> The 20% thing at Google is currently a marketing lie
There was a thread recently where some googlers said the opposite. The main thing I've heard is that you have to actually assert yourself and take the 20% time, it's not going to be set aside for you.
Sadly, I think mostly in the BigCorp world, you always have to take time aside to learn new stuff (or read HN etc). Everybody knows that no one works 8h/day doing real work. Sometimes taking time for learning is frowned upon (the "bad companies" out there) but mostly it is up to you to take the time.
I've never heard any of my (ex) bosses in BigCorp say that taking time from daily work to learn is not permitted. Of course it would be cool to have the 20% stated by the management, but I don't see that happening. Mostly they leave it up to you to take the 20% from the daily work.
this makes it a team dependent thing. The other thing is politics, "oh, we are behind schedule, yet that one guy doing his 20%..." combined with stack rankings is a downward spiral.
Now, if you can assert yourself and back up your assertions, then many other places will enable you to do what you want if it's directly related to the success of the business.
There was a thread recently where some googlers said the opposite. The main thing I've heard is that you have to actually assert yourself and take the 20% time, it's not going to be set aside for you.
Edit: this one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5982333