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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsGoogle Kills '20 Percent Time,' The Perk That Created Gmail, As They Become Just Another Corporation
Once a pillar of innovation at Google, now verboten
When Google went public in 2004, the founders letter from co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin cited 20% time as instrumental to the companys ability to innovate, leading to many of our most significant advances, including AdSense, which now accounts for about 25% of the companys $50+ billion in annual revenue. Google engineers also used 20% time to incubate Gmail, Google Transit, Google Talk, and Google News, among other projects.
Heres how Google has effectively shut down 20% time without actually ending the program, says our source: First, as has been reported previously, Google began to require that engineers get approval from management to take 20% time in order to work on independent projects, a marked departure from the companys previous policy of making 20% time a right of all Googlers.
Recently, however, Googles upper management has clamped down even further, by strongly discouraging managers from approving any 20% projects at all. Managers are judged on the productivity of their teamsGoogle has a highly developed internal analytics team that constantly measures all employees productivityand the level of productivity that teams are expected to deliver assumes that employees are working on their primary responsibilities 100% of the time.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/16/google-20-percent-time_n_3768586.html
MADem
(135,425 posts)Jackpine Radical
(45,274 posts)I'm not sure, but I think MBA stands for Management by Assholes.
Fuddnik
(8,846 posts)mick063
(2,424 posts)I hope I am retired before I am forced to wear the personal monitoring device as well.