Re:Facebook Stealing Googlers At An Alarming Rate
by boucher on Thursday November 22, 2007 @12:26AM
(#82670)
From what I understand, it's not even that real. That is, if you can get all your work done in 80% of your time, then you are free to work 20% on whatever, but most people don't end up doing it because they have to spend 100% of their time (or close to it) on official work.
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Re:Facebook Stealing Googlers At An Alarming Rate
by plinkplonk on Thursday November 22, 2007 @04:05AM
(#82701)
but, afaik, you can club all the personal time you don't use and take it as a continuous block of time, perhaps between projects. Anyone working for Google, please clarify!
Re:Facebook Stealing Googlers At An Alarming Rate
by neilk on Saturday November 24, 2007 @05:55AM
(#83165)
I don't work there any more, but you are correct. Many successful products started with banked 20% time.
However, most individual 20% projects are not standalone projects. They are often tools or components or features or mini-sabbaticals with other teams.
It is more possible to entrepreneurial at Google than any other company I know of. The workload is really high, but even so, the main barrier to effective 20% time is still oneself. Even at Google, most people talk about their brilliant ideas and don't do anything about them.