>If your manager wants to make your 20% time more structured, then so be it. It's not free time, it's just a block of time set aside for research, experimenting, and innovation.
Then don't call it 20% time. Fold it in as a "spike", in the normal sprint planning process.
The visceral reaction you're seeing to this system stems from the disconnect between the promise of "20% time" - that I get to work on something that I think is cool, without having to justify it to the company - and the reality, which is that it's just normal sprint work by another name.
If 20% time is subject to the normal planning and prioritization processes that the company uses for planning out the rest of its work, it raises the question of why you're placing that time into a separate bucket in the first place.
> If 20% time is subject to the normal planning and prioritization processes that the company uses for planning out the rest of its work, it raises the question of why you're placing that time into a separate bucket in the first place.
A cynical answer: Other companies have heard that Google does this cool thing called 20% time, and they want to be hip too, but don't want to give up any actual employee-hours to institute it. So instead they just rebrand some portion of their normal work as "20% time".
But who can resist the lure of paying down technical debt during one's allocated "20% time" that was accrued in their job vs all the other things not necessarily related to their job that one may find satisfying and might make them more valuable as an employee or to other human beings outside of their job?
Then don't call it 20% time. Fold it in as a "spike", in the normal sprint planning process.
The visceral reaction you're seeing to this system stems from the disconnect between the promise of "20% time" - that I get to work on something that I think is cool, without having to justify it to the company - and the reality, which is that it's just normal sprint work by another name.
If 20% time is subject to the normal planning and prioritization processes that the company uses for planning out the rest of its work, it raises the question of why you're placing that time into a separate bucket in the first place.