[alacombe]

Doesn't seem to be a joke...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/20%25_Project

Former Google employee and Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer once stated “I’ve got to tell you the dirty little secret of Google's 20% time. It's really 120% time.”[6]

https://www.businessinsider.com.au/google-20-percent-time-po...

Yahoo CEO and formal Googler Marissa Mayer once bluntly denied its true existence.

“It’s funny, people have been asking me since I got here, ‘When is Yahoo going to have 20% time?'” she said on stage during an all-employee meeting at Yahoo. “I’ve got to tell you the dirty little secret of Google’s 20% time. It’s really 120% time.”

[Talanes]

I don't see what Marissa Mayer's comments actually add to the discussion. She was obviously acting in PR mode as the CEO of a competitor. It's barely information.

[mondoshawan]

At the time she made this statement, she represented Yahoo, not Google, and was making major changes in its culture to fit her direction. I wouldn't put much stock into these statements.

As a current Googler, I've been spending 20% of my time on self-directed work, and 80% on what is assigned since I started, and my contributions have been to both open/released software and also internal stuff, and I joined in 2006.

[lallysingh]

As an ex-googler, my manager said that we should bank our time and then spend a week on our 20 to make good progress.

[mondoshawan]

That's what I did so much in my early days at Google, banking a week's worth of time and making a huge push. I don't do that too much anymore, though.