[robodan]

It's important to remember the difference between the old Google with ~1k people and today's Google with 100k+ people. Things were a lot more flexible back when gmail was a new thing. I started at G in 2005 when there were 6k engineers, but it was doubling every 9-12 months. You could watch the ossification in real time. My experience was definitely one of 120% time. Some people made 20% projects actually work, but that became more rare over time.

[BurningFrog]

Yeah, I was there 2006-2009, and each year I got another layer of management above me:)

I'm sure there were area where 20% time was real, but in my department it was pretty much non existent.