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Alex: Hello. I'm Alex.
I'm an engineer from Google Waterloo.
This is Wolfgang.
Wolfgang: Hello. I am also an engineer from Google Waterloo.
Alex: Today we are trying to answer the following question: "Tell us more about the mythical
20% time projects. Do they really exist? Does every engineer qualify for them? How 'open'
are these projects within the team? Can you join anyone's project?"
Wolfgang: Yes. So 20% projects exist for every engineer in Google.
I actually worked on Google Translate for Android.
If you go to the Android market and you search for a translator, you'll find the application
there.
It lets you translate phrases and words between 50 different language pairs.
The one thing that I wanted to mention is that 20% projects at Google are not, don't
necessarily have to be engineering related.
I know of a group of people that were upset about having to drive from San Francisco to
Mountain View every day in traffic. And so they organized a shuttle bus that has Wi-Fi
access and now many hundreds of people are using this every day.
Alex: I also started a 20% project about 6 months ago and I am working with two more
people from a different office.
The project that I'm, the 20% project I'm working on is related to search but it hasn't
been yet released so I will not be able to give you details.
But to answer your questions, every engineer does indeed qualify for the 20% project and
every engineer is encouraged by his manager to work, by his or her manager to work on
the 20% project.
If you find a project that you're interested in, could it be already an established project
or a smaller project -- typically, you are more than welcome to join as a 20% engineer.
Pretty much every team is happy to have more engineers contribute to the project.
So yes to 20% projects, most people try to do them.
You're encouraged to do them.
Yes to 'Can you join any project?'.
And these projects are quite open within the team in the sense that you can contribute
to certain aspects and spend either one day a week or some engineers bank a few days and
then spend a few days, consecutive days in a month or in a quarter.
So there are different ways you can do your 20% project.