5 ms·

At least historically, google engineers had 20% of their time to spend on projects not related to their core role

by darkr 1y ago

kyrra 1y ago
This still exists today. For example, I am on the payments team but I have a 20% project working on protobuf. I had to get formal approval from my management chain and someone on the protobuf team. And it is tracked as part of my performance reviews. They just want to make sure I'm not building something useless that nobody wants and that I'm not just wasting the company's time.
- vrosas 1y ago
  I see why they do this, but man it almost feels like asking your boss for approval on where you go on vacation. Do people get dinged if their 20% time project doesn't pan out, or they lose interest later on?
  - NBJack 1y ago
    Previously it could be anything you wanted. These days, you need formal approval. Google has changed a bit.
  - kyrra 1y ago
    It has nothing to do with success. It's entirely for making sure some one besides the person doing the 20% agrees with the idea behind the project.
    - hedora 1y ago
      Lol. They’d be better off giving people the option to work 4 days if they also signed over right of first refusal for hobby projects.
- rollcat 1y ago
  I never worked at Google (or any other large corp for that matter), but this sounds like the exact opposite of an environment that spawned GMail. As you think back even to the very early days of computing, you'll find individuals or small teams like Grace Hopper, the Unix gang, PARC, etc that managed to change history by "building something useless". Granted, throughout history that happened less than 1% of the time, but it will never happen if you never try. Maybe Google no longer has any space for innovation.
  - jasode 1y ago
    >I never worked at Google (or any other large corp for that matter), but this sounds like the exact opposite of an environment that spawned GMail. Friendly fyi... GMail was not a "20% project" which I mentioned previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39052748 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39052748 Somebody (not me but maybe a Google employee) also revised the Wikipedia article a few hours after my comment: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Side_project_time&diff=1197275692&oldid=1188783909 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Side_project_time... Before LLMs and ChatGPT even existed ... a lot of us somehow hallucinated the idea that GMail came from Google's 20% Rule. E.g. from 2013-08-16 : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6223466 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6223466
    - rollcat 1y ago
      I see, thank you for debunking. But I think my general point still stands. You can progress by addressing a need, but true innovation requires adequate space.
- codr7 1y ago
  Which misses the point of 20% imo; exploring space that would likely be missed in business as usual, encouraging creativity.

At least historically, google engineers had 20% of their time to spend on projects not related to their core role

by darkr 1y ago

At least historically, google engineers had 20% of their time to spend on projects not related to their core role

This still exists today. For example, I am on the payments team but I have a 20% project working on protobuf. I had to get formal approval from my management chain and someone on the protobuf team. And it is tracked as part of my performance reviews. They just want to make sure I'm not building something useless that nobody wants and that I'm not just wasting the company's time.

vrosas 1y ago
I see why they do this, but man it almost feels like asking your boss for approval on where you go on vacation. Do people get dinged if their 20% time project doesn't pan out, or they lose interest later on?
- NBJack 1y ago
  Previously it could be anything you wanted. These days, you need formal approval. Google has changed a bit.
- kyrra 1y ago
  It has nothing to do with success. It's entirely for making sure some one besides the person doing the 20% agrees with the idea behind the project.
  - hedora 1y ago
    Lol. They’d be better off giving people the option to work 4 days if they also signed over right of first refusal for hobby projects.
rollcat 1y ago
I never worked at Google (or any other large corp for that matter), but this sounds like the exact opposite of an environment that spawned GMail. As you think back even to the very early days of computing, you'll find individuals or small teams like Grace Hopper, the Unix gang, PARC, etc that managed to change history by "building something useless". Granted, throughout history that happened less than 1% of the time, but it will never happen if you never try. Maybe Google no longer has any space for innovation.
- jasode 1y ago
  >I never worked at Google (or any other large corp for that matter), but this sounds like the exact opposite of an environment that spawned GMail. Friendly fyi... GMail was not a "20% project" which I mentioned previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39052748 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39052748 Somebody (not me but maybe a Google employee) also revised the Wikipedia article a few hours after my comment: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Side_project_time&diff=1197275692&oldid=1188783909 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Side_project_time... Before LLMs and ChatGPT even existed ... a lot of us somehow hallucinated the idea that GMail came from Google's 20% Rule. E.g. from 2013-08-16 : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6223466 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6223466
  - rollcat 1y ago
    I see, thank you for debunking. But I think my general point still stands. You can progress by addressing a need, but true innovation requires adequate space.
codr7 1y ago
Which misses the point of 20% imo; exploring space that would likely be missed in business as usual, encouraging creativity.