Back in 2008 we shared some of our workplace experiments including the four day work week (still in effect May – Oct), funding people’s passions (we’re still doing this, too), and discretionary spending accounts (everyone still gets a company Amex they can use for anything work related).
This June we’re trying something new.
This June will be a full month of free time to think, explore, mock up, prototype, whatever. People can go solo or put together a team – it’s entirely up to them. This is a month to unwind and create without the external pressures of other ongoing projects or expectations. We’re effectively taking a month off from non-essential scheduled/assigned work to see what we can do with no schedule/assignments whatsoever.
Some companies are famous for their 20% time where employees get 1/5th of their time to work on their own projects. In spirit I like this idea, but usually it’s executed by carving out a day here or a day there – or every Friday, for example – to work on your own projects.
But all time isn’t equal. I’d take 5 days in a row over 5 days spread out over 5 weeks. So our theory is that we’ll see better results when people have a long stretch of uninterrupted time. A month includes time to think, not just time to squeeze in some personal work around the edges.
The culmination of this month of free work time is Pitchday – the first Thursday in July. That’s when everyone will get a chance to pitch their idea, mockup, prototype, or proof of concept to the whole company. The better the pitch, the more likely the project will happen.
Some people have already paired up and recruited others to work on an idea together. Some are going solo. And some are taking the time to work on a combination of smaller things they’ve been meaning to work on for a while.
I’m really excited to see what people come up with (and share what I’ve come up with, too – David and I are working on something together). Hopefully our customers will see the results of some of these pitches over the coming months.
We’ll report back if we have anything interesting to share.
ADI
on 31 May 12Great post, another great test would be to see if headphones make employees more or less productive.
Bryan
on 31 May 12This is a great idea!
However, I am curious to know if you were able to include the support crew as well? Obviously it is not possible to give a support team a month off. Or is this for developers/designers only?
JF
on 31 May 12Bryan: Support will remain on support because customers expect our full support schedule, however, support will likely be involved in a variety of the projects. They are our eyes and ears and know our customers best, so I fully expect them to be a valuable resource to the teams who are building customer-facing ideas. Further, I know there’s already an effort underway to redesign a variety of our internal tools that support uses, so they’ll be intimately involved there as well.
Mike Swimm
on 31 May 12Fantastic.
I don’t know how much you pay attention to the video game industry, but Tim Schafer of Double Fine conducted a similar experiment that literally ended up saving his company a few years ago.
Here’s an article about it: http://www.gamespot.com/features/how-amnesia-fortnight-saved-double-fine-6365180/
Josh Jones
on 31 May 12You guys hiring? ;)
Devan
on 31 May 12Nice! I am a believer in having ‘blocks’ of time to really immerse yourself in a project, rather than snippets here and there. Be interesting to see what bubbles to the top…
Adam Siegel
on 31 May 12This seems like it’s in the same vein as larger companies who do “idea pageants” which are nice in concept, but come pitch day, won’t it be much more likely that yours and DHH’s project gets funded and after that it will be a brawl amongst everyone else (just like in large companies where the pet projects get funded regardless of merit)?
Will there be some sort of system to ensure everyone gets a fair shake for getting their project sponsored after pitch day?
Sunir Shah
on 31 May 12I worked like this for months once and I did my best work of my coding career.
May I suggest doing the pitches weekly to show progress, get feedback, and naturally accrete coconspirators to the most promising projects. Plus it is far easier to plan a week of work four times than a whole one shot month.
ksat
on 31 May 12This might not be same as google’s 20%
“Hopefully our customers will see the results of some of these pitches over the coming months”
Going by that line, I think there’s a clear rule that it has to be related to one of 37s products. An employee can’t for example work on an ‘auto-driving-car’ where 37s customers will not be benifited
Diego Izidoro
on 31 May 12would be cool after every 4 weeks have one week for working on your own projects.
Jason Watkins
on 31 May 12Or you could operate this way indefinitely. Read Valve’s employee handbook.
Dave
on 31 May 12Love it but Pitchday is the 5th? so everyone will be spending July 4th doing final preparation for their presentation!? :)
YOHAMI
on 31 May 12Love that. Will the employees have participation on the revenues for the stuff they create? I guess so.
Michael
on 31 May 12Wow, just wow.
Joss Winn
on 31 May 12Very impressed by this. In academia, we call this a sabbatical :-) Would you consider 6-12 months? Who owns the IP and is the work expected to relate to any of your existing products?
GeeIWonder
on 31 May 12I’m impressed by this but astonished it’s disclosed ahead of time. I guess you folks are more trusting of the competition than I am.
Björn Lindqvist
on 31 May 12Are you hiring? :=) This is the kind of company I’d love to work for.
Sten
on 31 May 12What a great way to reap from the humanity of the programmers! Instead of forcing a net of pre-imagined thoughts upon their creativity, you’ll get the full-color version.
It will be very interesting to hear what comes out of your experiment.
Motyar
on 31 May 12Waiting to see what you have made.
Piotr
on 31 May 12This is amazing! Can’t wait to see what useful things may come out of this experiment. With love Piotr
smithstan
on 31 May 12Employee motivation in the workplace article. This article focus on aspects of employee motivation, theory and practice as applied to in the workplace.
W. Szabo Peter
on 31 May 12Very nice initiative. I think it will boost morale and hopefully produce a lot of innovative projects.
Rahul
on 31 May 12We do this once a year at our company, Q42, for 3 days, and call it w00tcamp. Since we’re an agency, we can’t just take off a whole month, but I think we can agree that we aspire to increase the time we spend on this as much as our clientele and budgets allow :-) Looking forward to hearing what kind of ideas you guys come up with – some of ours have been ridiculous!
Josh Long
on 31 May 12Another great reason to hire the most talented people possible. I think that giving your people the time to focus specifically on a product, solution, etc. is a stellar idea. I can only imagine what the talent pool there will come up with. I’m excited because I’m sure the products I use everyday will be exponentially better because of it. Cheers!
Adam Musial-Bright
on 31 May 12Sounds like a good idea. A month is actually a lot of time not only for prototyping but in some cases for a small project, which if survive and stays stable over 20 days, may be something that is manageable in the future. Not only projects are interesting with this amount of time. You could actually try out a totally new way of working such as different work times, teams or outsourcing (and testing if it works) something you really hate to do on a daily basis. Cannot wait for your feedback/experience. Good luck.
JP
on 31 May 12Jason, why do you only have four day work weeks (May-Oct)? Why not the entire year? I’m interested because I really like the idea of instituting four day work weeks, but part of me is worried that Thurs, becomes the new Friday (i.e. less creative work). Do you do this so that people keep appreciating that extra day off?
Bret
on 31 May 12May I ask if you guys do bonuses for products or features that are a hit?
TVD
on 31 May 12Revolutionary.
Paul Grunt
on 31 May 12VERY COOL!
Randy
on 31 May 12Over 90% of my job is self-directed like this. One of the best things about my job actually. Been doing it this way for years, and it opens the floodgates on the possibilities of what you can accomplish as a company. The mind needs that free-space to explore and create great things. Drop the leash, watch your people do great things!
DaveS
on 31 May 12Really cool approach!
I worked at a few companies that did the 10-20% free time to create. However, very few ideas actually matured because of the hour here, hour there, inconsistent timing made it hard to make progress.
I really believe you will get more out this with your approach of giving a continuous set of dedicated time to create and iterate on a passionate idea(s). Looking forward to seeing the results!
JZ
on 31 May 12@JP – What’s nice about May-Oct is that four day work weeks become a change of pace. It’s something to look forward to and it’s nice to have the extra day off when the weather is nice. Why not work when it’s cold and nasty outside all winter? :)
I think it is more special when it’s not all the time and usually by October I’m ready to get back to normal work-weeks. Four day work weeks go fast, there is only so much you can do with one less day. Thursday doesn’t become the new Friday, it’s more like, “Oh man I really need to get this done today if I want to push it this week”. Four days means more focus, not less. Try it!
Robert G
on 31 May 12“For example, Mark has recently taken up flight lessons. 37signals is helping him pay for those. If someone wants to take cooking lessons, we’ll help pay for those. If someone wants to take a woodworking class, we’ll help pay for that.
Part of the deal is that if 37signals helps you pay, you have to share what you’ve learned with everyone. Not just everyone at 37signals, but everyone who reads our blog. So expect to see some blog posts about these experiences.”
I guess this didn’t work out as expected?
JF
on 31 May 12Robert: Correct, the posting to the blog and teaching everyone else didn’t happen.
Benjy
on 31 May 12A month-long hackathon! This sounds awesome, and I hope we also get to hear what was created during the month. Perhaps 37Signals next great product?
Helen Tran
on 31 May 12That’s interesting. Who retains the ownership of the project?
JF
on 31 May 12Helen: It’s the company’s work, just like everything else that’s worked on here. The difference is that it’s self-directed instead of assigned.
Anonymous Coward
on 31 May 12What if your employees come up with something on Pitch Day and you implement it, only to decide later that it’s not part of your core business and try to either sell if off or shut it down?
Rich
on 31 May 12Wow, Jason: Such a fan of Shark Tank that you’ve recreated it in your own office? I can see you taking on the Cuban role and DHH as O’Leary. Seriously, sounds like a cool idea. I wish we could all work the way you guys do. Way to continue to rework work. Or unwork it. Is it still work if you are passionate about what you’re doing and are encouraged/enabled to pursue your ambitions?
Hugo Dias
on 31 May 12What a great idea! People have many ideas and sometimes they do not have enough time to put into practice. It’s a great initiative of 37signals and hope that other companies try this approach. Peace!
Berserk
on 31 May 12Isn’t it obvious that stuff you do at work/during work hours is the company’s, regardless whether someone told you exactly what to do or not? If you don’t want your employer to own it don’t do it at work.
I’d guess that 37s would be cool with employees doing (unrelated) projects on the side?
Fred Campbell
on 01 Jun 12You are one of the few companies who are brave enough to take on such an idea. What never fails to surprise me, is that with the universal access to the web that has taken place over the past 15 years, companies are still stuck in the past, making sure their employees clock in at 9 and out again at 5. I think it comes down to a lack of trust – where the boss has to their employee sat at their desk – whether this is productive or not.
Ben
on 01 Jun 12I’m lucky enough to work at a company which runs a similar program. We’ve developed an interesting process of evaluating ideas for the “pitch” round, so that there is no bias for managers’ pet projects. The judging process is based on which teams can gather the best evidence/data their idea is solving a customer problem (or not). Many teams get as far as actually delivering a working product which they can charge for (or other validated business model), which is hard to argue against during final pitches…
Using this process, winning ideas are almost always self evident. In fact, most teams tend to agree on which ideas are best, and I myself have often said “yep, that idea is way better than mine”. Its a cross between a hack-a-thon and a startup competition, and experimentation lab. We have a total blast during the process, as I’m sure the 37 Signals Team will.
Lee
on 02 Jun 12Bethesda did something with their most recent game, Skyrim. Really cool stuff if you enjoyed the game: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGIgXeGC6Dg
internets
on 04 Jun 12More people are busy more the make done. :-)
Anonymous Coward
on 04 Jun 12“Workplace experiments, a month to yourself” aka No blog post on 37svn during this time.
ugsaivbt
on 04 Jun 121
Bob Reid
on 04 Jun 12You might want to move “Pitch Day” to July 11 so everyone can enjoy the July 4th Holiday.
Otherwise, this is a great idea. I previously used every Friday as R&D day and created some of our best stuff that way. If you’re a “Full Stack” developer – you also don’t quit thinking – and coding for fun – on weekends.
It will only take one big idea to pay for this month of research, in addition to the inherent morale boost.
Good luck!
Anderson Sanches
on 05 Jun 12Your ideas are awesome! I hope one day I can join a similar experiment.
Eugene O'Brien
on 05 Jun 12Such a fantastic idea, it can only enhance morale along with strengthening the trust between employer & employee which is a much undervalued commodity in the present time. I really cannot wait to see or hear the results. As someone else pointed out ‘Are you hiring’?
Best of luck
This discussion is closed.