Red Light

Photo of the Canary Wharf traffic lights, a ridiculous, confusing mess of lights that looks like an AI-generated monstrosity but is apparently real

Famously, Google used to have a practice dubbed “20% time”: about one day a week, engineers were {expected ⊻ encouraged ⊻ permitted ⊻ tolerated ⊻ known} to work on something other than their nominal work; something they themselves chose. Circa 2011, not long after I joined Google, I pitched a 20% project idea to my… Read more