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Comment by harryjo | Hacker News Reader

Is section 3.1 "20%" time still true?

In my experience, yes. Most people find it courteous to inform their manager but I did a lot of 20% time that led to getting hired with Google Brain, and it was never any doubt in my mind that my manager would approve.

That being said, there were times when I was really excited about the project so I would work 80% time plus 40% time and stay late.

Can you tell us about what exactly you did that led you to getting hired with GB?

I don't want to get too specific but I did a 20% project that led to a couple of conference abstracts with one subteam. This built relationships which helped when I applied internally to work on a different subteam.

20% time aiding in team transfer is very common I think.

You guys seem to think that Google is benevolent by giving engineers that 20%, while in fact they do that for very selfish reasons: it is all about copyrights.

They hire the smartest Software Engineers in the world, so it is only a matter of time that some of them will create new, disruptive product.

If they weren't given that 20% of time at Google they would do that anyway, on weekends, but since they do it in company-sponsored time then Google owns the copyrights to all of their work.

Companies own your work even if you do it off the clock, in many cases.

That's not the case in most states, like California, New York and Massachusetts, due to state laws.

This is not the case in most countries in the world.

Given that you work on your own time and don't use company's resources.

What new York state law prohibits this? My contract says that as a salaried employee I work at the company for 23:59 hours Monday to saturday, so it's only Sunday that's off the clock.

And from what I understood, all inventions they own, but I am still very iffy on what's qualified as an invention.

A coworker even asked for bosses blessing to sell some stuff on the side unrelated to the company, he said no because as per the contract that wouldn't let coworker give full undivided attention to the company.

California excludes IP that:

> Relate at the time of conception or reduction to practice of the invention to the employer’s business, or actual or demonstrably anticipated research or development of the employer

For google, that's pretty much all software related projects.

> You guys seem to think that Google is benevolent by giving engineers that 20%, while in fact they do that for very selfish reasons: it is all about copyrights.

What did he say that makes you think that?

It is for me.

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