Side project time

Some employers offer, as an employee benefit, a guarantee that employees may work on their personal projects during some part (usually a percentage) of their time at work. Side project time is limited by two stipulations: what the employee works on is the intellectual property of their employer, and if requested, an explanation must be able to be given as to how the project benefits the company in some way, even tangentially.

Google is credited for popularizing the practice that 20 percent of an employee's time may be used for side projects. At Google, this led to the development of products such as AdSense. While Gmail is frequently described as a 20% project, its creator Paul Buchheit states that it was never one.Though the program's continuity has been questioned, Google claims that it remains an active program.

Other major companies that have at one time or another offered some or all of their employees the benefit include the BBC (10 percent of employee time), Apple (a few contiguous weeks yearly), and Atlassian (20 percent of employee time). Some companies, such as LinkedIn, have experimented with more restrictive versions in which employees must first pitch their projects receive approval to work on it during company time.

Side project time has been criticized by some academics, such as Queens College sociology professor Abraham Walker, as "exploitative" because of how it grants employers the intellectual property rights over the personal business ideas of their employees that the employer would never have requested to be worked on otherwise.