Author here. While I appreciate the reads, I am even more glad for the amusement provided by various comments about how I'm confused about what "100% time" means (since, AFAIK, the post is where the term was first used outside of private conversations with friends of mine), or that it's potentially illegal, or that it's really just the typical 80/20 split and I can't tell the difference. Cheers! :-D
Snark aside, Craig Andera asked me about the post on a recent Relevance podcast, and we talked about it and matters related to 100% time for a good stretch:
100% time means that I choose what to care about, and then dedicate all my energy to making that choice have impact
There isn't a lot of difference between 100% time and the concept of 80-20. You are interpreting the 80% time almost like slavery while making it seem like your 100% time provides complete freedom. I bet the reality is in between. The 80% time is still spent working for a company you're choosing to work for, often on projects you're choosing to work on and often work that you're enjoying. Meanwhile, even when you have the freedom to dedicate 100% of your life on whatever you'd like, you're still compelled to decide what to prioritize and what to turn down because of a lack of time.
I run a business. In theory I have 100% time. In practice, I still have to choose to do grunt work 80% of the time (or more) if I want my business to succeed. You can redefine and reshuffle the numbers, but ultimately the work that needs to get done needs to get done.
We designed our company in such a way that to some degree everyone has 100% time. We get together and choose priorities as a group, and then everyone can spend their time as they wish, as long as the goals we agreed on as a team are met. People still choose to do grunt work, since they realize it needs to get done for the company to succeed. There is no way to escape that.
I think that ultimately, it's a matter of having the choice that makes a difference between fulfillment and misery. But even if you can choose what to work on, you still have to do unpleasant work at least some of the time.
For sure, there are times when certain things simply have to get done. I didn't talk about that side of things simply because it would have diluted the message, and I figured that it was a given.
However, contrary to what the GP says, 100% time (at least, my personal experience) bears little to no resemblance to the 80/20 split found in many workplaces. I don't know what the split actually shakes out to in my case, but short of allowing random HNers to surveil me (as tantalizing a notion as that may be :-P), everyone will just have to take me at my word that what I'm talking about isn't some sugar-coated notion of "it feels like I'm not working because I love my work so much".
I am a person who severely can't stand paperwork. (ADD may be a factor.) Yet I'd be just the sort of person who would actually be productive in a self-directed fashion. Do you think that striking out on my own could work? I would pay money for someone else to do the paperwork side (although I'd have to trust them, of course...)
>I run a business. In theory I have 100% time. In practice, I still have to choose to do grunt work 80% of the time (or more) if I want my business to succeed. You can redefine and reshuffle the numbers, but ultimately the work that needs to get done needs to get done.
I've found that while running a business, I have to do a whole lot more of the unpleasant stuff than when I was working for other people. I mean, some of this is 'scope creep' that results from me making decisions when I'm not depressed (the not-depressed me? I fucking hate that guy. Always giving me more bullshit work to do. "Oh yeah, that will be easy." Fuck you, smiley.[1])
I have optimized my core business to minimize time and energy spent in negotiation- something I really, really hate. But I keep getting this notion that I can disrupt other related industries by taking the negotiation out of them for my customers. I mean, co-location is ridiculously inefficient. Like we're talking at least 10% loss to negotiation (on a relatively low-margin service, you are doing really well if you can get 20% margin on your co-location without owning the goddamn building, so 10% is like half your actual profit)[2] So yeah, a lot of this is me making bad decisions and needing to follow through on those bad decisions. Have you ever walked from a full-time job because your boss made a series of bad decisions that made you do a bunch of unpleasant work? Yeah. I have, more than once.[3] Turns out? when you are the boss? this walking becomes much harder. Also, it turns out that your boss wasn't just and idiot. those decisions are way harder than they look.
But, even without the bad decisions, there's just a lot of bullshit you have to deal with. So much bullshit. Bullshit that as an individual contributor, you can just ignore. I mean, you can attempt to hire it out, but "Even telling other people to make things is exhausting;" It is seriously difficult to hire outside your field[4] - hell, it's difficult to hire within your field; now try doing the same thing in an environment where you don't even know what competence is shaped like.
It's good to see this end of it, I think; I know that I've had fights with my employees that could have been the exact mirror of me fighting with my boss when I was younger. Things look different from the other side.
But yeah. I am not at all sure that I am 'more free' now. As an overpaid individual contributor, well, if I didn't like it? I could quit and fuck off for 6 months on my personal projects[2]. As a business owner? yeah. not happening. Sure, you occasionally have opportunities to sell, but companies are bought, not sold, and generally speaking, the offers come when the business is going well and you are enthusiastic. During the hard times? yeah, the options are to force march onward, or to give up and deal with corporate (and probably personal) bankruptcy and a whole bunch of people being angry at you.
Running a business that other people depend on? it's a much bigger commitment, I think, than just working for other people. I mean, I'm not saying it's up there with having children.... (how the fuck do parents run companies? I... do not understand how that is even possible.) but it's still a lot of freedom-constraining responsibility.
[1]If it's not obvious, I'm coming out of a period of depression right now. This is, generally, when I get the most productive work done; I'm not so optimistic as to be a fucking moron, but I also don't have to struggle quite to hard to, you know, answer the fucking phone. I'm telling you; fear isn't the mind-killer; it's confidence. Every time I fuck myself it can be traced back to being too optimistic. "Sure, that's easy!" fuck that guy.
[2]Huge mistake. I hate negotiation, why would I want to do it for other people? So yeah, I'm in the process of trying to peel off my co-location and similar businesses and fold them into a partnership with someone who can handle negotiation, without disrupting service. (Of course, you never completely get away from negotiation. Now I've gotta negotiate with this guy. But eh, we will see.) I'm keeping my core businesses, the VPS market requires relatively little negotiation.
[3]that's how I got into this mess in the first place.
[4]I have an accountant that I think is excellent, but she's also the highest paid person at the company, by quite a lot. Worth it, I think, because that's the most likely way for me to get debt that won't go away with bankruptcy. Do not fuck with the IRS. Doing your own taxes? one of those 'fuck it up and you are in debt for life' bad ideas. Thing is, she's the closest thing we have to a businessperson, so I ask for help on a bunch of stuff that isn't really in her specialty, but I don't have, you know, a HR specialist, either.
I admire (and in some ways totally agree with/follow) the message.
Having said that, I don't really think that you can say that with his "100% time" he can still achieve what Google employees once did during 20% time. My understanding is that Google now (and for a while) has not actually continued to uphold the 20% tradition - and that was expected with company growth - but back when it did, the idea was that you could spend 20% of your time to build your own side project using Google resources and while getting paid by Google. Maybe it would become super popular and be a 'real product' some day.
With "100% time" you certainly cannot legally do this. I can't go to work and devote some time to some side project using my company's resources and while getting paid to be doing other work. Sure, I could put in "100% time" into doing it, but it would be illegal.
Like I said, I like the message, but mentioning 20% time seems wrong since you can't compare the two. In my opinion, anyways.
If you quit your job and have a profitable, self-sustaining business there's nothing illegal about spending your time in the pursuit of any lawful activity.
In terms of legality, it really depends on what kind of covenants you went into.
The 20% thing at Google is currently a marketing lie, and now Google is very much so a "team dependent" environment. That is, 20% is only allowed based on your team and the politics around your group. (based on several current/former google employers that I've talked to...)
> The 20% thing at Google is currently a marketing lie
There was a thread recently where some googlers said the opposite. The main thing I've heard is that you have to actually assert yourself and take the 20% time, it's not going to be set aside for you.
Sadly, I think mostly in the BigCorp world, you always have to take time aside to learn new stuff (or read HN etc). Everybody knows that no one works 8h/day doing real work. Sometimes taking time for learning is frowned upon (the "bad companies" out there) but mostly it is up to you to take the time.
I've never heard any of my (ex) bosses in BigCorp say that taking time from daily work to learn is not permitted. Of course it would be cool to have the 20% stated by the management, but I don't see that happening. Mostly they leave it up to you to take the 20% from the daily work.
this makes it a team dependent thing. The other thing is politics, "oh, we are behind schedule, yet that one guy doing his 20%..." combined with stack rankings is a downward spiral.
Now, if you can assert yourself and back up your assertions, then many other places will enable you to do what you want if it's directly related to the success of the business.
With "100% time" you certainly cannot legally do this. I can't go to work and devote some time to some side project using my company's resources and while getting paid to be doing other work. Sure, I could put in "100% time" into doing it, but it would be illegal.
It's worth noting that if every developer believed this, then Python wouldn't exist, because Python was one such project.
Guido van Rossum started working on python in the late 80s while employed by a computer science research center in Europe, then continued working on it while employed by a computer science research in the United States. He didn't start working at Google (working 50% on python) until 2005.
How many employers at universities have any idea about what their employees are doing beyond 'something with computers' or 'something with microbes' ? (exaggeration - but not a whole lot, in academia by definition most people are not in a position to understand what others are doing because what they are doing is supposed to be cutting edge)
>With "100% time" you certainly cannot legally do this. I can't go to work and devote some time to some side project using my company's resources and while getting paid to be doing other work. Sure, I could put in "100% time" into doing it, but it would be illegal.
You missed his point.
His 100% time is not like the 80% expanded. It's like the 20% expanded.
I.e instead of something like Google paying him to devote 20% to extra stuff he likes, he choose to work 100% of his time in stuff he likes, and pay himself with that.
I'm doing something similar. I sold the technology of my (very) small startup in 2007 and had enough to stop "working" and putz around for a few years. I had no aim but kept trying whatever took my fancy. Eventually, something clicked as being in demand, profitable, and something I enjoyed doing. That's now my new business and I try to optimize so that at least 80% of the work is something I enjoy doing (and try to outsource anything that I don't!)
Without that initial runway, however, I'd never have done it and this idea of having some extended time off or having a healthy pillow of cash to cushion a potential fall seems to be a common element of many stories like this.
I've not had an exit (threading that needle with a small software product business seems to be particularly challenging), but I hope I've been able to accomplish something similar in terms of searching for the next best thing. I think I've found it, but only time will tell; at the very least, I feel like I've found something like a "life's work" worth thinking about in those terms, so that's something...
This sums up very nicely why I'm interested in building a company. It's not something I'm a 'natural' at (I'm not a great programmer, but I feel very at home with it), and I don't care about being rich, I just want time and freedom.
Even with the small amount of money I've made with LiberWriter, I've tasted some of that decoupling he talks about - it's an awesome feeling when someone signs up, asks a few questions to our support team, and has their book done without me lifting a finger!
Not sure about this. 20% time put some boundaries, and marks that you should be doing something different. It can be typically abused (hey, I'm supposed to have 20% for "other projects", but I have a deadline, so I'll use it for the "regular work"), but at least there is a line in the sand saying: "This is clearly time for OTHER STUFF". Your manager can say to you "hey, it's friday so you should be leaving this alone and do alternative projects"
100% sounds great, but does not define anything, so it's extremely easy to fall into "I have a lot of work, I can move to other stuff when the workload goes down". Of course, workload never goes down...
(Author here.) I agree that 100% time does not define anything. That is definitional. ;-) I'm "the boss" of the business, so I'm pretty well in control of what gets done and what doesn't.
The whole thing requires a great deal of self-control and psychological awareness…though I'd suggest that without that, the business that makes the whole thing possible in the first place probably wouldn't exist.
100% time idea can only be possible in a start up company. If you consider any big corporate company, they don't even allow 10% time policy. This makes an engineer just another labor.
Snark aside, Craig Andera asked me about the post on a recent Relevance podcast, and we talked about it and matters related to 100% time for a good stretch:
http://thinkrelevance.com/blog/2013/05/14/chas-emerick-mostl...