivity, and work quality. No one has really noticed yet since I am sort of a workaholic overachiver anyway. The net drop still puts me way above the average around here (Ie. I actually still turn in projects at least on time if not a bit early, though nowhere near as early as I used too(Bugs the hell out of me) There are people here that have not delivered a project in as far as I can remember, the project usually gets killed before they finish it because it has been languishing for so long. Comparitively if I ever turn a project in I look pretty good.

    The reason I never get that release of switching to something else to take my mind of the problem.

    • Re:I used to do this anyway... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by AGTiny ( 104967 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @05:42PM (#11401113)
      You just need 1 open TCP port to enable an SSH connection to your home machine via your firewall's port forwarding. Then you can create any number of SSH port forwards to handle any kind of traffic you like. As a bonus, it's AES encrypted so your boss can't spy on it. :)
      • AGTiny writes:

        You just need 1 open TCP port to enable an SSH connection to your home machine via your firewall's port forwarding. Then you can create any number of SSH port forwards to handle any kind of traffic you like. As a bonus, it's AES encrypted so your boss can't spy on it. :)

        That works great... right up until the day they terminate you "for cause", resulting in losing not only your primary source of income, but also any chance at severance or collecting unemployment.

        Any network security pro

  • Tutos based system (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Cowherd X ( 850136 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @04:58PM (#11400423) Journal
    A company I consult with has a policy like that in place, but instead of enforcing it by separating the work like you suggested they have a flexible Tutos [tutos.org] based system which provides time tracking capabilities, so developers are free to divide that time as they please. They modified Tutos to display the ratio between the time spent on company-based and volunteer work in a graphical way on every page. The work done for the company is shown as a green bar and volunteer work is shown as a blue bar which turns red if the ratio goes beyond what is expected. It works well, the managers do not even have to keep a close eye on things because most people are disciplined enough if they are made aware of how they are spending their time like that. Of course they could always lie and pretend to be working on a company-based project, but without any significant results to show they can't do it for long. It's a cool system if you have moderately disciplined and self-motivated people who enjoy that kind of freedom and know to appreciate it.
  • if its 20%, thats 1 day a week (presuming a 5 day week), or two afternoons or something.

    If you want the personal stuff done in lazy time, do it fridays

  • Post Its (Score:3, Informative)

    by jmichaelg ( 148257 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @05:07PM (#11400570) Journal
    3M's Post Its came out of that kind of program. 3M has had a policy [3m.com] in place for ages that encourages employees to spend a bit of their time on something other than their assigned tasks.

    What the official timeline [3m.com] doesn't make very clear is it took quite a bit of effort on the part of some folks within 3M to get 3M to market the notes. Notice the large gap in the timeline between initial samples and the product hitting the shelves. It was pretty bizarre - corporate secretaries were hooked on them and yet the product's backers couldn't convince corporate HQ to sell them.

  • Well, it is quite easy to give "20%" time to outside projects.

    Start with a 40 hour week.
    Subtract out meeting overhead, junk/whatever (5 hours)
    Subtract out misc. process overhead (5 hours)
    leave you with 30 hours.
    Now subtract out 20% (6 hours)
    Schedule developers for 24 hours of work a week

    As for progress reviews/etc.
    The simple rule is leave it to the developer to tell you when there is progress to review. Plan on adding incentive awards for people that do good "idependant" work.

    The idea is there i

  • IP issues come into play here.

    If my company let me spend 20% of my time on my own projects, most likely the company would still own everything I create. (I haven't heard what Google's policy on that is).

    I don't know about the rest of you, but if I knew that all my "personal" projects would have to be left behind when I get laid off or whatever, that wouldn't exactly inspire my creativity a whole lot.

    • I think the reall discussion here is on implementing a policy of using 20% of your time in the way you percieve will best benifit your company. This is 20% of your paid time to work on personal stuff, but to work on un-approved but still good work projects. I have quite a few projects which have been great successes but were originally borne out of me working on something because I thought it needed to be done before it was approved or i was *told* to do it.

  • Let X = Good Idea

    Employee : Hey Boss, I had a great idea! It's $X! I'd like to develop the idea a little and get back to you. That ok?

    Boss : Your idea is horrible. It'll never work. Drop it and get back to the mindless labor I've assigned you.

    Executive Meeting :

    Big Boss : Anyone with new ideas?

    Boss : I came up with $X in my spare time. I'll have Employee work on it immediately.

    Big Boss : Excellent work. I'm giving you a 2% raise for this and a nice bonus at the end of the year.

    Back in the offi
  • How do you keep your real project from impacting it?

    By asking this I think you may have already lost the battle.

    If you're going to be serious about this "real projects" are going to slip if they're not properly scoped. You can't take from the 20% time, it's not yours. (well, of course it is, but if you treat it like that you've lost).

    The point here is that the 20% time is investment in the future of your business. You can't ignore the future and have a successful business which is what you're doing

  • Build project mentality into your culture first... (Score:4, Informative)

    by bADlOGIN ( 133391 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @05:37PM (#11401035) Homepage
    Mandating something like this is counterproductive. People either have the drive to do things on thier own via personal projects or they don't. If having employees who have the drive to learn more and improve themselves via projects is important (and I believe it is), you need to make the cultural changes to enable it. Many people are likely to be doing things on thier own time as it is. You should start there and then begin accomodating "work time" to do it once you see people have the personal commitment not to abuse the freedom. Here's a few suggestions to encourage personal projects to start with:

    1.) Provide a personal project server w/ CVS access from both inside and outside the company. Personally speaking, traffic sucks where I am. If I can crank on something out durring rush hour, then pick it up over the weekend or at night as well as tinker at luchtime w/o copying files around it would be a godsend.

    2.) Sponsor weekly project lunch where the company pays for pizza around noon and people are encouraged to discuss, demo, or work on personal projects. Show, tell, talk, encourage.

    3.)Work the project concept into the job itself. When doing performance reviews, ask what people have done in the way of personal projects and/or professional development since the last time. Let it become a cultural expectation and include the concept that "we encourage and support personal projects around here" part interview process.

    If you do put these things in place, don't forget to include some Slack [amazon.com] as well every now and then. Good developers write software in part because they love to, but even they need some downtime. Replace that show & tell pizza lunch w/ tickets to an afternoon geekfest type movie or something sometime.
  • http://db.etree.org wouldn't be what it is today without my ex jobs. Implementing a great idea immediatly made working in powerbuilder tolerable.

  • ... where employees are allowed to work on their own projects during their 4 hours of "sleep" time each day.

  • 20% Time at Google. (Score:5, Informative)

    by chrisd ( 1457 ) * <chrisd@dibona.com> on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @05:50PM (#11401208) Homepage
    20% time works pretty simply, you identify a project you want to work on, write up a design doc and have that be your 20% time. You can also put your work into an existing project at Google. You can also bunch up 20% time and take it all at once or in larger chunks than 1 day a week or whatever. Of course, Google engineers are expected to make sure that thier 80% projects are in a good place, but we trust each other to make those kinds of decisions. The trust is what makes 20% time work for everyone.

    There are some caveats, but that's the broad strokes. News.google.com, Orkut and a bunch of stuff on labs came from 20% time.

    Chris

    • Personally, I don't even write it up - I just start playing with something. Once it's cool enough to be useful, that's the time to write it up. :)

      (Which has the added side effect that nobody knows about the ideas that turned out to be completely useless . . .)

  • How Google really does it (Score:4, Informative)

    by RichG ( 55660 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @06:23PM (#11401735)
    I have a friend who's an Uber Tech Lead (I am not making that up) at Google and he told me how it works in practice:

    Everyone gets their 1 day a week to work on whatever they want, *however*, in reality at Google you're slammed working on your project like anywhere else. Therefore, on Friday, you really need to finish patching that security hole in Gmail, so you 'bank' your time. Once your project lets up a bit, you withdraw your time and take n days to work on your personal project.

    It seems like this is a fairly practical system for software development, which goes in waves of heavy work and then light times of regrouping and gathering requirements. The 20% gets used during those times when you'd otherwise be waiting for the next big thing to hit.

    The interesting thing about Google is that people work to gather other 20%ers onto your 20% project, thereby increasing your project and hopefully eventually presenting it to mgmt for work as a real project (Orkut and Gmail started this way). If you can't gather others onto your 20% project, you're encouraged to find another project... :)

    Anyway, I wish I could implement this system at my work, but my PHBs think it's "wasted time" and given our quarter-to-quarter existence, spending that 20% on customer issues is probably a better use of time, at least for the short-term.

  • Here's how to make it work (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Mandatory Default ( 323388 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @09:15PM (#11403659)
    At my company, we provide the research time between projects. This allows people to focus on the new activity and to not affect deliverables. Typically people get a one to two weeks of open time between projects.

    The vast majority of people can't handle undirected activities, so we enforce some controls over junior people. We require them to learn foundation skills that they don't already know that will benefit both them and the company. For employees who are anywhere from an intern to a software engineer, there is a stock list of topics you can choose from, including langauges, techniques, coding standards, testing, new tools, etc. Unusual topics can be studied with approval. At the end, these employees have a discussion with a technical lead about what was learned (note: not a grilling, but a "fill in the gaps" kind of discussion.) This last bit also forces them to practice their communication and organizational skills.

    More senior people, who have demonstrated innate initiative and curiousity, can choose their own research topics, but they have to present their findings to the rest of the senior staff. Therefore there's some peer pressure to pick relevant topics.

    A very important additional benefit is that everyone has their own book budget, the size of which is dependent on experience. You can spend the money on any technical book you want without having to get prior approval.

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