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Fired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI

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Re: Fired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI

#131

Post by cdata »

I'm noticing a few commenters who work (worked?) at Google (inferred from comment history) who are critical of this person's actions.

First: you ought to disclose that information when commenting on a topic that relates in some way to your financial incentives.

Second: when I worked at Google under Chrome it was very common for individuals and teams to publish projects to open source repositories under Google-managed Github orgs. In fact, for most of my tenure ('15-'21) my team had license to publish to Github unilaterally (no approval from the open source office required). Great power comes with great responsibility, but also I would put to you that publishing an open source project like this one is part of Google's culture.

Firing seems an extreme consequence for the perceived damage of a long-tenured employee's behavior in this case.

Re: Fired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI

#132

Post by pydry »

Stevvo wrote: post #112
djeastm wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He seems to be a good coder with poor judgment. But I think it would be wiser to manage him better than to fire him so long as he recognizes what he did was wrong. I'm a bit of a softie for the clueless, brilliant coders, though.

He doesn't recognize it. He claims in the post he was fired because certain leaders were afraid of being disrupted.

This seems pretty plausible. This tool probably did threaten some product line or other with cannibalisation.

Re: Fired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI

#133

Post by [deleted] »

xnx wrote: post #40

Yikes. The lack of judgement involved in personally releasing something that could be confused for an official release (I was confused) by your employer is someone who has huge wildcard risk in the future. I would expect significant disciplinary action if they didn't follow procedure, and termination if they were directly warned at any point.

[deleted]

Re: Fired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI

#134

Post by zerobees »

It'd be a fairly major faux pas to release a "non-product" open-source project in a way that smells like a product, but I don't think it's an automatic firing offense in most of big tech, especially if you're just releasing some technical (CLI) tool. It's more of a "stern talking-to" situation.

I'm guessing something more happened here. Maybe someone was displeased with how the author initially responded, or some powerful exec really wanted to make an example out of him (sounds like another group was working on an identically-named official product with the same name?), or they were just looking for an excuse to cut this particular role.

Re: Fired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI

#135

Post by pydry »

danudey wrote: post #102
nickv wrote: post #3

Yikes. I see Justin posted this, and I'm sure he can't say much - but this is an absolutely insane story. Google has gone from encouraging 20% time (to create amazing projects like this) to firing people for doing it. There seems to be some true maliciousness going on at Google. You have this, you have the open source Gemini CLI getting replaced with a shittier closed source Antigravity CLI, etc... etc... What is goi…

It sounds like a big part of why he was let go is that he created a work-related product, possibly using his '20% time' meaning he created it while at work, and then released it with Google branding and logos, all of which without clearing it with anyone at the company, while his name is attached to the company. In other words, he created an extremely official-looking product and released it in a way that made it loo…

Struggling to see how google was harmed by this but yea it's true he didn't dot the i's and cross the ts.

I actually thought when it was released that it was a pretty clever move by google in a sea of bad decisions but they've cleared that misapprehension right up.

Re: Fired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI

#136

Post by jrochkind1 »

jauntywundrkind wrote: post #128
echoangle wrote: post #53

Interesting that people here seem so sympathetic to the fired guy. Wouldn’t you kind of expect to be fired if you release a project under your employers name that’s not even associated with them and hasn’t been cleared? Working for them actually makes it worse because people could look up your name and would see that you actually work for google. It’s kind of obvious that this is a bad idea, right?

I agree it's problematic, but I'm pretty sympathetic because it was an obvious and straightforward thing to do, whose benefit is incredibly obvious and good, that made sense. This should obviously be a thing, and not having it hurts customers of your products. But allowing customers and agents access to their data is the opposite of Google's purpose here. They fired him and took this down because they don't want to d…

It doesn't look like anything has been taken down.

Re: Fired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI

#137

Post by jrochkind1 »

pydry wrote: post #135
danudey wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like a big part of why he was let go is that he created a work-related product, possibly using his '20% time' meaning he created it while at work, and then released it with Google branding and logos, all of which without clearing it with anyone at the company, while his name is attached to the company. In other words, he created an extremely official-looking product and released it in a way that made it loo…

Struggling to see how google was harmed by this but yea it's true he didn't dot the i's and cross the ts. I actually thought when it was released that it was a pretty clever move by google in a sea of bad decisions but they've cleared that misapprehension right up.

> but yea it's true he didn't dot the i's and cross the ts.

How do you know that's true? Do you have information the rest of us don't?

Re: Fired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI

#139

Post by fg137 »

justinwp wrote: post #114
xnx wrote: post #40

Yikes. The lack of judgement involved in personally releasing something that could be confused for an official release (I was confused) by your employer is someone who has huge wildcard risk in the future. I would expect significant disciplinary action if they didn't follow procedure, and termination if they were directly warned at any point.

You are assuming that it was "personally" releasing something and that the process wasn't followed.

Why isn't it under google's username on github?

Why does the repo say "This is not an officially supported Google product."?

Is it actually approved by Google or not?

You need to actually answer these questions instead of dodging them.

Re: Fired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI

#140

Post by Aurornis »

gerdesj wrote: post #115
xnx wrote: post #40

Yikes. The lack of judgement involved in personally releasing something that could be confused for an official release (I was confused) by your employer is someone who has huge wildcard risk in the future. I would expect significant disciplinary action if they didn't follow procedure, and termination if they were directly warned at any point.

The real problem is that OP is or wants to be an old school disruptor working at what used to be an exciting and disruptive employer (but isn't any more - its just a boring old money maker). OP crank out a pretty decent and well received, by the community, product and get absolutely canned because they are well out of touch of how Google now works. You don't do risk (without reward) at Google and you certainly don't…

> what used to be an exciting and disruptive employer (but isn't any more - its just a boring old money maker).

I feel sorry for this person, but I would be surprised if this would have been okay at Google in the past 20 years. It wouldn't have been okay at any company I've ever worked at, big or small.

I think there's a valid argument that this started as a simple DevRel script or trick, but due to the way you can write a lot of code very quickly with AI it expanded to something that resembled a full-blown product.

Maybe uncharted territory as the previous assumption was that an individual DevRel person releasing scripts couldn't be mistaken for a supported product because one person couldn't produce that much code in the past.

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