Some interesting thoughts from a new Google engineer, Things I’ve learned at Google so far
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Paul Buchheit was a software engineer at Google. He didn’t need permission to write something like gmail. Corporate culture says that if you need something like that, you just go ahead and do it. In fact this is enshrined as an official corporate policy – engineers get 20% of their time to do with pretty much as they please, and are judged in part on how they use that time. I found a speech claiming that over half of Google’s applications started as a 20% project. (I’m surprised that the figure is so low.) To get a sense of how much stuff people just do, visit Google Labs. No corporate decision. No central planning.
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Sick day policy. Don’t show up when you’re sick and tell people why you’re not showing up. Note what’s missing. There is no limit to how much sick time you get if you need it.
I think he overestimates the lack of central planning, still it is another interesting view of Google.
Related: Eric Schmidt on Management at Google – Google: Ten Golden Rules – The Myth of the Genius Programmer
There's one thing I've always wondered about Google. If they're such an egalitarian outfit and if that 20% time is so productive, why do only engineers get it?
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