80/20 Rule

I’m not quite productive recently, no new significant lines were written. So, I think I’ll take some peace of mind defragging my brain. It’s still using VFAT you know. So, I need to sort things out every once and a while to make it work in order.

Okay, I think most of you have heard/read that there’s this 80/20 rule within Google. Google allows its engineer to work freely during their 20% of their work time (need more citation here). I won’t go much deeper on it. More about 80/20 left as an exercise to the reader (see reference below). What I’d like to say here is what has just crossed my mind few hours ago. I’ve always thought 80/20 percent from employee perspective, without really understand what’s the value for both, me and any of my employer (yes, I’m hoping to work to various employer ;).

So, I think it’s pretty clear that 20% means more freedom, employee can do “whatever” s/he (she or he) likes and have a totally fun experience with it. Free means s/he’s no longer restricted onto what to solve and how to solve (in lazy engineer term: what to play and and how to play). No time restriction, only excitement. It’ll then become the most luxury leisure an engineer can have, given the company might not provide real world luxury leisure to compare. In the ends, it refreshen up the engineer, scores another time of his (engineering) life. A happy engineer.

On the other hand — from human resource perspective — not only the 20% will be an attractive point in a recruitment and long stay purposes, it will also maintain productivity level at an always acceptable (at the least). Weekly working hour will indeed be reduced, but in the long shot it’s like making your gears live longer and prevents it from premature retirement. Thus, employer vehicle can run as smooth and longer as (hopefully) expected.

So, am I endorsing and proposing 80/20 rule her? At some point yes. However, there are still catches to think about. Even an employee can found a 20% free time, its utilization is still to be questioned. What worst are an employee didn’t know how to make the most of it or, the other way around, an employee found a great way to abuse it. And speaking of abuse, given a broad choice to work on and appreciation on whatever s/he has done, I think it can be reduced to minimum. Of course, real world experience leisure may still be needed to break to 80/20 monotone pattern (it’ll happen anytime soon).

Finally, to quote from enterpreneurs-journey: “You won’t find fulfillment only by consuming”. Very much true, isn’t it?

Reference:

• 80/20, What and how
  
• 80/20 example at Google

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