The Google Way: Give Engineers Room | Hacker News Reader

The Google Way: Give Engineers Room

nytimes.com

11 pointsbootload17 comments

20% time is really great. But my God, look at what some of the programmers are doing with it:

"Consider the collection of engineers who wanted to promote 'agile programming' inside the company. "

How could your soul be so dead that you want to spend your precious 20% hacking time to evangelize a Methodology? Can you imagine such a person?

And our author is one of them: "In my 20 percent time, I started the Testing grouplet." Yep, he means software testing.

I guess it's good news for us startup founders that Google has an infestation of Agilists, burrowing into the company with their sharp little teeth. Still makes me sad, though.

"... How could your soul be so dead that you want to spend your precious 20% hacking time to evangelize a Methodology? Can you imagine such a person? ..."

Also laughed at this one. But not for the reason you might think. The engineering guys are google are smart right? I think the reason why some take up the "evangelism hat" is out of sheer necessity. Google has what 15,000 employees. I'm not sure of the numbers for those at the sharp end. With this number of smart people working on their own projects. Fierce competition for recognition would be required to get your project above the noise of others all competing for a place in the google platform, process and dollars.

Therefore it's not unreasonable to expect someone figured out it might be a good idea to market or spruik. Anything to let those above, beside or below consider that my process, product or idea is better than the next. In startups this process is essential and is turned into a real art form by the likes of Winer, Spolsky and Graham who write, blog and speak where required ~ http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=70863

Twenty percent time is great, and obviously it has paid off nicely for Google. But was anyone else taken aback that the Times would run this? It's a bit...puff piece-ish. It's good, obviously, to report on good ideas that companies have pioneered. It's just a little irresponsible to let an employee of one of those companies write the report. It reads a lot like a press release.

"... By BHARAT MEDIRATTA; as told to JULIE BICK .... Bharat Mediratta is a software engineer at Google. ..."

If you read carefully the NY TImes writer was Julie Bick who most likely from the byline at the top of the article. The story teller does work at google. But it it probably the best plain language description of the 20% rule I've read.

"... It's a bit...puff piece-ish. ..."

Could be viewed this way but it's a first-hand story from a google engineer.

The byline is inconclusive, and Mediratta doesn't use the first-person until about a third of the way through the article--the first time it's clear that we're hearing from an insider.

Anyone who reads the whole article will realize by the end that the author works at Google. The thing that annoyed me was that this article differs in no way whatsoever from what you'd hear in a Google recruitment video. When a publication wants to tell its readers about something--even if that thing is good--there is an obligation to explore the issue. Literally letting your subject write the story is an abdication of that responsibility.

"... The thing that annoyed me was that this article differs in no way whatsoever from what you'd hear in a Google recruitment video ..."

True, that made me laugh.

"... When a publication wants to tell its readers about something--even if that thing is good--there is an obligation to explore the issue. Literally letting your subject write the story is an abdication of that responsibility ..."

Good point.

Maybe you are right. Maybe it is a submarine ( http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html ) because I found the same post over on the Monster job section of the NY Times ~ http://jobmarket.nytimes.com/pages/jobs/ captured here ~ http://flickr.com/photos/bootload/1685017453/

Hmm, good eye. I wonder if they'll respond to the question you sent them.

"... I wonder if they'll respond to the question you sent them. ..."

They have. A copy of the email text can be found here ~ http://flickr.com/photos/bootload/1685662827/ Here's the response:

  Thank you for contacting NYTimes.com.
  This article was published in the NYTimes.com Job Market section.
  Article is by Bharat Mediratta; as told to Julie Bick.
 
  The Job Market section is essentially equivalent to a 
  help wanted section of a paper.
 
  Regards,
  Eric Winston  
  NYTimes .com
  Customer Service
  www.nytimes.com/help

A sub I guess. Thanks karzeem for being so critical. I'll be restricting the urls next time to tech or the main page of NYT. So another way to check for Submarines is to check both the location of the article in the paper (ie: is it in Tech, news or Jobs) and if the format, layout and bylines smell "funny".

I think it was a good submission, so you did the right thing by posting it here. It sparked some good discussion.

Sent a quick email to NYT to see what the story behind this is ~ http://flickr.com/photos/bootload/1685662827/ See what the response is.

In most of the cases I've heard of it's more like 20% out of 120%. Some managers like it to be very formal, so you have to dedicate a whole day in the week to your 20% work, which is (almost) impossible to do if you are working on a product that has to meet a deadline.

It's hard to work on more than one thing at a time. However, from what I understand, you can accumulate your 20% time so that you can work on your own project for a month at a time say.

"Testing on the Toilet," and the idea stuck.

This I think stems from another cool googly initiative to have the highest-quality toilets in the industry. Basically, the seats are so generous and comfortable that googlers sometimes stay as late as 9 or 10PM so they can pass waste at work rather than at home. Fits in nicely with the catered meals and other homey accomodations.

Supposedly, they're going to start have cool group "bathroom times" so that engineers can discuss cool new projects and initiatives during moments that would otherwise be spent only on body functions.

The idea of using their 20% time like that is pretty cool. Do you guys know of any other companies that use a similar approach, or is this unique to Google?

I know National Instruments here in Austin has something similar. Not sure of the exact percentage, though.

"... Do you guys know of any other companies that use a similar approach, or is this unique to Google? ..."

I know Zuckerberg (un-official) take on this is to encourage employees to "hang-our" together to foster better communication. "Educators Corner, From Harvard to the Facebook with Jim Breyer (Accel Partners), mp3 1Hr, 26Mb" http://edcorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=156...

Not exactly as left field as google. Maybe they cannot afford it or the culture is different?

Sounds simple. But they need a Fixit for Google Groups right now.

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