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I worked there. He got it right. Some managers are supportive and want their reports to succeed and will encourage them to direct their own work. Some are not.

I worked there. He got it right. Some managers are supportive and want their reports to succeed and will encourage them to direct their own work. Some are not. Google's great if you get a good manager. It sucks if you don't. Not much of a different story than in other companies. "20% time" means that if you do a skunk-works project and it succeeds (which is hard to do-- because Google places high demands in terms of reliability and internationalization before it allows a launch, and for good reasons-- if you're only giving it 8 hours per week, so most people whose projects succeed will "cheat" a little bit) that you don't have to apologize and won't get fired for the mere fact of having a side project. That's important, but the idea that average Googlers get 1/5 of their working time to devote to anything that helps the company is a myth.

Rapzid 12y ago
Yeah, sounds like every other large corp with deep pockets ever now in that regard. I've had this experience at large-ish tech companies and have actually ended moving cities to take a new position to work for a manager, and ended up moving on(from the company) after that same manager was re-assigned later on. Working with a great manager can be an awesome, motivational experience. It can really accelerate your career growth too.
encoderer 12y ago
That's too bad. I'm a lead engineer at Trulia and we have a quarterly hack week. It's less than 20% time if you do the math, but it's structured and has been, so far in our existence, inviolable. Many of these projects ship -- though they are usually features and not products.