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

(qz.com)
581 points antr | 1 comments | 16 Aug 13 12:09 UTC | HN request time: 0.213s | source
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snorkel ◴[16 Aug 13 13:14 UTC] No.6223761[source]▶
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 accommodate and more fun.

replies(4): >>6223794 #>>6223823 #>>6223881 #>>6224853 #
1. bmj ◴[16 Aug 13 13:19 UTC] No.6223794[source]▶
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.