I never worked for Google, but I do have fairly extensive experience with these kinds of situations. From that perspective, I assume there has to be more to the story for it to lead to a firing. In general, when a talented employee (like OP) does something like this, the response is usually something like: “We appreciate and love your initiative, and we want to encourage you to keep doing this kind of work. However,…
Given their manager was the one who announced their project I'm leaning closer to Google handling this badly? Which is understandable in an organisation so large tbh. Sometimes things are done badly, no one is perfect, especially not large organisations.
The text of their "tweet that got me fired" is: > Introducing the Google Workspace CLI: https://github.com/googleworkspac e/cli - built for humans and agents. > Google Drive, Gmail, Calendar, and every Workspace API. 40+ agent skills included. Yeah, that absolutely looks like an official product announcement from Google. Surely it was obvious they'd get in trouble for that.
Is the issue primarily caused by the English language? (Google Workspace) CLI vs Google (Workspace CLI) Because Google has there name in the product for which the CLI was produced it looks like he's using the Google brand when he's only using a descriptor of what his CLI was for. Trademarks are funny, but if I build a thing that only works with Google Workspace wouldn't it be a bit weird to not say that?
Probably contributes to the fact. In Opensource to avoid legal threats for instance with USB/HDMI and the likes you usually say "Compatible with" to avoid claiming certification/trademark infringement.
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...
Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but it really sounds like you knew the policy in depth, and even contributed to the design of the policy, but when it came to your pet project you ignored it by skipping the release process? Am I missing something?
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 i…
To me the random guy comes off much more likable here than someone who has spent billions protecting its reputation and still failing.
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…
Fascinating! First, to your point, I'm Not a googler or ex googler. That being said, for what little may be worth, No company I worked for would be ok for me releasing unauthorized code to official public report with official logo and company name without some approval / discussion / disclosure, at whatever appropriate level that may be m. I'm curious, On your previous team, did your manager know and approve of open…
So if this is a case where they weren't legally in the right, but were morally in the right, which is far more subjective, it makes sense to go the Twitter route since if they were morally in the right people would support them while legal discourse not. So morally they had a cool idea, put a lot of imagination and effort into it, it's an idea that was valuable to people, and maybe a big corp was blocking them for egotistical or whatever reasons, to me it makes sense what they did. I don't know if that was the case, but if a corporation is forcing you to with legal means not do what is perhaps your life work and good value for the society, there must be way beyond legal to do it. But clearly the pettiness of the company is showing here, who cares if this confuses people a bit, there's many other good ways to solve the situation by Google.
> and then you have a random guy put out a self create product Random guy? He was a Google employee. Looks like he was just doing his job. > Google has spent billions to protect its reputation Not sure billions are enough here, since Google's reputation is terrible in spite of it, and this episode certainly isn't helping.
Are you suggesting Google's lawyers haven't done a good job at protecting Google's reputation? Watch out, you don't want to get sued by them!
Going for the little guy who wants to build cool stuff here would be the thing that makes them waste their billions on the wrong thing.
Former Google employee here. This is exactly the kind of shit-for-brains action I'd expect from Google executives. Bravo on further dragging your image through the mud.
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…
In this case I guess the only other option the person had is to quit to build something of their own or work at another more builder friendly company, but at least in this case they got to release a thing that was valuable to many people and got popular, so they got some good publicity out of that. So ultimately I don't see that their actions were wrong overall.