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How Google Works

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Re: How Google Works

#111

Post by judk »

dfritz wrote: post #45
q_revert wrote: post #5

I started work at google pretty recently, and expressed an interest in working on a particular project. I made some notes about some of my ideas, and was putting some stuff together to show to one of the teams, to get some input before prototyping. I asked a senior team member to have a look at the notes I had made, and see if they were ready to show to the wider team. His advice? "Go build something, then we can hav…

That's the same in most companies. But when they say "go build something", it really means "go build something at home, not during your working time!". In my career, the most interesting things I worked on were mostly done on my spare time. Then, I left the company and lost the right to use my own code. Retrospectively, I'd have rather spent this time on my own projects.

Not true. In most companies, your novel ideas are not welcome, even if you build them on unpaid overtime. They aren't part of the Plan.

Re: How Google Works

#112

Post by collyw »

johan_larson wrote: post #108
DonPellegrino wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was under the impression that the work load at Google is so heavy that it is almost impossible to get "20% time" anymore. During what time did you work on your idea? Are they freeing you of all responsibilities to build your prototype or do they expect you to do it in your free time and then donate it to the company? Thanks, I'm very curious about this aspect of Google's culture.

At least in the part of Google where I worked, there wasn't much pressure, and people generally kept business hours. If you got in at eight you were one of the first in the office, and if you left at six you were one of the last in the office. Twenty percent projects were a real thing, but less than five percent of engineers participated. As far as I could tell, side projects were not the way to get ahead. The people…

Its difficult to get any momentum spending with something if you are only spending 20% of your time on it. While it sounds good, I might prefer to stick to as few projects as possible, so you can actually focus on getting stuff done rather than just context switching.
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