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The Decline of '20% Time' at Google
One of the things Google is known for is giving their employees so-called '20% time' — that is, the freedom to use a fifth of their working hours to pursue their own projects. Many of these projects have directly improved Google's existing products, and some have spawned new products entirely. An article at Quartz on Friday made that claim that 20% time was all but dead at Google, largely due to interference from upper management. Some Google engineers responded, and said that it has essentially turned into 120% time — they're still free to undertake their own projects, but they typically need their whole normal work week to meet productivity goals. "What 20% time really means is that you- as a Google eng- have access to, and can use, Google’s compute infrastructure to experiment and build new systems. The infrastructure, and the associated software tools, can be leveraged in 20% time to make an eng far more productive than they normally would be." An article at Ars makes the case that this is not necessarily a bad thing, because Google has enough good products that simply need iteration now, making the more innovative 20% time less useful. "Google wasn’t hurting for successful products when it started to tout its 20 percent time: off the backs of its pre-IPO services, it earned a market cap of over $23 billion. But if it was a company that wanted to grow and diversify beyond products that were either related to search or derivative of what already existed, it needed more ideas, better ideas, as quickly as possible. Hence, liberal use of 20 percent time made a lot of sense. Now, Google is not only an enormous company of nearly 45,000 employees with a market cap twelve times that of its first IPO ($286 billion), it has a lot of big products that it wants to make work. More than it needs more ideas, it needs to make the ideas it has great."
The stock market kills companies.
A change from a work environment where you can spend 20% of your time experimenting with new ideas you have, and 80% working on the "regular" mainline products, to one where you're expected to spend at least 100% of a regular workweek iterating on the "regular" products, seems like a bad thing from the perspective of the engineer at least. Ars seems to be arguing that it's not necessarily a bad thing for Google's stockholders, which is a pretty different question.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
What that often translates into is: do stuff we aren't paying you for. Why can't the staff handle their own secretarial needs? Why can't they clean up their own workspace, get their own supplies from storage, install their own software etc etc. We take what was before someone elses full time job and just tack it on to everyone else's day but don't reduce the productivity expectations to compensate.
Encourage employees to use the 20% time to Innovate within the existing projects; for example, by finding ways to make them better or lower their costs.
The value of people doing more than their jobs doesn't go away --- they just need to be more focused, in exactly, what those 20% projects are.
It's also only fair that the benefit of their 20% projects get included in their productivity. If an employee uses their intellectual resources to do something particularly innovative, they should be given an opportunity to reduce their required working hours by 50% with a net increase in pay and benefits, or an opportunity to move from "20% time" to "40% time" working on their own projects.
That is: the value delivered via the employee's hard work should be shared with the employee fairly. When the employee delivers more value than the average employee; they should be given back more opportunity.
On the other hand: if their 20% time doesn't win over management with a benefit within a year, perhaps they should get 15% time instead, from then on, until they can do better.
What is productivity? How do you define productivity?
My point is you can work for gmail and do your metrics to hit your spam filtering code. But, what if the next big idea is there that can generate more revenue. Would it then be wise to work on better spam filtering for your gmail users or would it make more sense to fund something that no one has done yet and that Microsoft or Apple will invent and then patent the shit out of instead?
That was my point. I have worked at companies where they are were sooo process oriented that we just put out fires and no one could ever call out sick or go on vacation or the whole operation would shutdown.
The good employees left and they had to bring in H1B1 because they were cheaper and would have no quram working 65 hours a week just to remain employed. Work 40 hours a week you were fired for being lazy. No improvements and no say were allowed outside of the directors as we had no time to do anything else. We just put out fires and worked 120% to keep our jobs. That might have worked for the previous CEO to gain his bonus but the company is losing over a 1 billion a year now!
http://saveie6.com/
The more MBAs in your organization the less innovation you will have.
They don't think in terms of success through better (or more diverse) products, only in squeezing maximum efficiency from everything - Marx would applaud them.
Motorola in 1981 they used to say "work smarter, not harder", we got comp time off for overtime worked, etc. After a while it became "work harder", and the comp time off went away, and overtime was expected with no compensation. A little while later it became "work!", followed by "work, goddamit!" where you were viewed unfavorably if you used company time to take a leak.
The bean counters always win...
I work for Google. 20% time is unpopular, undertaken by single-digit percentages of engineers. Despite that, the message coming down from management is generally positive.
My sense of the issue is that a lot of engineers are spooking at shadows, worried about their performance reviews if they spend 80% of their time on their teams' main business rather than 100%. The solution to this, as far as I am concerned, is to make sure there is someone who is willing to stand up and say positive things about your project at review time. Since Google has an intricate system of peer review, that should be enough.
And if you can't find _one_ person who thinks your project is a good idea, take some time to figure out what you are hoping to accomplish before continuing.
The other day a Google tech recruiter (not a headhunter) contacted me about an interview at Google. This after I turned down a second interview with them seven years ago. Yes, seven years ago. It got me to thinking: Is Google that desperate for qualified employees that they are having to dig that deep into their interview files to find talent? After doing some research, it seems as though they want to interview me for a "technical sales engineering" position or some such thing. Still, this article and the fact that Google is searching their archives for help seems to point to a dwindling supply of technical types in the market.
And since I'm a few years older than Vince Vaughan, I seriously doubt I'd quite fit in anymore. Say what you want about The Internship, but Google's imprimatur was all over it.
I'm sorry but Apple deserves what they get as Jobs knew for a decade his time was running out but right up almost to the bitter end he refused to groom his replacement and make sure the company would continue down the path he set. You read the emails and other behind the scenes stuff and its really hard to get the impression all that Jobs cared about was Jobs and that the company tanking when he died would just boost his legend that much more which was fine by him.
As for Google they need to remember who was ruling the roost when they started, Altavista and Yahoo...where are they now? Altavista is gone and Yahoo is a shell of its former self. Google NEEDS all those bright young people cooking up new products on their dime as that is what lets them stay ahead of the game and in tech if you sit on ass and just ride on existing products it really don't take long for the hot new thing to come out and steal your thunder. Remember folks once upon a time Yahoo and MSFT were kings and Apple had Michael Dell telling them to give the money to the shareholders and give up as they had NO chance to recover, in tech you innovate or you sit on ass and if you ain't doing one you are probably doing the other.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
After reading all the 3 FAs I see a pattern --- the overarching focus of "20%" has flushed out one crucial inefficiency, not that of the corporation (Google), but of the engineers, ie.,
Those who claim that "20% time enticement" has turned into "120% overtime nightmare" are the same ones having terrible time management skills
Those who do not know how to manage their time tend to blame "meeting productivity goals" on their inability to meet their goals while using their time effectively
I used to be very terrible on managing my own time - and ended up wasting too much time on unimportant/unnecessary/meaningless routines - looking back on what I had done, I realize that the change of mindset (plus the time management methodology that I'm practicing) has not only has prevented me from wasting time on meaningless routine, it enables me to invest my NEW FOUND FREE TIME to experiment on new things that I've always wanted to try
I bet not all Google Engineers are making the same complain - those who do practices time management still manage to hit their productivity goals within their preset time frame and use their 20% time exploring new ideas, just as it was intended to be
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
But there is something else going on here.
Google was, a long time ago, a young idealistic company full of people that had drunk the Kool-Aid and were willing to pour out their energy into neat little side projects that one day might make Google greater.
Times have changed.
The smart folks at Google percolate their ideas on their own time in secret, and then bail out and start a "start-up" (and then possible sell the idea back to Google).
The whole "creativity" dynamic has changed at Google. It is still a pool of VERY smart people, but they know better than to give their ideas away for free.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Google is moving more towards hiring temporary employees. As a contractor, I wasn't eligible for the 20% time.