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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

#431

Post by sanderjd »

rcbdev wrote: post #262
sanderjd wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I'm struggling to believe that this person who worked at Google for 7 years was surprised by this outcome. Google has very clear processes for contributing to open source as an employee. I'm skeptical that this person never navigate to go/opensource (not remembering exactly the link, but it might literally be that) and read the policies there in that amount of time... This is not even an endorsement of those pol…

He worked for devrel under Osmani. These guidelines and processes do not apply to them, last I checked.

Well, fair enough if the situation is "the rules are complicated to navigate specifically for devrel people".

Re: Fired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI

#432

Post by dekhn »

justinwp wrote: post #268
dekhn wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something in the explanation is missing here. It's still not clear to me from any of the provided context whether you got approval to release this. At least from my understanding of your role, if you had approval and used an official google repository, you would not get fired for merely publishing code that accesses a documented API through documented endpoints. Hence many people are wondering if you released this wi…

There was a Ariane/Launch with bits flipped including the eng bit from my manager.

then there is some detail missing from your report- for example, if leadership asked you to take down the repo (perhaps because another team was building/releasing/launching their own) and you refused, then you weren't fired for creating the Google workspace CLI, but for something else.

In short, the way the post is framed, and the reality behind it, don't seem to match up, and people with experience are asking for you to clarify. If you don't want to go into more detail, that's fine, but... many people (like me) read what you wrote and thought "there must be more detail than this, because it would be silly for somebody to get fired for doing their job in good faith, and following the rules"

Re: Fired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI

#433

Post by allarm »

chaostheory wrote: post #237
echoangle wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re supposed to bend stupid rules but the one bent here is kind of important. I couldn’t trust an employee that does this, so I wouldn’t want to continue to employ them.

My point is a good portion of HN is composed of pirates who don’t like rules and have a higher tolerance for risk. You can dislike that all you want for any given reason both valid and petty. However, what you’re seeing are core values from the people who created this community and the same type of people still run it today so you’re going to keep seeing this kind of thinking moving forward

> a good portion of HN is composed of pirates who don’t like rules and have a higher tolerance for risk

That's cute.

Re: Fired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI

#434

Post by frollogaston »

saghm wrote: post #361
zipy124 wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's amazing how quickly so much of this thread is people vehemently arguing that this person deserved to be fired for not following proper procedures, but when it's the company not following proper procedures for literally firing someone (which is a way more egregious thing to screw up than publishing some code that can easily be deleted, not that Google apparently has bothered to do that yet), there's so much room…

What procedure did the company not follow here?

Re: Fired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI

#435

Post by frollogaston »

allarm wrote: post #433
chaostheory wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is a good portion of HN is composed of pirates who don’t like rules and have a higher tolerance for risk. You can dislike that all you want for any given reason both valid and petty. However, what you’re seeing are core values from the people who created this community and the same type of people still run it today so you’re going to keep seeing this kind of thinking moving forward

> a good portion of HN is composed of pirates who don’t like rules and have a higher tolerance for risk That's cute.

Yeah the risk tolerance here is probably well below average. Gotta go to the Nissan Altima forums.

Re: Fired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI

#436

Post by [deleted] »

notfromhere wrote: post #5
nickv wrote: post #3

Yikes. I see Justin posted this, and I'm sure he can't say much - but this is an absolutely insane story. Google has gone from encouraging 20% time (to create amazing projects like this) to firing people for doing it. There seems to be some true maliciousness going on at Google. You have this, you have the open source Gemini CLI getting replaced with a shittier closed source Antigravity CLI, etc... etc... What is goi…

its what happens when a company runs out of ideas and is mostly run by people with MBAs. Good ideas are now risky because it steps on the toes of someone's fiefdom

[deleted]

Re: Fired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI

#437

Post by jrochkind1 »

msephton wrote: post #337
jrochkind1 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but yea it's true he didn't dot the i's and cross the ts. How do you know that's true? Do you have information the rest of us don't?

He probably read the twitter thread, it's all in there

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.

Re: Fired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI

#438

Post by jrochkind1 »

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?

I don't see anything about the product that made Google leadership look bad? I don't see that anyone else external to Google thought so either, before they fired him? Firing him makes them look bad, however.

Re: Fired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI

#439

Post by DANmode »

kazinator wrote: post #294
gedy wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you like them in a house? Would you like them with a mouse?

AI am Sam ... Sam AI am ... My program made green eggs and ham ...

Is there a smell of toast burning where you are?

Re: Fired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI

#440

Post by jrochkind1 »

frollogaston wrote: post #142
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…

So is it normally allowed to publish a non-Google-affiliated repo under Google's brand? This seems weird to me, and I can't understand why he didn't just do it under his own name. I did work at Google until a year ago, when I quit and sold my stock, but not in a team that remotely deals with open source so idk how this works.

I don't know that I'd call the repo "non-Google-affiliated", but whatever it is, it is still up [1] in a google-owned github organization [2], which also includes several other repos with the line "This is not an officially supported Google product," such as this one that's two years old [3].

So, yeah, whatever it is, I'd say it looks normal.

[1] https://github.com/googleworkspace/cli

[2] https://github.com/googleworkspace

[3] https://github.com/googleworkspace/redriveapp

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