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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.