[johan_larson]

At least in the part of Google where I worked, there wasn't much pressure, and people generally kept business hours. If you got in at eight you were one of the first in the office, and if you left at six you were one of the last in the office.

Twenty percent projects were a real thing, but less than five percent of engineers participated. As far as I could tell, side projects were not the way to get ahead. The people who advanced were the ones who did what their bosses told them, full stop. For all that Google makes a big deal about having an egalitarian peer-based culture, the end result was remarkably strict and top down. That Japanese proverb about nails fits Google to a T.

[collyw]

Its difficult to get any momentum spending with something if you are only spending 20% of your time on it. While it sounds good, I might prefer to stick to as few projects as possible, so you can actually focus on getting stuff done rather than just context switching.