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Independent Developer Projects in the Workplace?
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?"
And then when they see the results they usually are quite happy.
I wish more companies would implement something like this, those fascists SOBs.
Sig? No thanks, I'm trying to quit.
Most people I have worked with can't get what they're supposed to get done with 100% of their workday.
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.
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.
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.
And yes, anyone who categorically bans OSS products is a frickin' idiot.
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.
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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.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
It's the poor carpenter who blames his tools.
Some might say it's an equally poor carpenter who tries to get through the day with lousy tools.
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 feel like you're watching them like a hawk. Make them feel like you trust them. At the same time, make sure they perform.
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."
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
Sounds like most people would spend it drinking beer.
Actually, I've seen many technical problems solved by having a Friday afternoon beer with my colleagues and just chatting a bit about the issue. I think it may be that we were more relaxed, or the change of venue or something, but the right synapses finally activated and you just knew you had the answer.
It's not easy explaining to the boss on Monday why you're working on a server referring to notes on a beer-stained napkin, but the results are usually worth it.
Soko
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
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.
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.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
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.
Table-ized A.I.
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 office
Boss : I presented my new idea, $X, to the board. They liked it. I want is completed in $Nominal_Time/4.
Employee : *sigh*
XenoPhage
Technological Musings
So what do they say about your happy bonzai buddy? Or what about other 'fun' spyware?
So wouldn't Firefox help all of you enforce that policy?
(I'm wondering, could you get fired for junk installed against your will, thanks to IE?)
If you have the motivation to spend 20% of your day building an independent project, chances are, you also have the motivation to have that project under your own terms (i.e., your own development company). From the perspective of the individual and not the corporation, I would rather spend my time funneling that kind of motivation into a system that sells and/or ends on my own terms. Even if the company offered independent project terms, I would still save my best project ideas for my own external projects.
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.
It's Wednesday now - we found that too many people were using it as an excuse to just do nothing on Friday, since if you knock off early for beer, you're not missing *real* work.
Yes, but if a blacksmith thinks he has terrible tools, he'll build himself new ones. If a developer thinks he has terrible tools...
You get the idea.
--LWM
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. The company may in fact be jackasses to assert this, but the courts don't have much trouble siding with jackasses, so I don't think that'll be a very persuasive argument for employee ownership. :)
* the person is "on the job" regardless of time of day
** the company is providing office space, equipment, support services, etc. for the project; i.e. investing in it
*** the project is officially part of the employee's regular job duties
**** the likelihood of company "trade secrets" or other IP being part of the project is signficant
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
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% increase over the original plan.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/