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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

#421

Post by msm_ »

cdata wrote: post #169
frollogaston wrote: post #156

Earlier 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…

>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)

In 2018 I applied for a permission to work on an open-source project, in my own spare time, and I was denied. The problem was the license (AGPL is like poison to corporations), but it's my after-hours side project anyway so I still don't get why it mattered.

Re: Fired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI

#422

Post by etruong42 »

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…

I currently work at Google. If the Eye of Sauron ever casts its gaze on me, I'm sure my history of critical posts will be silently used against me.

The public face that Googlers put on is extremely sycophantic to Google, imho. At best, this sycophancy is unconscious, self-preserving behavior in a vicious culture that can fire someone like Justin Poehnelt who ostensibly created something people LOVED and still fired them without a clearly articulated reason that counterbalances their positive contributions. At worst, this sycophancy is conscious, brown nosing behavior in order to climb to the highest rung of the career ladder by shedding all burdens of self-consistency, self-reflection, and noble intentions.

Please don't read into this comment what isn't said. I'm not saying Google is entirely evil, nor am I saying everyone other than me is sycophantic. There are those who recognize the callous culture that is often present at Google, and generally speaking, this bad behavior is only called out by Googlers in subtle ways, such as random HN comments :)

Re: Fired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI

#423

Post by etruong42 »

argee wrote: post #194
cdata wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Create a product that people loved? This could have been redirected to make leadership look good. This event demonstrates that impactful products can be extremely polarizing - you could become the hero or the villain or a bit of both. You can no longer be a quiet contributor.

Re: Fired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI

#424

Post by frollogaston »

msm_ wrote: post #421
cdata wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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) In 2018 I applied for a permission to work on an open-source project, in my own spare time, and I was denied. The problem was the license (AGPL is like poison to corporations), but it's my after-hours side project anyway so I still don't get why it mattered.

They basically deny everything. They say they don't want to give bored people a reason to leave, but that's seemingly outweighed but not wanting to give bored people something besides their day job to focus on. Even at Google, plenty spend non-work hours on work, instead they might spend it on a side project.

They don't really have the teeth to deny it if you live in California, where there are laws partially invalidating those non-compete clauses, but most people will just accept it.

Re: Fired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI

#425

Post by frollogaston »

LoganDark wrote: post #284
neya wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> First: you ought to disclose that information when commenting on a topic that relates in some way to your financial incentives. I've never ever seen anyone, especially Apple shareholders disclose this here whenever they brush off something Apple did with malice - Eg. slowing down users' phones, spying on their siri recordings, etc.

Throttling is to avoid overloading degraded batteries. Replacing the battery alleviates the slowdowns. Apple didn't want your phone to shut off at 15% when the battery can't supply enough current to sustain full performance. Siri recordings are only ever stored to improve Siri. Apple does not share personal data or recordings with advertisers. There was a lawsuit based on coincidence alone. I am not an Apple sharehol…

My iPhone 6 was throttled so hard I could barely type. When they finally gave an option to disable the throttling, the phone didn't shut down randomly, it was fine. Most other people had already bought new iPhones by then, I only had mine cause idc so much about using a phone.

Sure, I can believe maybe Apple legitimately thought my phone was going to randomly shut down, not that they wanted to slow it to make me buy a new one. Then Apple could've disclosed that they're throttling iPhones due to a known battery defect. They hid that until they were caught. They subsequently discounted the price of battery replacements, but that's still an extra cost that shouldn't have been there. The phone was way too young to be having these issues.

So yeah the iPhone 6 was well below the quality people normally expect from Apple. But it was the only time they screwed up so bad. The thing about planned obsolescence via OS updates is still true and accepted as a constant, your iPhone realistically has 10 years of life. I'll still choose iPhone over the Samsung hamas phones, but also not gonna be gaslit about batterygate, it was real.

Disclaimer: I own 99% of the entire Apple corporation, this is legal advice, this is medical advice

Re: Fired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI

#426

Post by kakwa_ »

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…

> was very common for individuals and teams to publish projects to open source repositories under Google-managed Github orgs.

I have the feeling these projects were not deeply intertwined with Google products like this cli is.

This project was not exactly some random devtool or library polished a bit to be published and used outside of Google.

It was a de-facto major feature of a significant Google product.

Re: Fired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI

#427

Post by frollogaston »

mewpmewp2 wrote: post #404
frollogaston wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's saying he went through the proper approvals. Google apparently doesn't think so. Not getting the full story here, but IF he really didn't get approval, I don't buy the whole "doing the right thing" argument. Could've done that without Google branding. If he got approval, Google is hurting itself in its confusion.

In any case, all I see, is that he built a cool thing, and Google failed to make it work whatever the process was. This is failure on Google's part in my view. Even if he didn't do the proper process, this is just a CLI wrapper, and they should have made it proper after, not fired the person. And they should have thought long and hard why a person felt this had to be done. Or alternatively why was the person able to…

It'll probably be both, they look on the inside but the employee is still fired. Doesn't matter if they decide later that the unofficial CLI is better than the real one, it's not justification to publicly break process.

Re: Fired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI

#428

Post by frollogaston »

saghm wrote: post #355
whstl wrote: post #286

Earlier 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…

Here's the rebuttal, look through these https://github.com/orgs/googleworkspace/repositories , one is not like the others. They're things like Python samples or a Google Drive picker web element. The 56 other repos probably got properly approved and this one didn't. This one also got a Twitter announcement saying "Introducing the Google Workspace CLI..." at the same time Google was working on an official Google Workspace CLI.

It's also possible this is all wrong and the author followed all the rules. That wouldn't be because Google actually benefits from making up reasons to fire good employees, only cause someone on the inside was scapegoating or glory-hogging. Tbh I doubt it.

Re: Fired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI

#429

Post by frollogaston »

teitoklien wrote: post #273
WheelsAtLarge wrote: post #199

Earlier 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…

You made a typo, it should be "Google spent billions eroding its reputation" [0] [0]( https://killedbygoogle.com/ )

They should've fired whoever signed off on 999 duplicate Google chat apps existing at once around 2018. Probably Sundar.

Re: Fired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI

#430

Post by magicalist »

whstl wrote: post #291
magicalist wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a fair point that it's still up, though looking just now for two minutes there are at least some issues with auth[1] which would make me really not trust it. It was just speculation about what could be bad enough if they really did have permission to release it, but the OP is being so cagey below now I'm just wondering if they got release permission but misrepresented what they would be releasing or something. >…

If that's a real problem and fireable offence, then there's people at Google that should be fired ASAP for failing to delete this repository.

> If that's a real problem and fireable offence, then there's people at Google that should be fired ASAP for failing to delete this repository.

Unclear what you're referring to here. Was it "misrepresented what they would be releasing"?

If that's the case, I disagree that the repo still existing is on its face evidence against that theory. It could be a perfectly fine tool, but if you lie on a release checklist, depending on what you lie about, it's easy enough to imagine a fireable offense. There are multiple ways that "it's easier to ask forgiveness" can backfire if there are legal things or organizational things you are knowingly avoiding.

Again, this is just speculation. I wouldn't personally fire someone for releasing a library that got popular, but its also speculation to suggest that's the only reason he was fired.

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