Thanks for at least making a CLI in Rust instead of Python. Their gcloud CLI is so annoying (and slow) to use.
Fired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI
231–240 of 472 posts
Re: Fired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI
#232Interesting 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…
I don't understand. If a public github project's CLI was being used to access workspace, then clearly they had the APIs for it open? How can they restrict how people do that?
Re: Fired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI
#233[flagged]
Re: Fired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI
#234Looks like a textbook example of Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy .[a] People like the OP, Justin Poehnelt, who build cool things out of self-motivation that others find interesting and want to use, are now at the mercy of those inside Google who care more about the company's internal bureaucracy and their own role and importance within it. To them, the fact that the OP's project was an instant github hit meant no…
EDIT #2: Former Googlers here say that for a long time it was common at Google to let employees publish code with Google branding on github, in which case the firing was not justifiable. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48652851 Yes, I changed my mind again. I have no qualms about changing my mind if the facts justify it :-)
Re: Fired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI
#235Earlier quoted context omitted.
This seems pretty plausible. This tool probably did threaten some product line or other with cannibalisation.
Is it plausible? Imagine any leader that is not sundar trying to get this person fired. At some point, that leader would need to justify to either their leader, or a similarly leveled peer why they budgeted x SWE-years(where x is probably > 25) for a project that took this person far less than 1 SWE-year.
You’d be surprised how petty some people are.
Re: Fired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI
#236Earlier 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.
Build cool shit and follow the proper release procedures for it . There is a huge difference between something unrelated to your employer on a personal repo, youremployerrepo/api-samples, and calling something "Employer Majorproduct CLI" on an official employer repo which is bound to be confused for an official release. I would have been fired from every employer I've ever worked for of any size for doing something l…
> follow the proper release procedures for it
What happens when your thing
or nothing close to your thing
will ever see the light of day?
Re: Fired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI
#237Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ofcourse. This is HN and not LinkedIn. We have a lot more people here who like bending rules as opposed to following them.
You’re supposed to bend stupid rules but the one bent here is kind of important. I couldn’t trust an employee that does this, so I wouldn’t want to continue to employ them.
My point is a good portion of HN is composed of pirates who don’t like rules and have a higher tolerance for risk. You can dislike that all you want for any given reason both valid and petty. However, what you’re seeing are core values from the people who created this community and the same type of people still run it today so you’re going to keep seeing this kind of thinking moving forward
Re: Fired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI
#238I'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.…
Being an employee of Google doesn’t give them any sway over my board position at an animal rescue,
or anywhere else,
unless my contract and pay reflects that.
Re: Fired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI
#239I see justinwp is commenting here… Justin, people are asking questions that you’re not replying to. Sorry, but it’s pretty disingenuous to tweet your story and post it here , but then refuse to answer requests for more info. > I think the cause was that Workspace and certain leaders (and projects) were afraid of being disrupted. But the fear wasn't specific to my CLI, it was a broader fear in what agents meant for Wo…
The read me clearly says "This is not an officially supported Google product.". I am not getting what you want to imply here and what you expect him to reply here.
It's other people on this thread that had questions, more than me.
I'm not really implying -- I'm stating that I don't think his management chain was "afraid of being disrupted", but that they were pissed that one of their own team members released a product with Google branding that was the same thing they were about to announce in 2 weeks. It was poor judgement. Not worth a firing, though, in my opinion.
Re: Fired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI
#240Earlier quoted context omitted.
Build cool shit and follow the proper release procedures for it . There is a huge difference between something unrelated to your employer on a personal repo, youremployerrepo/api-samples, and calling something "Employer Majorproduct CLI" on an official employer repo which is bound to be confused for an official release. I would have been fired from every employer I've ever worked for of any size for doing something l…
> follow the proper release procedures for it What happens when your thing or nothing close to your thing will ever see the light of day?
1. If google said ok but don't release under google’s name/in google’s repo, do that.
2. If google said no this goes against our goals for the product, don't release it if you want to keep working for google?