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

qz.com

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

#41

Post by api »

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".

Yeah, Google still strikes me as probably a great place to work. 20% time is not common in the industry, and trust me-- if you work for Google you work in a much better place than your typical "enterprise software" hell-hole.

But this might affect their ability to attract absolutely top-tier talent.

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

#42

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#43

Post by ctb_mg »

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…

The rest of the article describes how it's being pinched out of employees' schedules using performance evaluation policies.

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

#44

Post by FedRegister »

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 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.

And arguably enabling the Apple I.

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

#45

Post by david927 »

officemonkey wrote: post #36
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…

Businesses that make material goods like 3M and Corning _have_ to innovate. If you don't keep innovating, you're going to lose your lead in established products (post-it notes, corningware) to China or WallMart. Apple has a similar story with Android phones. Keep innovating or get your low-end eaten. Google doesn't have to innovate. They're already China. If somebody makes something they like, they'll buy it. Or make…

That's what Yahoo thought, 15 years ago.

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

#46

Post by bmj »

snorkel wrote: post #38

No companies should be offering 20% time anyway because it's a difficult promise to keep between crunch schedules and need to keep work between teams synchronized. Some companies also have creative interpretations of "20% time" as "We offer 20% time: you can spend 20% of your time doing whatever marketing needs you to do" turning the whole notion of 20% time into a disincentive. Hack Days work much better. Easier to…

Crunch schedules are often the result of poor management (at many points along the chain). My group seems to handle the balance reasonably well--we certainly go through crunch times (either because of deadlines, or customer requests), but when we are outside those times, we can spend some of our time playing with things. There's no guarantee that we get some percentage of our time each week or month to play with new things, but if we feel we can put it into our schedules, we have the freedom to do it.

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

#47

Post by peacemaker »

marknutter wrote: post #26
akadien wrote: post #8

This means that a lowly engineer with a great idea will leave Google to develop it instead of developing it at Google. Perhaps, this is a good outcome given the way Google keeps killing web services that people find useful but aren't profitable for Google.

But then what's stopping Google from just turning around and buying their startup if it looks promising?

That was my first thought but then I realized that no-one can force them to sell to Google

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

#48

Post by anxious »

levosmetalo wrote: post #34
anxious wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Way to hijack the thread with anti-Google propaganda ...

Why is this anti Google propaganda? I can't see a single point that is not reasonable enough on its own merit, and none of them applies to Google alone, but to all search engine providers.

First and foremost it's off-topic. Second, these are the same citations used by those who were pushing for the FTC to sue Google for antitrust, so they have political baggage, third: it's before the company was founded so it's all academic and theoretical with no actual experience behind it, fourth: context matters - choice quotes from long texts have been used for Google bashing before, some earlier this week even.

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

#50

Post by betterunix »

mattstocum wrote: post #7

And how many failed projects came out of 20% time?

What is your definition of "failure?" A project that nobody uses and makes the company no money is a failure in terms of direct profitability, but may be a success for other reasons. Your engineers get to exercise their minds in unusual ways and keep themselves sharp. Your engineers are more willing to put up with boring tasks. You attract talented people who want to be self directed at some level.
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