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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

#381

Post by jacquesm »

mcherm wrote: post #342
jacquesm wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same thing may have happened at HP, but at Google is isn't happening (yet). It may happen but to claim that 20% time is gone is simply false.

Do you have information that contradicts the description in the article? Because the article claims that the 20% time is still "official policy", but that employees are expected to still put in 100% time on their normal project (and measured on doing so) and that they also need permission to start a "20% time" project and finally that management has been instructed to be parsimonious in granting this permission. The…

Plenty of googlers on the record in this thread that this is bs, I don't see what my anecdotes relating friends' experience would add to that.

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

#382

Post by roguecoder »

bennyg wrote: post #361
dekhn wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

All the best corporate cultures are a form of brainwashing.

My form of brainwashing happens to include 40 hours weeks. It's pretty nice.

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

#383

Post by roguecoder »

throwawaykf02 wrote: post #12

A Google recruiter, while doing his spiel, told me in a light-hearted, offhand manner that some engineers call it "120% time". Having lurked here long enough and read similar sentiments from ex- and current google employees, it wasn't really news to me, but I was pleasantly surprised at his candor. But do any of the other companies listed do 20% time? AFAIK, they only have infrequent "hack days".

Ours instead does one week a year. They get scheduled like any other project. It means they can't be as ambitious or unbounded, but it also provides uninterrupted time to work on whatever-it-is you are interested in.

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

#384

Post by paranoiacblack »

enraged_camel wrote: post #351
moultano wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He was at Google for 6 months. Whatever you think about his opinions in general, he doesn't know anything about how things at Google work.

How long do you have to be at a company to understand how things work in it? (That's a trick question, since the answer is going to depend on the person's intelligence and ability to make observations.) Also, a ton of long-time Googlers agree with the stuff he says. It's not like he's some lone dissenting voice.

Also, please feel free to get off of Michael Church's dick.

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

#385

Post by levosmetalo »

guyzero wrote: post #352
levosmetalo wrote: post #184

Did that 20% time actually bring anything useful at Google, or it's just a myth? IIRC, both Gmail and AdSense mentioned in the title didn't come to Google as 20% byproducts, but as acquisitions. Does anyone know of any popular (by Google standards) product that started that way?

Transit directions on Maps started as a 20% project.

It's just one single feature of one of the projects. If that's the poster child of 20% projects then that's good enough reason to ditch them.

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

#386

Post by yuhong »

bane wrote: post #186
ssharp wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> proven short-term penny-wise/pound-foolish idiocy of MBA-think. This is a completely unjust attack. Quite frankly, I have no idea what "MBA-think" even is. You make an assumption that an MBA making a bad decision is making a bad decision because they have an MBA. That doesn't pass the test. Would the same person make the same decision even without the MBA? I always seem to get sensitive over the general MBA hate ex…

I say this as somebody who suffered through getting a professional management degree as well: I think the observed pattern is that we repeatedly see startups get kicked off, grow like wildfire, then turned into an empty shell of their former selves once the "professional management team" is brought in as they promptly kill off all of the reasons the company was growing in the first place in favor of short-term (bonus…

I wonder what would be good professional management that is as close to general purpose as the old MBAs.

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

#387

Post by nwzpaperman »

JPKab wrote: post #128
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…

You are sooooo right on with this. The top-10 MBA cult is awful. These are usually those people you knew in high school/college who were excellent at studying for and passing tests. Excellent at getting great grades on projects. Excellent at everything except building ANYTHING. I think that the people who are best at building things that people want don't want to get an MBA. They instead choose to spend their time bu…

Not surprised...I am hearing rumors that the "do no evil" policy is next to go. What then?

It's the JDs and MBAs, IMO.

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

#388

Post by varelse »

locacorten wrote: post #369
varelse wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Does that really matter?

From my perspective, Google recruited me aggressively away from a long-term gig where I had an absolutely stellar reputation. I uprooted my career with the mistaken belief that they wouldn't do this unless they had a reasonably clear idea what to do with me. Apparently they didn't and I'm not the only one who had an experience like that.

Sure, I could have said no and I take full responsibility for saying yes and for everything that happened as a result of doing so. And once I realized that Google was going to be of zero help in fixing what I think was a minor allocation error, I once again took responsibility to do what it took to fix the problem myself: I left.

So here's why I think they wouldn't help: the team onto which I was placed was losing an engineer a month. Every time they got a noogler to say yes (3 times during my short stay), another team would intercept them before they got to their first day on the job. The work was dreadful and tedious and the manager even seemed to hate running the team. And the only reason I said yes was because I had this naive faith that Google wouldn't do something as seemingly daft as blind allocation unless they had a pretty good idea how to make it work. My bad. But not my problem. High level people should have been fixing the root cause here instead of continually throwing nooglers into the pit and expecting a miracle.

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

#389

Post by [deleted] »

g20 wrote: post #141
6d0debc071 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What killed 20% time? Stack ranking. This is just a "They did WHAT ?" moment for me. Like, wow. Stack ranking >_< Seriously?

Well, actually Google has had stack ranking forever, since before I got there. I remember my first manager (as a new hire) was telling me about this weird ritual where managers got together in a room and talked about everyone and wrote stuff down. It is a bit puzzling to me that Google was pretty innovative in a lot of areas, including HR policy, but the perf stuff is unimaginative and rote. Then again, I don't neces…

[deleted]

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

#390

Post by dkrich »

JPKab wrote: post #326
onebaddude wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "The top-10 MBA cult is awful." SV technorati pretentiousness is awful. > "MBA people love to go to school and get pieces of paper that say "pay me I'm smart." As opposed to some "Silicon Valley" types that don't have a clue about what it means to run a business, and say "pay me with investors money, I have lots of users!" > "I have to go in and deal with these assholes all the time. I have hard numbers, they have…

"This community is getting worse every day." You've been in "this community" for less than 3 months according to your username. I'm not SV technorati, and I've run a business, as well as been a founder in a non-tech business that grew to 150 employees. I know business, and I know what I said is correct. "SV technorati" is itself a stereotype.

Yep, absolutely correct. Well, save for Nike, which was founded by an MBA. Oh yeah, and Apple, whose CEO has an MBA and was personally selected by Steve Jobs. Well, now that I think about it, Meg Whitman, the current CEO of HP and former CEO of eBay has an MBA. And wasn't Bonobos founded by a Stanford MBA? I think Birchbox was born by a group of MBA's as well.

Except for those and probably thousands of other exceptions, your logic is water-tight and well-reasoned. Kudos, sir.

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