For me it hangs on how the author describes his product “THE google workspace CLI” as opposed to “A google workspace CLI”. That sounds very much like an official google product to me.
Fired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI
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Re: Fired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI
#372Earlier quoted context omitted.
It looks like the account where this repo was published was the one used by Google Workspace DevRel? (And that’s the team this guy worked on.) That makes this quite a bit different situation than publishing the repo on a personal account.
> getting grilled by legal about why the Google logo and brand colors are on the Google Workspace GitHub code repositories. The wording is very ambiguous, but to me it suggests the opposite. If legal was question why the logo was on the account profile picture, not just that specific repo's content, that would imply the entire account was unauthorized, right?
> If legal was question why the logo was on the account profile picture [...] that would imply the entire account was unauthorized, right?
This relies on assuming legal's action made sense, when Justin is likely mentioning it specifically because it didn't make sense.
The Github account is linked to on https://developers.google.com/workspace ("Code Samples" near the bottom).
Re: Fired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI
#373Maybe this is just one of the AI firing? It just happen OP did something before the firing announced and put that and firing together. This would explain why others also let go and the repo still there.
Re: Fired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI
#374For me it hangs on how the author describes his product “THE google workspace CLI” as opposed to “A google workspace CLI”. That sounds very much like an official google product to me.
He worked at Google and released it in a Google owned GitHub organization.
Seems like he just didn’t have the authority to release such a project.
Re: Fired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI
#375Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is it legal (or moral) for an employer to keep you from being a board member of a dog rescue or a glove repair company without review?
The obvious answer is that "obvious lines" aren't at all obvious at the scale of Google. Googlers are well paid, and that pay reflects this.
People said the same thing about non-compete agreements.
Sorry, not buying that’s for anyone’s good.
Re: Fired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI
#376I 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,…
> However, this needs to be taken down, and you need to make sure this does not happen again. It's still up now, so it seems like they do not actually think it needs to be taken down
That part is odd, especially the fact that his boss tweeted about it.
So there is probably much more to the story. My guess is that this is more of an internal fight, possibly with unwise executive involvement (meaning there were no grown-ups in the room).
His team was supposed to develop GWS API samples. And very good samples can become quite sophisticated and start looking almost like an official product.
Re: Fired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI
#377Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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?
None of that is relevant. You're working on things for their employer, they control when and if anything is released. Most of us have worked on projects that were cancelled - even when that happens you don't just release it anyway.
> they control when and if anything is released
I don’t think that’s how APIs work at all.
Upon reflection, the only thing this guy did wrong was put his name on the thing…
Re: Fired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI
#378I am appalled at the amount of commenters on HN saying stuff like "well he should have followed proper procedures, it's right and proper that he was fired". When did we all join IBM?
A few points:
1. It's clear from various comments that he might have followed "the process", and that different orgs at Google have varying levels of latitude in publishing to GitHub orgs with the company colors.
2. The repo clearly has no sensitive code or such, it's just using the developer API. Naturally, Google hasn't taken it down, and it is widely popular. Guess what, the author was in DevRel and it was literally their job to showcase the developer API. Which they did, splendidly. What was the internal justification, "What would happen if every employee just wrote and published useful code that leveraged our public APIs? We can't have that!"?
3. There are comments saying that it was "unexpected" that a single person would be able to generate something that looks like a full product. Really? The place where the CEO runs around making claims like "75% of all code here is AI-written" found it unexpected that a person would be able to ship what looks like a product? How low are their expectations about their own tech, exactly?
4. Anecdote, but as soon as the Workspace admins at my place saw this, they went "Holy shit, Google released something useful for Workspace! How can we use it?" It stoops to the level of self-parody that Google would fire the person that created one of the few actually useful tools for Workspace. Steve Yegge's memo about GCP (a different org, I know) sucking at public-facing APIs comes to mind.
Justin -- if you read this, I'm very sorry that this happened to you. Whoever took this decision is a suit and is destroying people's trust in Google and their attitude towards people that use and maintain their APIs. If I was a VC (unfortunately, I'm just a mid-level IC), I would immediately invest in your next startup.
Re: Fired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI
#379Earlier quoted context omitted.
People are making a crazy amount of assumptions in those threads only to defend Google and dunk on someone who was just fired. The repo belongs to Google, the organization belongs to Google, the job of the fired dev was to produce code just like the one he was fired for, and there's 56 other repos with similar code in there, a lot of them using the same API.
Yeah, it's pretty telling that comments like the one you replied to are all over this thread, and every time a response like yours is posted, no one seems to have any rebuttal. It's pretty clear that there's plenty of precedent for what this guy did and no legitimate reason to consider it a departure from what he and his coworkers had been doing for a while. If you only read a condensed summary of what happened, you…
Yeah, people are just going wild with assumptions.
Every story has three sides, or something like that?
...except when HR/Legal is involved, then it has quite a few more. Lots of secret narratives that are relayed differently to different people.
Re: Fired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI
#380Earlier quoted context omitted.
The obvious answer is that "obvious lines" aren't at all obvious at the scale of Google. Googlers are well paid, and that pay reflects this.
People said the same thing about non-compete agreements. Sorry, not buying that’s for anyone’s good.
I don't understand your point.
What I'm saying is that it might be "obvious" that it's ok to volunteer for a dog rescue group.
Is it equally as ok to volunteer to raise money for a dog rescue group operating in Gaza?
What about other charities operating in Gaza? What about in Israeli occupied territories?