You would think the devrel would be more familiar with OSS policies than anyone else.
Something about their LinkedIn job title at Google ("Developer Relations (Mostly SWE)" also reads odd.
Fired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI
201–210 of 472 posts
Re: Fired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI
#202I'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 i…
It’s a CLI for Google Workspace. Google Workspace is a genuine Google Product.
Edit reply to person below (sorry, rate limit):
> Just because you work for Google does not mean you can release products under their name.
Releasing open source projects that use company APIs is about 50% of the work of devrel staff. The rest is making content about what you and your customers did/could build.
Re: Fired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI
#203At big tech you do what your piece of shit manager wants you to do (assuming you have one of the typical big tech managers). That’s all you are allowed to do. Thats my experience at Apple. I even tried to ask for alternatives, mentors, etc. all denied by my one manager because I was reorged into their team and a new manager had something to prove. Directors who I talked to just shrugged their shoulders. Leadership at…
Big companies just wake up the worst instincts in everyone involved.
I've seen people getting thrown under the bus even for voluntarily quitting due to burnout. Like legitimately doing illegal stuff such as withholding documentation or writing recommendation letters in secret code.
I know of a company that I worked that is currently under fire currently for not following the law and lying to employees by advising them incorrectly about their rights. They can't even fucking fire people properly without breaking laws and treating them like shit.
No company deserves anyone's loyalty or concern.
Re: Fired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI
#204I don't get it – you called the GitHub org 'googleworkspace' and used the Google logo? Presumably without permission? Don't Googlers regularly open-source side projects under the official org(s)? Did you really think this was going to be fine, or was it 'growth hacking' with tougher consequences than expected?
Google has quite a few of those. It's hard to figure out if they're really official.
https://github.com/googleapis/googleapis/discussions/865 / https://github.com/google-research/big_vision / https://github.com/googleapis
Re: Fired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI
#205Interesting 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?
> 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? Not really, no. I'd expect a stern reprimand, but getting fired is extreme. I'm not sure if Google is still an attractive place to work, but this incident certainly isn't helping tip the scales.
I guess it may be semantics, but I agree that I would have the same expectation. However, I also I think getting fired would be a justified punishment in the situation.
It’d like playing a computer game during free library time at the school when I was a kid; I would expect to be reprimanded, however just outright barring use from the computer during free time would probably be justified.
Re: Fired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 i…
It’s a CLI for Google Workspace. Google Workspace is a genuine Google Product. Edit reply to person below (sorry, rate limit): > Just because you work for Google does not mean you can release products under their name. Releasing open source projects that use company APIs is about 50% of the work of devrel staff. The rest is making content about what you and your customers did/could build.
I mean, the GP is being overdramatic but releasing a vibe coded cli frontend for an official product in a google github org and that uses your google account credentials is a big deal no matter how unofficial you claim it is in the readme.
Re: Fired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI
#207[flagged]
Re: Fired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
But there's an approval process to create such a repo under the Google name, right? I'm not seeing that he followed that.
When I was there, there was no universal process; different teams had different processes based on their focus. There was a launch process for Google products and there was the open source office for approving open source code (which amounted to a rubber stamp in my experience; they mainly checked for boilerplate issues). As I said above, my team and others were allowed to publish at our discretion. Even if this pers…
Releasing vibe coded handling of google account credentials seems like the biggest problem with this.
Agreed it's gross if the big problem with execs was that it got social media buzz and it embarrassed official products or something.
Re: Fired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI
#209I'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…
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.…
Even setting the legal process aside, I would ask the team before releasing a tool for their product.
Seems kind of rude.
Re: Fired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI
#210I'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…
So is it normally allowed to publish a non-Google-affiliated repo under Google's brand? This seems weird to me, and I can't understand why he didn't just do it under his own name. I did work at Google until a year ago, when I quit and sold my stock, but not in a team that remotely deals with open source so idk how this works.
This project is in an organization that has 57 other public repos with code by several other Google employees, is linked to by Google own documentation, and the only public member of the organization is (hopefully still) a Google employee.
Google has multiple Github Organizations that have all degrees of oficial-ness to it.
This is not someone releasing something in their private account and plastering Google logos over it.