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Google’s “20% time,” which brought you Gmail and AdSense, is now as good as dead

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Re: Google’s “20% time,” which brought you Gmail and AdSense, is now as good as dead

#131

Post by Graham24 »

api wrote: post #25
donw wrote: post #18

Few people remember it, but the same thing happened at HP. It used to be that HP engineers were expressly given Friday afternoons and full access to company resources to just play with new ideas. Among other things, this led to HP owning the printer market. Then "professional" management came in and killed the proverbial goose. They had to focus more on the "bottom line". To do what was easy to measure and track, rat…

It boggles my mind, given the big money involved, why so many people continue to bet huge sums of cash on the proven short-term penny-wise/pound-foolish idiocy of MBA-think. I mean sure-- if your company is under cash flow pressure you have to pinch pennies. You have no choice. Spreadsheet says so, and spreadsheet's the boss. But if you're not, you should be investing and thinking long term cause the other guys proba…

Side Issue: do Americans really say "penny-wise/pound-foolish"? I'd have thought it'd been dollar.

And what exactly is a po-dunk school when it's at home?

Re: Google’s “20% time,” which brought you Gmail and AdSense, is now as good as dead

#132

Post by riffraff »

toyg wrote: post #60
jusben1369 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In all fairness 18 months ago the perception of Google is it was doing a LOT of things but none of them very well. Embarrassing attempts at social networks (wave, err, that other one I'm forgetting) is just one example. So narrowing their focus (still) seems like a good idea. But having great engineers is the most important thing for any success so not sure why you'd take away a mystical founding pillar of your cultu…

>Embarrassing attempts at social networks (wave, err, that other one I'm forgetting) You mean Orkut. That was weird: it got wildly popular in Brazil, India, Turkey and other places, but never really took off in "the West" (weird name, bad quality when first released, boring UI...). I guess most of its members (it's still going!) will become G+ users, so it wasn't a complete failure in the end (in fact, a large userba…

More likely imho, he meant google buzz

Re: Google’s “20% time,” which brought you Gmail and AdSense, is now as good as dead

#133

Post by [deleted] »

[deleted] wrote: post #83
g20 wrote: post #24

20% time isn't dead -- I have been using it at Google consistently for over 7 years, and it has immensely benefited me. You don't need any permission, at least in engineering. However, I would agree that it is "as good as dead". What killed 20% time? Stack ranking. Google's perf management is basically an elaborate game where using 20% time is a losing move. In my time there, this has become markedly more the case. I…

[deleted]

[deleted]

Re: Google’s “20% time,” which brought you Gmail and AdSense, is now as good as dead

#135

Post by dekhn »

VikingCoder wrote: post #129
dekhn wrote: post #122

I am a Googler. I will only speak to my personal experience, and the experience of people around me: 20% time still exists, and is encouraged as a mechanism to explore exciting new ideas without the complexity and cost of a real product. My last three years were spent turning my 20% project into a product, and my job now is spent turning another 20% project into a product. There was never any management pressure from…

At my last job, I had to wait two weeks to get a VM created and assigned to me. At my current job, I can't get a port opened to make an OUTBOUND connection to Amazon Web Services. Yeah, working at Google, it's definitely easier to use big tools to try new things, huh?

We have a lot of perks, including great food, but ultimately it comes down to: 1) awesome coworkers I learn from daily 2) access to infrastructure and few barriers 3) a competent IT team for corporate IT

The combination of the three is rare in industry.

Re: Google’s “20% time,” which brought you Gmail and AdSense, is now as good as dead

#136

Post by eli »

Killah911 wrote: post #54
JamesCRR wrote: post #15

"if 20% time has been abandoned at Google, are other companies, which reportedly include Apple, LinkedIn, 3M and a host of others, wise to continue trying to copy it?" That's incorrect, AFAIK 3M were the first company to pioneer this approach (with 15% of time spent on self-directed projects). For example see: http://www.fastcodesign.com/1663137/how-3m-gave-everyone-day... Talking to a friend at 3M (who has been ther…

The author needs to google 3M an find out actual facts. It's like Google came up with it and Everybody was in a mad rush to copy it. God forbid, innovative ideas come from anywhere else but the companies we perceive to be the most innovative. Google was keen to adopt the practice that's worked well elsewhere and they seem to be focusing on other methodologies now, maybe they're figured out something that works well f…

Agreed, it's a silly question even if it were true that Google invented the idea. I do not get the impression that Apple is a company that mindlessly copies R&D strategies from Google.

Re: Google’s “20% time,” which brought you Gmail and AdSense, is now as good as dead

#137

Post by erichocean »

Graham24 wrote: post #131
api wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It boggles my mind, given the big money involved, why so many people continue to bet huge sums of cash on the proven short-term penny-wise/pound-foolish idiocy of MBA-think. I mean sure-- if your company is under cash flow pressure you have to pinch pennies. You have no choice. Spreadsheet says so, and spreadsheet's the boss. But if you're not, you should be investing and thinking long term cause the other guys proba…

Side Issue: do Americans really say "penny-wise/pound-foolish"? I'd have thought it'd been dollar. And what exactly is a po-dunk school when it's at home?

> do Americans really say "penny-wise/pound-foolish"?

Yes.

Re: Google’s “20% time,” which brought you Gmail and AdSense, is now as good as dead

#138

Post by varelse »

JabavuAdams wrote: post #100
Spooky23 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a management perspective, you're forgetting about the obvious: the less than productive people. The benefit of giving employees no- or few-strings attached time to work on whatever is clear. Things like GMail, Apple 1, etc. The "cost" is that people are doing things that don't necessarily contribute to the bottom line -- for every GMail, there are 1,000 low-impact ideas. When your ability to make money hand over…

Re: productive people. We have this notion of the 10x producer, but the real problem is high variability within the same person's work. I know productivity superstars, but if you catch them on the wrong day or at the wrong time, they look like lazy bums. Over a year, they're extremely productive. On any given day, they may look like they're wasting time. This property of conceptual work is at the core of a lot of cul…

1,000x yes! My productivity comes in intense bursts of effort, with quiescent periods of research and reflection between them (or what looks like goofing off to rigidly process-oriented sorts). Combine that variability with mandatory daily scrum meetings and it makes me want to figuratively slit my wrists.

Re: Google’s “20% time,” which brought you Gmail and AdSense, is now as good as dead

#139

Post by CmonDev »

api wrote: post #28

"Google’s “20% time,” which allows employees to take one day a week to work on side projects, effectively no longer exists. That’s according to former Google employees, one who spoke to Quartz on the condition of anonymity and others who have said it publicly. What happened to the company’s most famous and most imitated perk? For many employees, it has become too difficult to take time off from their day jobs to work…

> "What I've heard is more nuanced: the policy is not dead, but it's very hard to both satisfy the core demands of your job and maintain 20% time. So it's not dead, but possibly not an actual priority in the culture the way it used to be..?"

... and the difference in outcome is?

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