Recruiter poached me from my previous employer, Standard Chartered Bank. I've never applied, but I reckon befriending a Googler and getting a recommendation is best. A recommendation pretty much guarantees you at least a phone interview. Most Googlers are happy to give out recommendations like candy: there's a hiring bonus on the upside, and no downside.
Nobody will force you to take 20% time. Some managers actively encourage their teams to take it; but more often, it's up to the individual to step up and grab.
There's a pre-approved list that most people's projects fall under. It includes open source work, tinkering, prototype, learning (eg new programming language), teaching, etc. You only need to apply, if you have something special outside of those areas.
You should inform your manager. But that's just common sense.
Your 20% efforts explicitly go into your performance evaluation, so it won't be a negative.
I see it as an opportunity to learn and work with (and from) people, I don't normally deal with.
I see a lot of people saying that money isn't an issue they would leave a job for. To me, money is the #1 thing that could make me leave a job. Maybe not 5%, but it realistically wouldn't take more for me to bail. 10% is almost a guarantee that I'll work for you.
I think this shows just how significant the gap is between software engineering and everything else. I went into mechanical engineering; my brother did software engineering. I don't know the specifics, but he makes way more than I do. Not 20% more, but 200% more. Some of that is location - I live in the middle of the country, he lives in California. But even without leaving, I could increase my salary by at least 50% by being able to write software.
Assuming that this is for a generic employee/employer relations advice, then pay is absolutely a huge concern. It's simply one that has been mostly solved in Silicon Valley.
It isn't even close to being solved in Silicon Valley, for a variety of reasons, mainly due to the culture within the industry. My opinion is that there are two strains of cultural thought in this industry that allow developer wages to be kept relatively low compared with the revenues and margins of the companies they work for: 1) the rather Galt-like (and empirically unjustfiable) thought that development work is a meritocracy; 2) the strong line of thinking that prioritizes "enjoying my work" over "selling my very life in the form of time" coupled with the frequent (mistaken, in my opinion[0]) belief that the work is important.
[0] I believe it's mistaken because, frankly, the vast majority of development work is for the very base purpose of commerce. Rarely, in cases where development is related to some scientific or artistic pursuit to advance human knowledge, it's important in any meaningful sense outside of commercial activity. On this basis, the commerce-related importance of a role necessarily implies that compensation ought to be a major factor if considered from a rational perspective.
I think that here "solved" is relative. What I meant was that pay is mostly removed from the equation as a requirement, because it is high enough that there is no possibility that base needs aren't covered by it. The motivation behind whether higher pay is effective or not is mostly irrelevant.
I think this is a function of the relative immaturity of software development. The pay is lagging behind the importance and scarcity of software developers, and this is distributed unevenly.
Company A may be in a place where the relative value of their developers may be 2% more than what they currently pay them, but for company B is in a place where they would gladly pay 25% more and still get a big fat return on that investment. By the time company A catches up (as in, software has now become way more important to their business), half of their developers have moved on. They review their recruitment and retention strategy, and one year on they are the ones paying more than company B.
I'd be interested in seeing the source on the first claim "26% would leave for a 5% pay rise". In my experience people will rarely leave a job that they are otherwise happy with unless the pay rise is very significant.
I'm not sure they'd be the ones on the lower end of things because when you don't earn much, you don't want to risk what you already have for almost no increase (given 5% of little money is very little) whereas 5% of a medium salary is much more of a difference/incentive.
I agree. If I am happy I won't leave for 5%. If I am unhappy I would leave for a pay cut.
In my current position I wouldn't say I'm unhappy but would consider leaving for a 10% raise. Only because jumping ship tends to be the only way to get significant raises, over the normal 2-3%. Even if you use another offer to get a raise in your current position.
I came here to ask the same thing - my understanding was that Innovation at Google had shifted from "Internal Curiosity - 20% Time" to "Inspire via Moonshots - Acquire what we need to get there".
You just started a few months ago; how would you really know?
(Perhaps 20% of your time is alive and easy to take; on the other hand, engineers who've been working on the same fast paced project for years and have built large bodies of domain knowledge often don't see it the same way. Not a single engineer I work with does 20% time, to my knowledge.)
I just realized, there might be a cultural divide between Google Sydney and Google Mountain View. We are more laid back here.
And, as everywhere in any company, you can do whatever you can get away with. From a pure career point of view, you can make a choice here: put in the 20% time for another project of your choice, to keep your skills sharp, have some fun and get some additional visibility.
Or put the extra 20% time into your main project for some marginal improvements. I can see that social pressure (real or perceived) in lots of teams might be towards the latter. For a 20% project you have to find your own group of peers to get recognition for it.
Yes, and yes. I'm learning about machine learning, and will apply it to have an experimental stab at an interesting internal problem that will probably not pan out at all; but I will have learned something.
I've never been a googler but I think that makes sense. In the early days google could deploy an MVP and people would try it out even if it wasn't "done" , now the level of polish expected from a google product is much higher than could probably be produced by a 20% project.
From previous responses to this question, it depends entirely on your manager. Some make it easy, some mess up prioritization so badly you can't get regular work done to allow for 20% time.
"2. AWFUL OFFICE SPACE Not providing an environment that nurtures productivity Open o ce setups report 62% more sick days Fix: Re-think the open o ce layout"
Or maybe allow partial remote work. I think I have called in sick 1 time in the last 5 years because I couldn't get out of bed. Other than that work from home makes it much easier for employees to not have to take days off for things.
Whenever I see advice like this, I remember that it is very specific to the environments the author has seen. All of these items are actually measured across a spectrum where you can be too far to either side. The suggestions might help if your current company is like the ones the author is thinking of. Or it might be exactly the wrong thing to do if your company is on the other side of the spectrum. And worst of all: the answer that seems most natural to you is probably the one that is wrong, because your thinking has been shaped by the very culture you're trying to change.
Some examples:
#1: an open rewards system might help if you have people paid flat salaries that are inadequate. But many companies already base people's compensation too much on individual metrics that don't reflect their real value. In that case, adding a reward system only compounds the problem. In general, the research I have read suggests that for creative jobs like programmers, it's best to pay people a good salary and not have rewards systems that might cause them to value metrics of visibility over doing good work.
#4: inefficient collaboration is obviously a problem. But in my experience it's just as often from too much open discussion (bike-shedding) as too little. In some cultures, asking more questions is helpful. In others, defining decision rights and removing room for outside stakeholders to comment is beneficial.
#5: negative people obviously aren't good. In some environments, caring more about individuals' happiness is helpful. In others, managers are already too cautious about not upsetting any one person's feelings, and that leads to keeping people around or not helping them improve when they are hurting the team as a whole.
#6: not every company is afraid of failure. Some are afraid of success, constantly giving up and trying something new when their current project gets difficult.
#7: clear goals seem like a great idea when you're at a company that doesn't know what it's doing. But some companies think they know what they're doing too well. I often see goals that are clear, focused, and absolutely unrelated to what the company really wants. If you know what you really want, report on that and let people find creative ways to achieve it even if they don't mean the "goals" that are supposed to get them there.
#8: micromanaging is bad, but non-managing is worse. At many tech companies, former programmers promoted to management are so hands-off they prevent their teams from getting better.
#10: don't ever do anything with the goal of making your team 'motivated' to work long hours.
In my experience it's very rare for someone to leave for a 5% uplift in compensation.
> Awful office space
Bang on the money. What is even worse is when engineers have a great space that gets changed. Always churn after that.
> No self development
Typically the people who say this are the people who are most likely not to get much from free time to learn new stuff. if you are the type of engineer to learn new stuff then formal training and free time is not going to change your ability to pick things up. If you come to me and say I could not learn X because I had no free time, I am generally sceptical.
> Inefficient collaboration
Generally means other teams / people do not recognise what an awesome thing I did. Generally implies your awesome thing was not massively awesome.
> Negative people
Totally true. The most devastating thing that can happen to teams is to have negative personalities.
> Fear of failure
Did not understand this.
> Lack of clear goals
bang on the money.
> Micromanaging bosses
it's different strokes for different folks. Whilst lots of engineers like the freedom to get to the goal by themselves there are some who actually really enjoy the directive style.
> Useless meetings
Is this still an issue in 2014?
> Wasting your team's time
I sort of get this but again it varies per engineer.
> Typically the people who say this are the people who are most likely not to get much from free time to learn new stuff. if you are the type of engineer to learn new stuff then formal training and free time is not going to change your ability to pick things up. If you come to me and say I could not learn X because I had no free time, I am generally sceptical.
I used to feel the same way -- I would spend practically all of my time after work reading about new technologies, best practices, and trying them out in some prototypes that I could then apply to my work. Then I got married. Then I had twins. My priorities have shifted so much that if I'm not given the chance to explore and learn _during_ work, then I'm probably not going to do it anymore. Many companies allow this without explicitly calling it 20% time; other companies will tell you that any time not spent working on a story is wasted time.
>> Inefficient collaboration
>Generally means other teams / people do not recognise what an awesome thing I did. Generally implies your awesome thing was not massively awesome.
I really don't think this means what you think it means.
Fear of failure means whether you work in an environment where it's ok to fail. Environments where it's not ok to fail are normally counterproductive and hinders people sometimes form doing the right things.
If failure has no stigma then people won't worry about, especially if it only causes externalities. Failure is not OK when it's due to laziness or apathy, or when it's chronic.
I agree. It can depend on how one defines being negative as well.
I'm often the guy that's tagged as the negative one in meetings because I point out the potential problems we'll have to address in the positive person's great idea.
I was once told by a manager to stop being so negative in a meeting that one of the owner's of the company was attending. The owner told him to shut up because I was only the person in the room not kissing his ass over his great ideas.
I'm paraphrasing there, he didn't actually say it like that.
Did you ever know any manager, never mind a higher-up manager, that did even 3 of those things ?
Management is about money and favours, and about those things alone, and that's why work sucks. The only way to get ahead is with threats and horsetrading.
I think there's a catch 22 to actually getting to the bottom of why motivation is poor. When people don't like their job, school or sister-in-law everything she does pisses them off a little. The way she talks. The fact that half the monitors had dead pixels for six months before they were replaced. The fact that everyone stays until 7:30 when something needs doing but you got a dirty look for heading off at 4:45 that one time when that damn sister in law asked you to pick up her brat kids with 20m notice!
Its about how things feel and how things feel depends on how you feel about them already.
If you love the school and the whole experience of it but the gymnastics coach always finds an excuse to peek into the girls showers, you might let it slide.
This is a nice list of stuff everyone hates, but I'm not sure that these things are the cause of killing team motivation. Instead I'd call them co-factors, things we can't stand but put up with if the most important stuff is covered (More about that below...).
1. INADEQUATE REWARDS - Everyone wants to be paid more, but how many of us have tolerated less pay to work on great stuff? I would jump to another job for a 5% pay increase only if I already hated my current job. I would never even think about leaving a job I loved for just a little bit more.
2. AWFUL OFFICE SPACE - Important, but not that important. Oddly, my most favorite assignments I've ever had were in the worst conditions. My favorite job ever: writing a custom ERP system with 3 great co-workers. We had 4 desks in the basement.
3. NO SELF-DEVELOPMENT - Not an issue. I take full responsibility for this. That where the "SELF" comes from.
4. INEFFICIENT COLLABORATION - This is everywhere to one extent or another. If the work is important enough, those of us who really care find a way to remedy this.
5. NEGATIVE PEOPLE - They are everywhere, too. Some of my best work has been in spite of assholes who I wish I had never met. But I never let them stop me. Sure, there are (sadly) some environments that are too toxic to fix, but these are the exception. Learn to deal with negative people or suffer. Your choice.
6. FEAR OF FAILURE - Not sure I understand what this means, but it can be a motivator as much as a roadblock. Sometimes we overachievers just have to drag the non-believers along, kicking and screaming the whole way.
7. LACK OF CLEAR GOALS - I see how this can be demotivating, but again, it can be a challenge. On the other hand, some of the most fun I've ever had was building stuff (without goals) and seeing where it would take us. Great places, quite often.
8. MICROMANAGING BOSSES - Again, they are everywhere. I have stock answers for every one of them: a) Where exactly on the project plan is your concern? b) Would you rather have me producing or on overhead?
9. USELESS MEETINGS - They suck, but again, there are many ways to deal with them. Many of my favorite jobs have been full of useless meetings, but I loved the work so much, I just accepted them (telling myself, "They pay me this much to sit through these?!?")
10. WASTING YOUR TEAM'S TIME - Not sure what this means, but once a developer learns how to handle other people as well as the ones and zeros, this isn't such a big deal. Just another issue to deal with.
To me, what's really most important?
Working on something important enough. Getting stuff done. Having fun. If I have these, not much else really matters. If I don't, I move on.
3. NO SELF-DEVELOPMENT - Not an issue. I take full responsibility for this. That where the "SELF" comes from.
Self development is one thing and I buy into this wholeheartedly. However, having a company recognize this into your work schedule makes all the difference. If my only self development time is supposed to be that one hour a week where I'm not working, spending time with my family, or working on the house, then it's not gonna happen.
> Self development is one thing and I buy into this wholeheartedly. However, having a company recognize this into your work schedule makes all the difference. If my only self development time is supposed to be that one hour a week where I'm not working, spending time with my family, or working on the house, then it's not gonna happen.
This. This all over the place.
I am actively engaged in Self Development all the time. The difference is whether or not my employer gives two shakes about my self-development, and then whether or not they encourage it, followed by if they facilitate it by setting aside time for me _as an employee_ to develop myself.
Telling me to go do "self-development" time outside of work is the same as telling me you really don't care about my development.
-- Not that this is inherently a bad way to treat employees, but telling an employee you value their development and telling them to develop on their own time is oxymoronic.
> Working on something important enough. Getting stuff done. Having fun. If I have these, not much else really matters. If I don't, I move on.
I agree with this. When it boils down to it, most people will stay where they're doing something important, getting stuff done, and having fun with it.
However, with the presence of most (and for some people, any) of these 10 things, you won't be having fun and you won't be getting stuff done.
It's not enough for a company to just aim for "having fun and getting stuff done" without figuring out the factors that add to and take away from having fun and getting stuff done.
Self-development can also be encouraged by a company though, by throwing dollars at you. I am often suggesting to go to conferences that my company views as "small" and "not immediately relevant" or that they talk about tech that is "so bleeding edge, it might not be around later".
The value comes from allowing employees to get a little elbow room, think out of the box, grow their skill-set and become more valuable to you. When you show employees that you want them to be better and you'll give them space to do that (and money), they want to stay there.
Why would I, as a husband and father, want to sacrifice very precious vacation time to attend a tech-conference instead of play at a water park with my kids, or invest in my relationship with my wife on a romantic getaway? I wouldn't. But what my company, and several others out there, says by their lack of support for personal development is, "hey, you wanna be a better programmer... great. We'd love that too. Go do it on your own time. That's what we give you vacation for! Not to wind down and unplug and be a great daddy, you kiddin' me?"
The company expresses value for you by letting you have a bit of room to do things you want to.
2. AWFUL OFFICE SPACE - My worst was a 3m² chamber without windows and a few woodplanks. I love to have my own space, without people talking a few times a day. But I would never ever work under such conditions...
3. NO SELF-DEVELOPMENT - I do this myself gladly, but I want the time to do it and not eating up my holidays for it.
> I would jump to another job for a 5% pay increase only if I already hated my current job. I would never even think about leaving a job I loved for just a little bit more.
I'm pretty sure they got at this number by asking people if they would leave their job for ~$200 extra a month. That makes the choice far more immediate than 5% extra a year. Everybody can think of things they could do with a few extra hundred a month, and everybody's got things they don't like about their job enough to fantasize about moving over.
If you look back at what you wrote, there's a false dichotomy there. Very few people either love their job or hate it. Most people just don't have strong feelings one way or another about it. That's why 27% would leave over peanuts. One job's as good as another, so why not take the extra cash?
>>> That's why 27% would leave over peanuts. One job's as good as another, so why not take the extra cash?
This also depends on the industry. Being a developer right now is like being in a gold rush. Supply and demand is what's driving salaries and contract rates. Need a Jevascript developer? Good luck finding one under 100K per year. When your industry is ripe for you writing your own ticket, then the leverage is with the employee, not the employer, it makes easy for people to leave one company and join another on a small raise since they know if things don;t work out, there's a dozen other companies in need of their services.
What about being a Carpenter? With the housing crash, and the slow recovery, most carpenters don't have the opportunity to be moving all the time. Considering right now the supply outstrips demand, their salaries are being driven down and the power then rests with the employers. The carpenter in this scenario is more likely to just stay put regardless of how much he hates his job or his boss because there is no certainty he'll find something better and get be paid more than he currently is.
> Need a Jevascript developer? Good luck finding one under 100K per year.
This is not true except in Silicon Valley. And that's just simple supply and demand. They need way more devs per-capita so they have to really incentivize people to move.
Everywhere else dev is well-compensated relative to other professions and you get more leverage and autonomy but it's much harder to translate that into an inflated salary. There are paths to get there and it is possible to get $100K+ as a developer but it's really just an open career ladder, whereas most other careers the ladder is closed to all except the ridiculously productive and/or sociopathic. Not a gold rush.
I quit my job for a slight pay increase and realized soon enough that it isn't worth it if the new work atmosphere sucks. The fact that I didn't hate my old job made me partially regret my decision.
After this experience, in case I love my job, I wouldn't even quit it for 20% pay increase. Work climate and work-life balance > pretty much everything else.
>Working on something important enough. Getting stuff done. Having fun. If I have these, not much else really matters. If I don't, I move on.
Most of the things listed are specifically things which prevent you from getting stuff done. Like open office plans (or having an office at all for that matter) and the like.
interesting re office space ...i think its not the open vs closed but focused vs distracted.
distracted office spaces seem to have all the wrong people mixed together in too close a proximity.
oddly i recently had a great open desk office space experience ...but it was all because of the people around me being right ..i still hated the open desks because any old goofus felt like they could walk up and start yakking away.
Scrum is a relief for me. Set a steady velocity, and keep to it. And a chance revaluate every 2 weeks.
I worked in places without any system, and it was awful, such as half finished issues that was never closed. No one knew the real state of the product. Requests where sent in via email, emails got lost, people backtracked without telling you, 3 different people pushing you on to different tasks to the exclusion of the other 2. Where as scrum sets a single direction for 2 weeks.
A lot of companies are like that. A lot of developers like it like that as well..
Nice fancy gantt charts stuff, but underneath it was like that. Where as Scrum more accurately described reality. Any late changes, any changes to the sprint, any over commitment, any delays where quite clearly shown on the board. As a result, they were reduced. The boss could not just come down, and ask to work on this task instead.
They had to create a user story, with mock ups etc and then the product owner decided if it should be included, scheduled it in for a sensible time. A lot nicer than before.
My point is that what you described is a symptom of a problem, and although Scrum solved it for you, it's not the only solution. The real problem is a lack of effective management.
I'd say "bad scrum". If you do scrum well and get the spirit of it right, it's a joy to work in. It's not perfect, but compared to what happens almost anywhere else, it's great.
Agreed. Surprised to hear Scrum. Because the Waterfall model was SO much better?
The nice thing about Scrum is that you are given up to a 3 week period, tasks, and you complete those tasks then re-evaluate. Creates a nice feedback cycle.
Plus if requirements change (as they ALWAYS do) you are more able to address that without going "backwards" in your Waterfall model or creating unnecessary steps.
That all being said, I'm sure you can make Scrum suck if done badly. But you can make anything suck via micro-management and political bullshit. If Scrum is done well it should limit micro-management to only the scrum meetings (which aren't daily or even bi-daily, so a weekly catchup meeting with a bi-weekly new sprint).
The usual scrum meetings aren't places for micro-management either. All of them are led by the team, and nobody tells them what to do. If your company is micromanaging employees during your sprint planning or retrospective, it's grasping at the last straws of conventional management before finally giving up :p
I wish the statistics had more context. They make me uncomfortable, and I feel that they were haphazardly thrown in there just to bolster the argument. E.g.:
"26% of Engaged Employees would leave their jobs for just a 5% pay increase": 26% of what sample of employees? What industries? What does "Engaged" mean?
"On average, 39% of workers don't feel their input is appreciated": Again, what kind of sampling was used? How were their sentiments ascertained?
"Average professional wastes 3.8 hours per week on unproductive meetings": Mean, median, mode?
OKR. Enormous waste of a lot of time and effort, anti agile and demoralising. Proper shared team goals with no individual goals, and frequent non abrasive appraisals are 100x better.
I'm currently reading "The Joy of Work" by Dennis Bakke, who was the CEO of AES for a number of years... in it he makes the point that compensation is rarely the most important factor for people.
Based on his own survey, he said that the most important factor to people is whether they get to use their skills and talents to make a meaningful impact.
If your people would leave their jobs for a 5% pay increase, you have hired the wrong people, or build the wrong kind of company!
I wholeheartedly agree. And there's also a rather well-known book by Daniel Pink "Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us". Money isn't the major factor in motivation indeed, but only if there's enough of it (to not think about).
It's like someone is writing about me and my previous job. Almost makes it kinda funny that someone is so easily able to compile a list like this and yet there are still far too many workplaces who almost seem to follow these rules.
This is an advert for WeekDone, a piece of status-reporting software. The pithy "fixes" named are rarely going to solve the underlying problem.
For software and product work, the answer is obvious: open allocation. For radically different kinds of work (e.g. factory-floor manufacturing) I'm not so confident; it's not my expertise. But I don't think the OP knows either.
"20% Time" policies don't really work, because if your manager is supportive you don't need them, and if your manager's a jerk, they don't offer real protection.
I agree on open-plan offices, because open-back visibility causes useless, counterproductive stress. The noise is a small issue; being visible from behind fucks with people's fight-or-flight systems. But if you can't afford to have everyone in an office (and, in some jobs, you can't; it would be a disaster on a trading floor) you could probably achieve it with booth-style seating.
Also, no boss wakes up and decides to "micromanage" and few people intentionally schedule "useless meetings". Those things happen and they're really unpleasant, but you can't just say "Don't do that" and expect the behavior to stop.
You need constitutional guarantees, like an Employee Bill of Rights that requires an employee majority to amend it and guarantees certain protections (i.e. any criticism of an employee must be delivered to that person with as small an audience as possible, and he has the right to defend himself; any employee can transfer at any time unless there is an immediate business justification for not allowing him). The problem with "20% time" policies and the "No Asshole Rule" (point #5 about "Negative People") is that they rarely have any real teeth; they just become the new language used to justify business-as-usual.
If I leave the office stimulated and excited about what I'm working on, I will work until 2 or 3am in a frenzy, and get a lot of work done.
If I leave the office tired and exhausted from hours and hours of yak shaving, I go home and rest.
Everybody wins on the 20% days, especially if they're friday, because I will likely spend the weekend coding what I didn't finish friday night.