[sanderjd]

How is the push to show a productive 20% project at Google any different than the push at most companies to show a productive 100% work time. Most people working on open source projects are working full time and doing open source in their free time. People who are willing to do that, and who produce high quality open source code are definitely worth hiring, but it's difficult to do and isn't for everyone, so hiring only on the basis of open source contribution is a bad idea.

[blacksmythe]

I don't work at Google, but I have heard that there is a lot of pressure to show some good results on your 20% project. It is pretty hard to do great things in a day a week, so there is a lot of pressure for this project to bleed out into evenings and weekends.

At the same time you are also expected to be doing great things on your 80% job, surrounded by brilliant people who are also doing great things.

I can't speak for Steve Yegge, but the energy that he put into blogging before going to Google seems to not be available now (unless he is getting internal pressure to blog less).