> You really can’t be a REALLY good company without innovation (side) projects where you play around with new technologies, with no expected results or deadlines, no managers, no infrastructure, just exploration.
That's the way it would change. Some places are a lot more open to 'directionless' work and others are amazingly focused on deadlines and the like. If a place is cool with you spending X% of your time on open source work that may or may not be directly related to your 'real' work than that's a much nicer place to be.