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Virtually no Google engineers use their personal time to develop new projects. In most cases, they have crushing responsibilities on their existing projects (th

by neilk 17y ago

Virtually no Google engineers use their personal time to develop new projects. In most cases, they have crushing responsibilities on their existing projects (that guy who appears to be 2x as smart as you and sits next to you? You are competing with him). Usually, people use the official personal time to take mini-sabbaticals with other projects, or write tools to make their own lives easier (which may have more general use within the company, or beyond.)

nostrademons 17y ago
"Virtually no Google engineers use their personal time to develop new projects." I've tried, without success so far, though I've got a bunch of things in the half-done state that could turn into something useful eventually. It is very hard, kinda like starting up a company while keeping your day job. I've found I had the most success by just trying to get my 80% project out of the way as fast as possible, doing as much as needed to keep my teammates happy, and then banking the remaining time to work on 20% projects. It's best used in chunks of a week or so, so that you can actually finish a lot and have something concrete that can sit and wait for your next big chunk of time.