Then the Dilbert strip <i>is</i> completelly accurate:<p><a href="http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2011-12-19/" rel="nofollow">http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2011-12-19/</a>
Its still dead then. You may have access to infrastructure to experiment on, but its on your time, not Google's.<p>You wind up investing personal time on company projects, with all of the usual ownership issues, thus no different than any other tech gig.