Google Calls Off Famous "20 Percent Time" Perk


Bangalore: The search giant had called off the famous “20 percent time” offered as perk to the employees that allowed them to work on their own endeavors. The perk was used by Google engineers to develop some of the famous products like Gmail, Google Transit, Google Talk, AdSense and Google News, among others.

In a revelation by a former Google Employee on news site Quartz, the company began shutting down the '20 percent time' scheme by making its employees seek permission before they start working on personal projects. The upper management has also clamped down the perk by asking the managers to discourage the employees from availing 20 percent of free time out of their working hours.

Google’s internal analytics team, which is known for its sophistication, constantly measures all employees’ productivity and it expects employees to work on their primary responsibilities 100 percent of the time.

The end of the perk doesn’t mean that Google is washing its hands over it. The company is to fill the gap with other moves made by CEO Larry Page since he took over in January 2011. After six months  of Page being at the helm of the company he announced that Google would adopt a “more wood behind fewer arrows” strategy to place more of Google’s resources and employees behind a small number of projects. The secretive Google X lab is now turning into a place where engineers can explore their ideas, everything from self-driving cars to Google Glass.

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