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Ask HN: Does Google “20% time” still exist?

36 points by LeonB ↗ HN
Does google still have a policy of allowing employees to spend 20% of their time on unofficial/passion projects?

Searching the internet gives very conflicting answers on this. Does anyone have the facts?

21 comments

[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 58.2 ms ] thread
dman
Yes. Google is a competitive place, so opting for 20% time can slow down your career progression unless you are extraordinarily good since it might reduce your ability to create impact at your "real" job. But as long as you understand that, you can do it. (I know people who have done 20% projects in the last year)
azhenley
I always thought 20% time was your opportunity to progress your career. You get to take the initiative and a solve a problem without being told to do it.
danans
It could help you make personal progress by exposing you to a new problem space, and that may help you transition to that problem space full-time, but a 20% project itself is very unlikely to help you get promoted, and getting promoted is the most concrete way of evaluating of career progress, and a big part of most people's career goals.

For that, you have to knock it out of the park in your main job, not a 20% project.

datguacdoh
Depends on your original role and what you do for 20% time. Some people setup volunteer groups, makers spaces, etc. that might not really fit their ladder so it makes it harder to grow. However, you can definitely take on projects that do align with your career path and can help with things like promotion. I've done 20% work helping to develop material for Coursera programs that did fit my ladder pretty well.
jeffjose
I'll second this comment.

20% are a great way to a) pursue your own passion b) try out a new product area c) try out a new type of job

Note that 20% is not a reason to do "nothing". Based on your goals, most people use 20% to build upto something. (a) can lead to a new product, (b) can lead you to gain knowledge of a new domain (c) can help set you up for a different role if you want to switch.

kerng
If that is how 20% is defined I think it's not that helpful - wasn't the idea to have that be the opportunity to create new things and actively encourage to progress faster in your career?
dman
Executing well on your job is a much safer bet career wise to progress since you are working by definition on things that already have institutional buy in. For a 20% project you have to create institutional buy in - ie it is possible but a fair amount of work and a non zero chance that it might not go anywhere.
quickthrower2
Say your 20% project becomes a big thing for example like gmail. Does your career and/or compensation get a boost?
dman
To be honest I do not know anyone who had such a success so anything I say would be speculation.
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LeonB
Thanks dman.

Is there externally available documentation about google 20% time?

dman
Not that I know of.
malux85
Offering 20% time and then engineering a company with an internal culture that makes it so that you can’t take the 20% time is functionally equivalent of not having the time.

I know your response is going to be “well, it’s available and is the employees choice” which is exactly the type of culture engineering I’m talking about

The most creative people are high in trait openness, and are conflict avoiders. The situation you describe is likely to result in only the more disagreeable people taking the 20% with the creative opens not taking it to avoid conflict - so there we are, google engineered an internal culture where their 20% time is not taken by those who it would be most beneficial for google to do so.

This is partially why I left google after 3 years of working there, because I could see that it was just about myopic immediate goals and creativity and curiosity are no longer valued

This is largely why we haven’t seen much innovation out of google in the last 4-5 years, because it’s become a max($) optimiser.

Google don’t want open, creative ideas, they want a bunch of naïve young programmers who they can Overwork because “working at Google is cool”, but Google’s problem is that the smart young are now wising up to this, and their image is shaking. This will result in all of the B level programmers flooding into Google (when I started there it was all A’s, then the Bs started permeating 2 years later) now the place is filling up with walking calculators - brilliant at arithmetic but no lateral thinking.

cblum
> now the place is filling up with walking calculators - brilliant at arithmetic but no lateral thinking.

That was exactly the impression my interviewers left on me when I interviewed there a couple years ago.

jeffjose
I take it you are a SWE. There's plenty of non-SWE folks at Google FWIW.
murm
> The most creative people are high in trait openness, and are conflict avoiders.

I assume that you're talking about the big five personality traits, right? I thought conflict avoidance is determined by the trait agreeableness and all the big five traits are independent of each other? So it's possible to have a agreeable/conflict-avoidant creative person as well as a disagreeable/conflict-engaging creative person? Your comment makes it seem that when talking about people high in trait openness, the more agreeable are more creative than the less agreeable? Do you have more information about this, as I would gladly like to fill any holes in my (rudimentary) understanding of personality traits?

JamesBarney
Yeah I think Steve Jobs would be an example of low agreeableness/high openness.
boulos
It varies. Most people I know joke that it's now "120% time". That is, nobody is going to stop you doing something interesting alongside your expected work.

However, I would argue that the expectations are low enough, that it's easy enough to carve out some time without material impact on your main effort. More challenging is getting a bunch of folks together, if you've got an idea that needs more firepower than just your own effort.

cstrasen
We are having a 20% time at my company (Medigo) since almost 5 years. Though the effects are hard to prove I see these:

  - obviously great for hiring
  - as we are not in a position to offer super advanced technical projects to tinker around with, it may have helped retention in a few cases, maybe general
  - one side project made it into a successful in-house product
  - it is sometimes a useful gap-filler if a project/backlog is not ready enough to start or too crowded on the dev side (a rare problem, ha!)
The biggest advantage though I feel is that it frees from hierarchy, planning and (most) coordination needs. Agile or not, the overheads are real. Developers often "know" at the back of their head what is the right thing to do. Let them do it. 20% is great for learning responsible autonomy.

Slightly OT but I wonder what the readers of this thread have experienced with this model and how acceptance in the wider company was handled.