Everywhere we look, developers are working on side or ‘passion’ projects. While these projects are incredible ways to expand your knowledge faster, accelerate your career, and gain recognition in the developer community, the truth is that not everyone can or wants to spend extra time outside of work on coding. The result of this is a tech industry that is less diverse and inclusive when some people are able to progress further and faster while others aren’t.

One way to help level the playing field while allowing your developers to grow and learn faster? Allow them to spend 10% of their time at work working on anything they want - no strings attached.

By giving people trust, permission, and time to pursue what interests them the most, we found that our developers were more engaged with their work, took charge of their learning, and brought more passion and creativity into their everyday work lives -- all of which in turn benefits their actual projects.

In this talk you’ll learn: how and why we embrace 10% time in Internal Product at the Financial Times; how it has helped me and the team I’m on; and how you can begin to implement this concept as well.