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by mamon 2603 days ago
Google has been using different trick for the same reason with their own employees: that famous 20% of working time that can be dedicated to personal projects. You might think they did that to increase employee satisfaction, but the real reason is that this way they own copyright to whatever their employees create in their spare time, and avoid Facebook-WhatsApp scenario (i.e. having to spent $14B on something you could have aquired for free).

Now I guess they apply the same principle to their GCP customers.
2 comments
EpicEng 2603 days ago
>but the real reason is that this way they own copyright to whatever their employees create in their spare time

Yeah it's not their spare time; it's work time. I would enjoy being able to spend one day a week working on whatever I like _for the company that employs me_. It's not a vacation day you spend in the office.

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manigandham 2603 days ago
It was never for personal projects. The actual IPO quote is "We encourage our employees, in addition to their regular projects, to spend 20% of their time working on what they think will most benefit Google".

It's often done in other companies to a lesser degree with hackdays/weeks and is a good way to clean up tech debt or kickstart new product ideas.

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