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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

#191

Post by vachina »

financltravsty wrote: post #173
bonsai_bar wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it so extreme? If you work at Google, there's a very clear policy for doing any outside "work" (volunteering, an open source side project, a business, being on a board, etc.): if it's related to your day-to-day work and/or related to Google's business (which virtually anything software is), you need to fill out a disclosure form and get a go-ahead from legal. Obviously a Google Workspace CLI is related to Google.…

This ethos doesn't gel with the old ethos and that's where the disconnect comes from. At one point Google was there to build cool shit and enable people to do it; not extract maximal amount of value and "being Evil" by the values of its time.

Ya we all can build cool shit all day if the world isn’t a litigious bitch.

“Actions have consequences”

Re: Fired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI

#192

Post by mh2266 »

financltravsty wrote: post #174
financltravsty wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This ethos doesn't gel with the old ethos and that's where the disconnect comes from. At one point Google was there to build cool shit and enable people to do it; not extract maximal amount of value and "being Evil" by the values of its time.

Just a very sad departure from more humanistic values towards "well technically their legal rights take precedence over common good." Especially that he's an "engineer" not a "Googler" or "a person." God what a fall from grace.

I'd much rather be an "engineer" than a "Googler" (I don't work at Google) or any other corporate cutesy name. No thanks...

Re: Fired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI

#194

Post by argee »

cdata wrote: post #175
qmarchi wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Former Googler here, and one that has open-sourced projects while working in Cloud. This is certainly not the case in other product areas and for specifically for something that uses the Google name. If I was expected to go through a full IARC committee in order to get my little Discord bot open sourced under my own account, something that uses the Google name would likely have to get IARC + Legal approvals, along wi…

Google contains multitudes. I don't doubt that your personal experience was the opposite end of the spectrum from mine. I maintain that firing is an extreme resolution here (taking the claims at face value of course). Surely this employee has demonstrated the capacity to deliver impact and could be redirected if properly incentivized.

As a Xoogler you should know that the "impact" they want is, making leadership look good, what you shipped or even whether or not you shipped is nigh irrelevant.

This did the opposite, didn’t it?

Re: Fired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI

#195

Post by davidgay »

financltravsty wrote: post #173
bonsai_bar wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it so extreme? If you work at Google, there's a very clear policy for doing any outside "work" (volunteering, an open source side project, a business, being on a board, etc.): if it's related to your day-to-day work and/or related to Google's business (which virtually anything software is), you need to fill out a disclosure form and get a go-ahead from legal. Obviously a Google Workspace CLI is related to Google.…

This ethos doesn't gel with the old ethos and that's where the disconnect comes from. At one point Google was there to build cool shit and enable people to do it; not extract maximal amount of value and "being Evil" by the values of its time.

The open source policy described above was in place 16 years ago (I went through it to continue working on some existing projects), and I doubt it was very new then.

Re: Fired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI

#196

Post by int_19h »

FuriouslyAdrift wrote: post #52
logicchains wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People ask why Google's Gemini is falling behind the competition in spite of Google's immense resources, this kind of thing is an example why.

the Antigravity AI suite is hugely popular among non-developers

I wonder if it's because non-developers are not exposed to Codex and Claude Code? I try to use Antigravity every now and then, and each time I drop it because of the sheer number of bugs and general brokenness.

Re: Fired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI

#197

Post by matznerd »

Great that it was available, but compared to Peter's version this one is inferior. It didn't have draft email as a default and asking it to write a draft would just send the email, oops lol. And doesn't have mutli-account support or a number of other features. I think one thing it could do better was inline commenting (maybe), but neither CLI can initiate their own comments...

Gog cli - https://github.com/openclaw/gogcli

Re: Fired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI

#198

Post by whstl »

fg137 wrote: post #152
justinwp wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To clarify, I was on the Google Workspace Developer Relations team, the majority of my work was that exact OSS release process. It is not clearly documented and always changing. You can read some of it here, https://opensource.google/documentation/reference/releasing/... , but like I said it is always changing. Relevant: https://www.theregister.com/software/2023/01/27/what-is-goog...

How do you explain "This is not an officially supported Google product."? https://github.com/googleworkspace/cli

There are plenty of such projects with similar disclaimers under Google's own /google/ organization. To give a few examples:

https://github.com/google/python-fire / https://github.com/google/pytype/blob/main/docs/index.md / https://github.com/google/dopamine / https://github.com/google/go-tika

Also plenty of official Google organizations that are not /google/ , but have official projects.

https://github.com/googleapis/googleapis/discussions/865 / https://github.com/google-research/big_vision / you can find plenty more

I wouldn't read too much into it, since it can mean virtually anything.

Re: Fired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI

#199

Post by WheelsAtLarge »

cdata wrote: post #131

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…

Bottom line, he did something that affected the company without any authority. His action implied the product was Google blessed without the company fully knowing about it. Google has spent billions to protect its reputation and then you have a random guy put out a self create product without the company even knowing. They had a case for suing him for millions. Of Course, they wouldn't have been able to collect but it would have been hell for him. They also had a case for criminal fraud. All in all he's lucky he only got fired.

Re: Fired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI

#200

Post by sanderjd »

sleepybrett wrote: post #180
bonsai_bar wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We take annual training that warns us against doing what this engineer did.

yes we all pay attention to 'the training'

Again, I'm pretty skeptical that this person completely missed this part of the training for seven years.
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