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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?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
2 months later, I think we can assume some kind of process behind that didnt go well for our friend here.
It looks like he wants his former manager to be fired too. This only gives bad signals to hiring teams.
But regardless once escalated by legal there have been a process to mitigate this, so either the director fired the OP or someone higher. The direct manger would be not really in the decision making here. There is a clear path to release open source at G, and it seems it wasnt followed. The OP claimed that its confusing, but it isn't - usual the launch tool to get the approval and you covered your bases. If the OP didnt have all launch approvals after 7 years at G, wow thats on him. If the OP actually had all the launch approvals then he has an actually big case against G.
Launch approvals are for all product - internal and external, it usually requires L8+ (Director) levels approvals.
Yikes. The lack of judgement involved in personally releasing something that could be confused for an official release (I was confused) by your employer is someone who has huge wildcard risk in the future. I would expect significant disciplinary action if they didn't follow procedure, and termination if they were directly warned at any point.
It's totally fair to question the wisdom of those processes and policies!
But I'm pretty skeptical of the "I'm surprised I got in trouble for this" narrative.
At big tech you do what your piece of shit manager wants you to do (assuming you have one of the typical big tech managers). That’s all you are allowed to do. Thats my experience at Apple. I even tried to ask for alternatives, mentors, etc. all denied by my one manager because I was reorged into their team and a new manager had something to prove. Directors who I talked to just shrugged their shoulders. Leadership at…
But also, the worst managers I've ever had were at 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?
This is not even an endorsement of those policies or of this action in enforcing them. I'm just saying it's very well documented there what you can and can't do and how to do things the "right" way. Lots of people understandable chafe at those rules, but the consequences of just saying yolo and ignoring them are fairly predictable...
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?
Ofcourse. This is HN and not LinkedIn. We have a lot more people here who like bending rules as opposed to following them.
So... they fired him for doing a 20% time project? I'm glad I don't have any of their stock to sell, what terrible management.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
20% time project != able to just launch it YOLO style I suspect the core issue here is that he launched it with Google logos without following any sort of process
That would be dumb but I don’t think it should result in firing still