<story><title>How Google Works</title><url>http://www.slideshare.net/ericschmidt76/how-google-works-final-1</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>DonPellegrino</author><text>I was under the impression that the work load at Google is so heavy that it is almost impossible to get &amp;quot;20% time&amp;quot; anymore. During what time did you work on your idea? Are they freeing you of all responsibilities to build your prototype or do they expect you to do it in your free time and then donate it to the company?&lt;p&gt;Thanks, I&amp;#x27;m very curious about this aspect of Google&amp;#x27;s culture.</text></item><item><author>q_revert</author><text>I started work at google pretty recently, and expressed an interest in working on a particular project. I made some notes about some of my ideas, and was putting some stuff together to show to one of the teams, to get some input before prototyping.&lt;p&gt;I asked a senior team member to have a look at the notes I had made, and see if they were ready to show to the wider team.&lt;p&gt;His advice?&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Go build something, then we can have meetings&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Coming from an academic background I find this type of thinking very refreshing.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>cromwellian</author><text>I think it depends. If you&amp;#x27;re working on something with a hard upcoming deadline, chances are you have no 20% time. If you&amp;#x27;re working on a launched product in incremental&amp;#x2F;maintenance mode, chances are you have extra time.&lt;p&gt;Sometimes greenfield projects or rewrites also permit lots of 20% time, because you&amp;#x27;ve got existing implementations, so you can have some people maintain the old one and some people go work on the new rewrite using new tech.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m one of the unlucky ones with very little free time at the moment. :)</text></comment>
<story><title>How Google Works</title><url>http://www.slideshare.net/ericschmidt76/how-google-works-final-1</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>DonPellegrino</author><text>I was under the impression that the work load at Google is so heavy that it is almost impossible to get &amp;quot;20% time&amp;quot; anymore. During what time did you work on your idea? Are they freeing you of all responsibilities to build your prototype or do they expect you to do it in your free time and then donate it to the company?&lt;p&gt;Thanks, I&amp;#x27;m very curious about this aspect of Google&amp;#x27;s culture.</text></item><item><author>q_revert</author><text>I started work at google pretty recently, and expressed an interest in working on a particular project. I made some notes about some of my ideas, and was putting some stuff together to show to one of the teams, to get some input before prototyping.&lt;p&gt;I asked a senior team member to have a look at the notes I had made, and see if they were ready to show to the wider team.&lt;p&gt;His advice?&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Go build something, then we can have meetings&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Coming from an academic background I find this type of thinking very refreshing.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mgraczyk</author><text>I joined Google a few months ago and have not had this experience.  The company is gigantic so everybody&amp;#x27;s situation is a little bit different, but plenty of people still have 20% projects.  The culture strongly emphasizes a &amp;quot;build first and ask questions later&amp;quot; attitude.</text></comment>