NPR tried Google's 20%-time with their developers

"Lumbard said the managers had toyed with the idea of adopting Google’s 20 percent time, but they concluded it wouldn’t work for NPR. Google has thousands of employees and extraordinarily deep pockets, which mean it can afford to let employees take a day every week for side projects. Plus, Lumbard says, 20-percent time puts the emphasis on individuality, whereas NPR’s approach values teamwork."<p>I often hear the 'Google is bigger, so they can afford it' argument... Bigger means they have MORE PEOPLE. That means it costs more.<p>I can understand a startup saying they can't do it, but an established company with profits? They could, if they wanted to. (Not that it would necessarily make sense, mind you. It depends on the industry.)<p>And the teamwork thing is nonsense, too. Googlers can work on other peoples' 20% projects in their 20% time. So it encourages teamwork as well. (And I'd likely be one of those, as I have few good ideas, but enjoy helping others flesh theirs out.)

Not really "tries," per submission headline, but rather "tried, one day."<p>"Lumbard said the managers had toyed with the idea of adopting Google’s 20 percent time, but they concluded it wouldn’t work for NPR. Google has thousands of employees and extraordinarily deep pockets, which mean it can afford to let employees take a day every week for side projects. Plus, Lumbard says, 20-percent time puts the emphasis on individuality, whereas NPR’s approach values teamwork."

Where I work, TechSmith, we've been trying the 20% time thing on different teams. We call it "TechSmith Fridays" and the goal is to make TechSmith better by Monday.<p>That goal is pretty loose and many people have spent their time working on their own cool ideas as well as internal tools that our sales team can use to make their lives easier.<p>I've found having a "free day" to look forward to makes it easier to focus on my regular tasks the first 4 days of the week.We also have the rule that the project needs to be shown off so you're accountable for the time. Nobody uses it just to goof off.<p>I know at least one new product is likely to come from this already and we've only been doing it for a few months. I'm really excited to see what comes out of it in the future.

Could a Googler give their input on this? Having spoken to a couple of Google fulltimers on this note, the general impression I've received is that 20% time is largely a myth and that spending this time working on alternate projects is widely acknowledged to not being conducive to moving up the company hierarchy.

Not to be cynical, but I bet the devs at NPR are already working on interesting side projects about 20% of their time, because if they don't they quickly become obsolete, and if they are grown ups their managements isn't monitoring them so closely they would even know. It's just that management (often) likes to pretend that they are completely in charge; "giving" devs 20% is sort of like "letting" a teen age son or daughter drink an occasional beer at a party.

Every manager in the world needs to spend 10 minutes and watch that video.

I just posted a blog post related to this. My company has done a similar thing to NPR, we call it "build it in a day". I see it as a step towards 20% time projects being encouraged. I know one of the contractors with us at the moment has what they call "innovation friday" every 2nd friday. So be it a spin on the idea, I find it encouraging companies are realising there's better ways to motivate people and increase their productivity.

If your company ever tries this, please try harder so word gets out that it causes your developers to try harder, so I will get 20% time as well.

Who is NPR? The article doesn't say.