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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 | 2 comments | 16 Aug 13 12:09 UTC | HN request time: 0.41s | source
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dekhn ◴[16 Aug 13 14:26 UTC] No.6224161[source]▶
I am a Googler. I will only speak to my personal experience, and the experience of people around me: 20% time still exists, and is encouraged as a mechanism to explore exciting new ideas without the complexity and cost of a real product.

My last three years were spent turning my 20% project into a product, and my job now is spent turning another 20% project into a product. There was never any management pressure from any of my managers to not work on 20% projects; my performance reviews were consistent with a productive Googler.

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.

What 20% time really means is that you- as a Google eng- have access to, and can use, Google's compute infrastructure to experiment and build new systems. The infrastructure, and the associated software tools, can be leveraged in 20% time to make an eng far more productive than they normally would be. Certainly I, and many other Googlers, are simply super-motivated and willing to use our free time to work on projects that use our infrstructure because we're intrinsically interested in using these things to make new products.

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driverdan ◴[16 Aug 13 18:30 UTC] No.6225858[source]▶
> 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 product and not open source)?

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1. nicholas73 ◴[16 Aug 13 22:04 UTC] No.6226985[source]▶
What happens if your 20% project becomes a product at Google? Do you get rewarded with a share or promotion? In a sense, Google could be acting as a mini-VC for you, so even if you work 120% that is just equivalent you doing a side project hoping it turns into a start up. Except you'd be able to work on different kinds of projects.
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2. dekhn ◴[17 Aug 13 16:45 UTC] No.6229549[source]▶
I don't really know if there is a standard "share or promotion" for 20% projects that become products. I'm sure some people have received bonuses. I don't think most people who work on 20% projects that become products really care that much about the monetary compensation- it's far more enjoyable to see people use your product happily, than get a wad of cash (at least for me).

Anyway, I think you raise an interesting analogy: working on 20% projects at Google, then using the company's resources to launch the product, does have a number of parallels to VC funding for startups (note: I'm advisor for Google Ventures, so I have some experience with both worlds). In a sense- and nobody everybody will agree with me- Google as an employer is a low-risk, low-capital way to launch my products. Larry and Sergey already took the risks (launching a company with no clear monetization strategy), they figured out a monetization strategy, and now they invest their capital in speculative projects.

Anyway, in my case, after it seemed like my project was in good hands and ready to be a product, I looked for something else interesting to work on. I think the main problem I have working here is that there are too many cool projects I could work on, learning from experienced SWEs and SREs, but I have to stick to one.