Well, my opinion (now) is that it wasn't so huge a gamble and completely unknown. The galaxy luminosity function (# galaxies per brightness, basically for those unfamiliar) is a curve they knew the beginnings of through images to date, and it wasn't unreasonable to suppose it would keep going beyond what had been done.

It's not like you would expect galaxies to suddenly stop being found if you took exposures a little deeper. It was a good (and not outrageous) bet. I would liken it to -- if we built a better microscope and looked deeper into a cell, is it likely we'd find nothing new? Probably not.

I'm glad you prefaced this with "(now)" ie: hindsight. There's always a considerable chance that tests of the untested / unproven will remain inconclusive, even if there's some evidence we should find something.

It's extremely risky to allocate a huge amount of finite resources to these unknowns, when there are so many areas we KNOW we can help advance with those finite resources. The fact that he was ready to retire, if the picture came back with barely anything in it, gives a sense of how bad that waste of resources would have been.

Future us might not think it is such a gamble to send a probe to look for life in the oceans of Saturn's moon Enceladus. There's evidence of abiogenesis from deep sea vents on Earth, and Enceladus has very similar conditions. But present us knows there are so many unknowns and possibilities of failure even if something is there. And there are so many other useful ways to use the finite resources of our space program.

It took a lot of courage on Bob Williams' part to explore this.

Except the models they had at the time indicated there should be a lot fewer galaxies than they actually found. Five times fewer. I that’s what the deep field had shown, it would merely have confirmed what people already thought they knew anyway. The reason the actual deep field is so interesting is because it dramatically expanded the scale of the observable universe. If it hadn’t done that, we wouldn’t be talking about it.

10% is a remarkable amount of time. I was astonished when I read that number. I would have expected it to be around 1% at max.

Discretionary time is usually given to projects which otherwise didn't get any time, it's not usually hoarded for the director himself.

I hadn't heard of this concept before, but I find it appealing. It's kind of like an insurance policy against groupthink, or a diversified long bet. More projects should have a small percentage of time dedicated to a drastically different allocation process, with iron-clad protection (like "director's discretion") to prevent manipulation, to help prevent getting stuck.

I find that asymmetric/concentrated power in the appropriate (!) hands can lead to better results for most things. For instance, I'd rather put my money in a company where the CEO has the proper vision and considerable agency over one that is ruled by committee, like most tech titants. I wouldn't advocate for a regression to authoritary regimes, but I think they can stabilize and accelerate progression towards greater objectives as opposed to a segmented and elected political power which rules on a 4 (maybe 8) years "vision" (colored heavily by polls optimization), for example China or ex-Yugoslavia. Linux probably benefited greatly from having Linus. It can obviously go wrong (North Korea, too many kings to count, WeWork, Theranos..).

I think it's a good hedge for NASA to have this policy, they probably selected a good pick in the first place, and if it went wrong they could probably easily replace the position [source needed].

Singapore is a fairly good example of a (mostly) benign dictator - built a modern developed city-state out of what was basically a swamp.

Good example is Google vs Amazon/Apple. Google's culture is very much a democracy of sort inside. Apple/Amazon more top down direction.

The problem, of course, is survivorship bias.

Its similar to Monarchy vs Democracy. A great monarch can get a lot more done than a leader in a democracy. They can also do a lot more harm.

If you want to maximize the potential of a company, you must choose a great CEO and give them near-unlimited power. The problem is that most boards aren't qualified/able to find one, which is why founders that survive the filter to growing into a mega-company are the ones you listed- they are the ones who've already got one.

Tim Cook is doing fine, but he doesn't wield near the influence Jobs did- look how long it took him to finesse Joni Ive out of the company, despite his choices causing massive problems for Apple.

At tech companies, it’s often in the form of hackathons, hackweeks, or 20% time.

Is 20% a real thing anywhere, aside from select google employees?

Googler here. Yes, in my team we have a colleague that is spending one day a week trying to solve a particular problem we have with a completely novel approach. He had an idea after we presented what we are up to in one of our Org summit. Furthermore, it is really a streamlined process, ie you only need your manager approval.

That's not 20% time. That's a project for your primary work area.

When I was at Google (long ago), you were very welcome to do a 20% project. But it was not considered in your performance review.

So you'd better do it outside of your regular job, adding up to a 120% workload.

It is at 3M

The Hubble schedule is planned out roughly a year in advance. If any unexpected astronomical events occur, they use discretionary time to study it.