In this episode I talk to Spencer Kimball, cofounder of Cockroach Labs , a startup that’s reinventing how databases work. It’s kind of technical, but fortunately Spencer does a great job of explaining what they’re doing. He also does an excellent job of explaining Cockroach Labs’ “Free Fridays,” and how they’ve designed their work week to give everyone one day a week to work on their own projects, even as they build a product designed to compete against products made by giants like Microsoft, Amazon and Oracle.
I also talk to Clive Thompson about why 20% time is a significant perk for software developers, and more gnerally, the place that free time plays in the professional and intellectual lives of programmers.
Mentioned in this episode:
- Cockroach Labs
- Spencer Kimball’s short piece about Free Fridays
- Clive Thompson, who I follow on Twitter, and so should you. Clive is finishing a book about how software engineers think; his previous book, Smarter Than You Think, is as smart as you’d expect (you can read a New Yorkerinterview with Clive about that book)
- If you want to read more about Google’s 20% time, I recommend this Business Insider article
- Jocelyn Glei writes about the importance of breaks here; I also recommend her excellent podcast, Hurry Slowly (which had me as a guest)
- Here is the article on the role of reflection in individual learning
- Finally, of course, is my book Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less