'Goofing Off' To Get Ahead? 141
Posted
by
timothy
from the sounds-like-a-good-movie-title dept.
from the sounds-like-a-good-movie-title dept.
theodp writes "His old day job at Gawker entailed calling BS on tech's high-and-mighty, but Ryan Tate still found things to like about Silicon Valley. In The 20% Doctrine, Tate explores how tinkering, goofing off, and breaking the rules at work can drive success in business. If you're lucky, your boss may someday find Tate's book in his or her conference schwag bag and be inspired enough by the tales of skunkworks projects at both tech (Google, Flickr, pre-Scott Thompson Yahoo) and non-tech (Bronx Academy of Letters, Huffington Post, Thomas Keller Restaurant Group) organizations to officially condone some form of 20% time at your place of work. In the meantime, how do you manage to find time to goof off to get ahead?"
Re:this is bullshit (Score:5, Informative)
Move closer to work. If they are paying you an hourly rate for the first 8 hours, work 8 hours. If they want more, inform them that an overtime payment is traditional. Social lives are overrated, but handy for making connections to get a leg up. Your address book is more vauable than your CV.
I too work for the military industrial complex and have all those alpha types in my address books. If I see them doing dumb, they get an email pointing it out politely. (It's just possible they might not have thought of all the consequences.)
Guess what. I am in exactly the same boat, and choose to control my life. The workplace actually prefer me to only work 8 hours as I work all 8 of them and come back ready to do it again instead of thinking how tired I am. They don't mind me goofing off occasionally because the last time I did, I saved the section $3M per annum.
As for tuna and ramen? Take time out and have a real lunch. The time away from your desk is refreshing. The vitamins and minerals will do your body good.
QUIT WHINGEING AND TAKE CONTROL
Re:Not making money = wasting money (Score:3, Informative)
Cheaper to burn out the old ones can get some new one for less then keep giving raises to your current employees.