181–190 of 472 posts
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He doesn't recognize it. He claims in the post he was fired because certain leaders were afraid of being disrupted.
This seems pretty plausible. This tool probably did threaten some product line or other with cannibalisation.
Looks 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…
You were right above the edit.
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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.…
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.
I would have been fired from every employer I've ever worked for of any size for doing something like that - including Google circa 2018.
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The policy was always crystal clear, but at the same time, tons of people found it confusing. "I wrote this at home on my personal computer in my free time? Why does google own it? how can that be legal" came up a lot. People would get into huge fights with OSPO over this.
> "I wrote this at home on my personal computer in my free time? Why does google own it? how can that be legal" Interesting. Did they read their contract before signing it?
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I believe it's an official or semi-official Google github org. Typically at Google there is some process you are supposed to follow when opensourcing your code, and a repo like this exists specifically to get more people to use the API. The CLI still exists at the repo and the repo still has the Google branding, so it's 99% certain this is a Google repo. If you do an end-run around the normal open source publishing y…
How come it's not under "google" organization, which is where almost every other Google open source project lives (with the exception of a few notable ones)? That's just weird. And if you look at the history, the main maintainer for the project was really just one person. Even today, the repo clearly says "This is not an officially supported Google product." So what is this? If you told me the "googleworkspace" accou…
I think but I'm not sure that this is a "semi-official" org run by Google DevRel. Perhaps it has looser rules and ownership than the more official orgs? If I'm using the Wayback Machine properly, https://web.archive.org/web/20201130062102/https://github.co... shows that the site already used the Google logo way back in 2020 (earliest snapshot).
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> what used to be an exciting and disruptive employer (but isn't any more - its just a boring old money maker). I feel sorry for this person, but I would be surprised if this would have been okay at Google in the past 20 years. It wouldn't have been okay at any company I've ever worked at, big or small. I think there's a valid argument that this started as a simple DevRel script or trick, but due to the way you can w…
Dunno about 20, but 7 years ago, they fired a security engineer for forcing in a CL for their internal Chrome extensions to put a disapproving banner on certain anti-union websites. Wasn't a very harmful change, but because she left a clear paper trail of circumvented code/release reviews, she couldn't be trusted anymore.
The union piece was probably extra motivation but still you just do not do that to security infra, it should always be a firing offense unless it was a truly exceptional circumstance.
Conversely, this guy was in a DevRel role where it sounds like they released open source stuff all the time and the line was a lot more fuzzy (admittedly I've only heard one side of the story).
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…
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.…
Interesting 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?
Not really, no. I'd expect a stern reprimand, but getting fired is extreme.
I'm not sure if Google is still an attractive place to work, but this incident certainly isn't helping tip the scales.
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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.
Just a very sad departure from more humanistic values towards "well technically their legal rights take precedence over common good." Especially that he's an "engineer" not a "Googler" or "a person." God what a fall from grace.
I don't get it – you called the GitHub org 'googleworkspace' and used the Google logo? Presumably without permission? Don't Googlers regularly open-source side projects under the official org(s)? Did you really think this was going to be fine, or was it 'growth hacking' with tougher consequences than expected?
I believe it's an official or semi-official Google github org. Typically at Google there is some process you are supposed to follow when opensourcing your code, and a repo like this exists specifically to get more people to use the API. The CLI still exists at the repo and the repo still has the Google branding, so it's 99% certain this is a Google repo. If you do an end-run around the normal open source publishing y…