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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

#361

Post by bennyg »

dekhn wrote: post #353
driverdan wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Calling 20% time 120% time is fair. Realistically it's hard to do your day job productively and also build a new project from scratch. You have to be willing to put in hours outside of your normal job to be successful. Then it's not 20% time, it's personal time you're giving to your employer for free. Why would you do that? Why not build your projects outside of Google and keep them for yourself (assuming it's a pr…

Why would I give my time for free to Google? Because my entire career- well before I started working here- has been dependent on things that Google has given to me for free. Like Google Search. Search helped me learn to run linux clusters effectively (it was far better than AltaVista for searching for specific error messages) which ensured I had a job, even in the dotcom busts. It helped me learn python, which also p…

To be honest, you sound brainwashed.

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

#362

Post by SmokyBorbon »

dekhn wrote: post #353
driverdan wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Calling 20% time 120% time is fair. Realistically it's hard to do your day job productively and also build a new project from scratch. You have to be willing to put in hours outside of your normal job to be successful. Then it's not 20% time, it's personal time you're giving to your employer for free. Why would you do that? Why not build your projects outside of Google and keep them for yourself (assuming it's a pr…

Why would I give my time for free to Google? Because my entire career- well before I started working here- has been dependent on things that Google has given to me for free. Like Google Search. Search helped me learn to run linux clusters effectively (it was far better than AltaVista for searching for specific error messages) which ensured I had a job, even in the dotcom busts. It helped me learn python, which also p…

Someday you'll be carrying a box of personal effects out of the office crying and wondering why your god has forsaken you.

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

#364

Post by RyanZAG »

TDL wrote: post #321
RyanZAG wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not at all - MBAs teach company management and company finance. There really isn't anything in an MBA that would have anything to do with the job of corporate oversight that a board of directors handles. The board of directors are simply large shareholders who are put there to make sure management does what is in the best interests of share holders. In most large companies, these people are mostly made up of employee…

"MBAs teach company management and company finance." This is inherently what the board of directors does. Furthermore, you characterization of the make-up of a board of directors is not necessarily correct. Many (if not most) boards also have independent directors, who many not own a single share. "There really isn't anything in an MBA that would have anything to do with the job of corporate oversight that a board of…

"This is inherently what the board of directors does."

That would be what the board of directors is theoretically meant to do. In practice it's extremely far from the truth, with board meetings being very infrequent and focused primarily on share price and dividends.

This discussion is not really about Google though: Google does actually have a very relevant board of directors with most of them being founders or directly involved in starting large tech firms. Many other companies (Nokia? Microsoft?) are not so lucky.

Interestingly enough on Google's board only Paul S. Otellini (previous CEO of Intel) and L. John Doerr (early Intel engineer and VC) have an MBA. [1]

[1] http://investor.google.com/corporate/board-of-directors.html

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

#365

Post by jarek »

jlees wrote: post #294

Seems odd that nobody is mentioning Google's in-house makerspace, hackathons, and 20% weeks (where engineers without 20% projects, or who prefer time-boxed commitments, take a week once a quarter to work on stuff). I ran a 20% week project last year - or maybe the year before? - and there are several really fantastic people working tirelessly on the Garage and other makerspace stuff to ensure that the 20% mindset is…

> 20% weeks (where engineers without 20% projects, or who prefer time-boxed commitments, take a week once a quarter to work on stuff)

Wouldn't that be 8% weeks?

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

#366

Post by falcolas »

moultano wrote: post #336
falcolas wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, the employees and other sources cited by the author are lying about needing manager permission? Or are you in an unintendedly unique position?

They may personally feel that they need manager permission. That doesn't mean that they do. There's also a wide range of managers with different opinions throughout the company.

> They may personally feel that they need manager permission. That doesn't mean that they do.

That doesn't seem to track with the article, or the articles/blogs linked from the article.

Lots of no-comments from the PTBs at Google... too bad. They could end the discussion one way or the other quickly.

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

#367

Post by eyeareque »

dekhn wrote: post #353
driverdan wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Calling 20% time 120% time is fair. Realistically it's hard to do your day job productively and also build a new project from scratch. You have to be willing to put in hours outside of your normal job to be successful. Then it's not 20% time, it's personal time you're giving to your employer for free. Why would you do that? Why not build your projects outside of Google and keep them for yourself (assuming it's a pr…

Why would I give my time for free to Google? Because my entire career- well before I started working here- has been dependent on things that Google has given to me for free. Like Google Search. Search helped me learn to run linux clusters effectively (it was far better than AltaVista for searching for specific error messages) which ensured I had a job, even in the dotcom busts. It helped me learn python, which also p…

Google doesn't give you anything for free; you give them data that allows them to sell directed marketing to you. I don't have a problem with that as for me it's a fair trade. But I wouldn't call what they offer as "free".

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

#368

Post by WalterBright »

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…

I know what you mean - my productivity definitely goes in cycles. I might create a great deal in 2 weeks, and then spend the next 2 weeks being unable to get much done.

But I learned long ago not to worry about it. The down cycles inevitably pass and then I'm producing again.

(no, I'm not bipolar)

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

#369

Post by locacorten »

varelse wrote: post #314
nostrademons wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious - were the projects you wanted to transfer to in niche technical areas or niche products? It's very easy at Google to transfer from niche to core. If we (in Search) see someone languishing in another part of the company with skills that we want and they want to work with us, we make the transfer happen, and there's nothing HR or another manager can do about it. It's much harder to transfer from core to ni…

I was in a core technical area trying to transfer into another core technical area in both cases (really, they needed me elsewhere, I could have made a genuine difference, and the blind allocation process completely hosed that up). I also didn't know upfront that little tidbit that whatever assignment I took, I would be stuck there for 4-5 years. If I had known that, I would not have accepted my initial assignment, n…

Have you considered that there might've been an issue that you didn't know about?

For me, I was with you until I read your suggestion to "read your comments" to learn about your experience.

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

#370

Post by saidajigumi »

api wrote: post #214
Silhouette wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know productivity superstars, but if you catch them on the wrong day or at the wrong time, they look like lazy bums. I've encountered a particularly nasty variation of this since Agile became a Thing, where anyone who isn't writing code or running tests or showing up in the commit logs every few minutes obviously isn't working. The idea that it might be better to step back for an hour, or a day, or even a month, to…

Agile / Scrum is the return of the K-LOC: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source_lines_of_code People don't recognize it as such because the LOC -- lines of code -- has an added time dimension now and a different name. In Agile / Scrum it's K-(issue/day) where issues take the place of raw lines and the metric is applied per unit of sprint duration. But same idea, and same fallacy. It results in gobs of ugly Rube Goldber…

"'Agile.' You keep using that word..."

An org that calls what it does "agile" or "scrum" and then proceeds to accumulate technical debt like the Titanic taking on water is lying to itself about what it's doing. Piling up technical debt is a textbook Agile(flavor) failure, full stop.

What sounds like happened in the case(s) you describe is that someone with dev management preconceptions wore "Agile" like a wolf in sheep's clothing and proceeded to dole out the same old ad-hoc nonsense. Nonsense as in being "efficient" (high KLOCs/metrics, butts in seats, long hours, etc.) and not caring about being "effective" (working on the right problem vs a problem, necessary understanding of the company and customer needs, working smarter vs. simply harder, etc.).

I've seen this attitude a number of times, e.g. in program managers with history in big, established s/w companies. They learned a certain way of working, but then talk "Agile" as the trendy hire-word. Unfortunately, some of these folks never gained understanding of the tools that Agile brings to the table, and when/how to apply (or not apply) them to a situation.

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