9 ms·
The myth that 20% time is dead was started by mchurch. He was at Google for six month and was let go. He then went on to bad mouth the company here and elsewher
by ma2rten 6y ago
The myth that 20% time is dead was started by mchurch. He was at Google for six month and was let go. He then went on to bad mouth the company here and elsewhere online.
20% time at Google exists and managers are supposed to adjust the workload - it's not supposed to be 120% time. That said I think it would be hard (but not impossible) to a launch a 20% project to external users that doesn't have people working on it full-time.
- wpietri 6y agoAnd who was later banned at HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10019003 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10019003
- grenoire 6y ago(I love dang.)
- ikiris 6y agoWow I had no idea that happened. Thanks for posting this for context.
- nunez 6y agoWow; good job, dang! mchurch is a poison to the tech community; sucks since he’s such a good writer :(
- kortilla 6y agoWell Marissa Mayer also said 20% realistically didn’t exist at Google, and she’s the one he insulted to get banned.
- fergie 6y agoIt was a shame that he overstepped the mark that one time, because he had a lot of sensible and deeply insightful things to say. He is literally one of the best essayists in tech.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- bachmeier 6y agoI wasn't aware of anyone saying it was dead, but the narrative has shifted over time from "work on whatever you want one day a week" to "your team might let you spend up to one day a week working on something of your choosing if it's in the interest of the company". I'm not at Google, and never have been, but it's almost certainly the case that the narrative has changed - whether or not there was ever a change in policy.
- throwaways885 6y agoI don't think things have changed that much, only Google grew so big that 20% projects became a potential damper on your career (the incentives of perf and promo and all that horrible stuff). But the freedom has always technically been there.
- pushrax 6y agoSounds very plausible from the outside. Also implies a widely varying experience with the program; levels of promotion politics must vary across the company, and levels of recognition for anyone's particular project must also vary.
- oakfr 6y agoI am a tech lead and find it surprising that 20% projects could damper your career, perf & promo etc. Where I work, a well-executed 20% project is seen as very positive during the perf review. In fact, doing zero 20% projects for a long period of time could actually damper your career.
- OJFord 6y agoBut if nothing came of the 20% work, you could've done 25% more on the core job, doing positive performance things there. I'm pretty sure that's what's meant about it being a career dampener, not that it wouldn't be great to hit on something fantastic and accepted as a new core product with thousands working on it full-time. (IANAG.)
- osipov 6y agoReally? So is it a myth that 20% time is dead at Google Cloud? Or are you one of the folks who doesn't consider Google Cloud to be Google?
- BobbyJo 6y agoI spent 3.5 years at Google, and, like most things at large companies, 20% is very team dependent. Mchurch may very well have had the experience of being on such a, crappy, team, not that his record is a good indication.
- toby 6y agoIt was amazing how some people lapped up everything he wrote about Google (case in point: apparently a lot of people don't believe 20% time exists at all any more), I guess because he was so prolific (it was hard for actual Googlers to keep up rebut everything), and he was playing into some confirmation bias.
- SquareWheel 6y agoThe confirmation bias still exists today, too. On HN I frequently see users claim that Google sells user data, but that isn't true; user data is only used for ad personalization. I also frequently see the claim that "Don't be evil" has been removed from Google's code of conduct, but it's still clearly visible in the document. I hope we develop better tools to combat misinformation in the next few years, because social media is far too effective at propagating it. For every person that verifies and corrects a claim, there's ten others who will gladly repeat it. This is especially problematic when there's a bias to exploit, be it political or otherwise. "A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes."
- HideousKojima 6y agoIIRC the confusion over "Don't Be Evil" started due to changes by Google's parent company Alphabet when they restructured.
- SquareWheel 6y agoI think so too. Alphabet does have their own Code of Conduct, but it is an additional document. It didn't replace the original. https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct/ https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct/ https://abc.xyz/investor/other/code-of-conduct/ https://abc.xyz/investor/other/code-of-conduct/
- kopakabana 6y ago> Google sells user data, but that isn't true; user data is only used for ad personalization. And other companies getting referrals can’t connect the dots when they know the user clicking on the AdWords Ad and what the Ad was for? Companies that work with big data companies run AdWords campaigns in Google for other companies, right? Even if Google isn’t evil and does everything in the interest of privacy, if their ads, based on your preferences from your emails and browsing history, are used to direct you to some product, there is a way that other companies will learn of those preferences, store them, sell them, and use them.
- shadowgovt 6y agoTBF, it's not just mchurch. Whether or not managers know how to make space for it varies heavily from department to department.
- fredophile 6y agoMarissa Mayer also said it didn't exist [0]. [0] https://www.businessinsider.com/mayer-google-20-time-does-not-exist-2015-1 https://www.businessinsider.com/mayer-google-20-time-does-no...
- mondoshawan 6y agoMarissa doesn't exactly represent Google's culture, given she works at Yahoo... :P
- fredophile 6y agoWe should ignore the word of one of the company's earliest employees, who worked there for over a decade and became a VP just because she no longer works there?
- mondoshawan 6y agoYes, because context is key. In that statement she was attempting to craft Yahoo!'s work culture as it's CEO. In contrast, I've been at Google since 2006 and have been utilizing 20% time since I started, and other Googlers here echo the same experience, and many of our projects are publicly available. Not sure how her statement jives with the experience and artifacts of other's work other than to say it's not correct, and shaped by the context of the statement.
- helsinkiandrew 6y agoGoogle employs over 100K people. With that many people there are statistically going to be people with the most amazing and dreadful experiences of working at the place - none of them representative.
- sdoering 6y agoWell. They are representative of a wide variety of different work cultures within Google. And if one were to join it would depend on the team/manager one ends up with what part of the stories told would be representative to you. As always in big corporations there is no one culture, but an amalgamation of many different subcultures. They can have a shared core, but even that becomes more unlikely the more a company grows. At least in my experience.
- slumpt_ 6y agoBeen at Google for several years. 20% time is dead for all intents and purposes in all of the teams I worked (~4 dif teams). I would not join Google and bank on having it. It’s usually 120% time and done as a way to soft-interview for a team you want to join.
- larsrc 6y agoClearly you need to find better teams. It's always been an option on the teams I've been on.
- stevage 6y ago>and done as a way to soft-interview for a team you want to join Clearly it's not that easy.
- slumpt_ 6y agoI will say that usually it is easy to move teams, but if the expertise of the team veers strongly from your background (web dev wants to work on C++) they might ask if you want to do 20% first to get a taste. Also can help convince a team to take a more junior hire, e.g. I’m not sure if it’s ever been an explicit requirement and if you have strong performance reviews it’s usually pretty well-oiled. Real 20% time though I don’t think I’ve ever encountered. Maybe if you work on a team without a high-traffic product (internal tooling?).
- slumpt_ 6y agoYMMV, that’s all I’m saying. Don’t come in expecting it or you’ll be disappointed. And that’s resonated with other coworkers of mine on other teams, too.
- accountLost 6y agoShould be 125% though (or is it already obvious for everyone and just me being pedant ?)
- traviscj 6y agoI’d never heard of 120% until this thread, but I immediately interpreted it to mean “you’re free to do your self directed 20% work on nights/weekends/your “own time”.” It actually took me a second to see yours, but I guess you mean more of a “ya you can do whatever you want on fridays as long as you get 100% of work done by Thursday” vibe?
- saberdancer 6y agoYeah, you'd need to work 125% as effective for 4 days to make up one day you work on other stuff.
- haakonhr 6y agoOr the 16.6666667% policy
- CodesInChaos 6y agoIf you use 5 days a week as base and add 1 day for personal work, you're at 120%. Of course interpreting it as "you need to work 125% for the 4 remaining days" is equally valid.