Hacker News Reader

Comment by jrockway | Hacker News Reader

Currently, managers get in trouble if they deny you 20% time for more than one quarter. This seems reasonable and I've never heard of anyone (in my department) being denied even for one quarter. But you're right, there is a bit too much management in general.

The depressing part is that Google is so far ahead of everyone else that they can fuck up a lot of things and still be the best place to work by light years. (They even pay better than the investment banks now!)

I haven't done a Perf cycle yet, but the only problem I foresee is that nobody really knows what my job title is supposed to do. That hasn't stopped my coworkers from being promoted, though, so I can roll with it :)

View on HN

Doesn't your 20% time project still require managerial approval? You can't just work on whatever you want, you need to get it approved by a manager? This is what I've read, I don't know if it's true or not.

No, 20% doesn't require any approval. Your manager can ask you to set it aside during crunch time (one quarter max) and you might eventually get dinged if you're doing something wildly irrelevant. 20% time is alive and well and not at all "deprecated".

Technically the particular project you work on is supposed to require approval. So far I haven't met any manager who does anything but rubber stamp anything you suggest, but theoretically you could get one who is picky, and that would defeat the point of 20% time a bit if it actually happens.

Seconded. In theory, a manager could veto a 20% project, but I have never heard of it happen.

I personally think "managerial approval" is just for 3 things:

1) If someone decides to do something wrong/illegal as 20% project, the manager should've caught this (so this 'approval' is really a 'we reserve the right to blame the manager if things go wrong') ;) 2) People probably want their 20% project (and progress therewith) to be factored into their perf, as such, their managers need to know about it. 3) So that people don't pick clearly fraudulent 20% projects (such as 'my 20% project is to stay at home and watch TV')

And if you set it aside you get 40% time next quarter. It's very much alive and well.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com