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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

#451

Post by efreak »

shevy-java wrote: post #8

> getting grilled by legal about why the Google logo and brand colors are on the Google Workspace GitHub code repositories. > I think the cause was that Workspace and certain leaders (and projects) were afraid of being disrupted. I normally don't defend Google - this pure Evil should not exist. Degoogling is a holy act. But it is also kind of silly to create a project, attach Google logo etc... to it while working at…

The logo isn't attached to the project. The logo is attached to the organization, run by Google (presumably), that Google (presumably) uses to distribute software made by employees.

Re: Fired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI

#452

Post by jrochkind1 »

msephton wrote: post #448
jrochkind1 wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read the twitter thread, don't see any clear information about what the t's and i's even are, or if they were crossed and dotted.

The twitter thread was more than enough for me to understand what has gone on.

Are we talking about the same twitter thread? This one? https://xcancel.com/JPoehnelt/status/2069482265953087602

Re: Fired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI

#453

Post by shaftway »

etruong42 wrote: post #422
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 t…

I'm also currently at Google.

> [Googlers live in a] vicious culture that can fire someone like Justin Poehnelt [...] without a clearly articulated reason

At the end of the day, nobody other than Justin is owed a clearly articulated reason. Not other staff, and certainly not members of the public.

If you were the one fired, would you want HR to announce that you were fired for taking Sundar's special cookies out of the cookie jar labeled "For VIPs ONLY!!!"? That seems like a trifling reason to me, and maybe not justified. But maybe I don't agree with the general population, and maybe that would be held against me in the future.

As the recipient of that information you're welcome to share it. And I haven't seen Justin clearly do so. But I would wager that in most situations it's better that the company stays silent.

Re: Fired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI

#454

Post by QuantumGood »

bonsai_bar wrote: post #161
QuantumGood wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clueness sometimes goes hand-in-hand with perceived freedom. I think it's that cause and effect are not as often connected (consequences). I remember a Google employee updating a Google font that broke thousands of websites. Community members explained that Google recommended (at that time) letting Google host the font, and that they could fork it instead, or find a path that wouldn't break so many websites. The empl…

We take annual training that warns us against doing what this engineer did.

This happened about four years ago, and was worse than I am conveying in its additional details. I can't imagine this being encouraged, and I can imagine it being trained against, but the personality type/worldview seems too common to mitigate simply by discouraging it.

It seemed especially sociopathic in how the employee actively avoided understanding what they were told, and actively reframed it. I would have expected a more bureaucratic 'this is how we have do it for internal reasons' kind of reponse, rather than actively avoiding understanding. Similar to traditional complaints in the past about active Wikipedia / Stack Overflow types.

Re: Fired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI

#456

Post by justinwp »

dusbskxnd wrote: post #353

I work at Google so was curious. This person did attempt to follow the process, but was belligerent in review and it was cancelled. They continued anyway. No surprise they were fired. If you work at google just search this CLI and you will see for yourself.

The launch was canceled after the fact.

Re: Fired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI

#457

Post by fragmede »

dekhn wrote: post #400
fragmede wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a reframe for > you can get punished at google (up to and including termination) for raising your voice in a meeting. That makes it sound like Google is really weird for firing people for merely "raising your voice in a meeting", but the reality is that toxic assholes who can't control their emotions and yell racist slurs at people do get fired, but, uh, shouldn't they?

how did you get from "raising your voice in a meeting" to "toxic assholes" and "racist slurs". Those are very different.

They are! That's my point! I've raised my voice in a meeting while I was at Google and not gotten fired. I was also around for that bit with "son of a bitch, I'm in" on memegen. I'm not saying that no one anywhere has ever been fired for raising their voice at Google during a meeting but without a more thorough description of the exact circumstances that led to that happening I guess what I'm saying isit's not a normal thing at Google.

Re: Fired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI

#458

Post by me-vs-cat »

mapkkk wrote: post #449
me-vs-cat wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I should be able to even berate my employer, as long as I'm not doing it from a persona that's directly tied to my employer e.g. my real name or git handle etc. They might not like it, but they sure as shit shouldn't be able to fire me for it. There are many things you should be able to do publicly without repercussion from your employer. However, your example is berating them, and I'm taking that literally: "to cr…

you raise a good point, I was trying to take the example to the logical extreme by specifically using berating. in essence, the example would be the same as whistleblowing (mechanistically speaking) So one would have to weigh the risks of being let go (and legal consequences if it was indeed whistleblowing) depending on the level of criticism being levied.

I disagree that the berating example is in any substantial way similar to whistleblowing.

I believe we are more on the same page than not, but I caution you to more closely evaluate an employee's obligations on how and when they speak about their employer, whether in public or where there's a chance of private speaking becoming public, regardless of the name or persona used.

I include whistleblowing, because some whistleblowing is not legally protected and, from an employment perspective, some whistleblowing requires that certain steps were first attempted or considered.

I've had to do that re-evaluation myself, from the employer side, and it changed my mind in some ways, even from my perspective as an employee.

(This sounds one sided only because we're not bringing up any employer obligations. I'm not in HR, but that re-evaluation more firmly entrenched my belief that HR is often a necessary evil.)

Re: Fired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI

#459

Post by etruong42 »

shaftway wrote: post #453
etruong42 wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

I'm also currently at Google. > [Googlers live in a] vicious culture that can fire someone like Justin Poehnelt [...] without a clearly articulated reason At the end of the day, nobody other than Justin is owed a clearly articulated reason. Not other staff, and certainly not members of the public. If you were the one fired, would you want HR to announce that you were fired for taking Sundar's special cookies out of t…

> nobody other than Justin is owed a clearly articulated reason

Justin has made this a public issue through their public declarations. If Justin is owed a clearly articulated reason (as you have stated), then Justin has essentially shared that right to the public. If "Google" claims that Justin has been given that reason (which does not appear to be the case), then someone is essentially lying, and this (hypothetical?) claim should be the focus of our conversation.

> But I would wager that in most situations it's better that the company stays silent.

I agree, it's "better" for the "company" by minimizing the risk of blowback to the people with the authority to terminate Justin. It is definitely not better for the "company" as a whole or society as a whole. We have an extremely credible person claiming that the "company" fired them for creating a product that people loved and without any claim that they broke the rules. The "company" has not provided any explanation to other employees about what Justin did so that other employees could avoid the same fate!

I would say this is where our language has shaped our thinking. You used the word "company" in a way that I would argue that it means the authority structure. If we define "company" to also mean collectively all the people of the company and our collective place and impact in the world, I don't think we could conceivably say that "it's better that the company stays silent", especially in this case.

Re: Fired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI

#460

Post by whstl »

frollogaston wrote: post #428
saghm wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Works…

> one is not like the others

> probably got properly approved

> also possible

That's not a rebuttal of anything, that's just a series of wild assumptions.

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