[cdata]

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 Github orgs. In fact, for most of my tenure ('15-'21) my team had license to publish to Github unilaterally (no approval from the open source office required). Great power comes with great responsibility, but also I would put to you that publishing an open source project like this one is part of Google's culture.

Firing seems an extreme consequence for the perceived damage of a long-tenured employee's behavior in this case.

[qmarchi]

Former Googler here, and one that has open-sourced projects while working in Cloud.

This is certainly not the case in other product areas and for specifically for something that uses the Google name.

If I was expected to go through a full IARC committee in order to get my little Discord bot open sourced under my own account, something that uses the Google name would likely have to get IARC + Legal approvals, along with a proper launch/privacy review.

The OP also notes that they had a competing product in the process of development when they "launched" theirs, likely leading to significant internal confusion, and is something that would've been caught during a review.

I'm gunna be real, this whole thing smells of "I'm purposely bit telling the whole truth" and looks like clout chasing.

[cdata]

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.

[argee]

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?

[jrochkind1]

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.

[xnx]

Shipping a personal project right before they were going to announce an official tool at Google IO seems like a bad idea.

[jrochkind1]

So it was done on the clock as a project at Developer Relations team, I don't know if that should be called a personal project or not, maybe, it does seem Developer Relations projects could be one person's idea and execution, but just to be clear on what happened.

It was released 2 and a half months before Google IO.

The way I read this, they decided to announce it at Google IO because of the attention the project released by the Developer Relations team got. No one with inside knowledge has said the "official tool" (not from Dev Relations) was already planned when it was released. Maybe it was. Maybe a guy on the Dev Relations team would or should have known it was if it was. Easy for me to believe it was not however.

[etruong42]

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.

[loki49152]

"Google contains multitudes"

It does not contain people who flout Google's privacy, security, or intellectual property policies. Those people are, quite rightfully, un-contained from Google with speed they can't muster for anything else in the company.

[olalonde]

It's weird that he even had the ability to create public repos inside the official Google Workspace org then. That said, I agree that some information seems to be missing. Like, why not instead fire the guy who announced the project on X and who I presume is his manager? Confusing.

[whstl]

The manager, Addy Osmani, also reportedly left Google, which is interesting.

Also more interesting is the fact the repository is still alive and kicking.

I can see Google firing the dev but HR/Legal giving a bogus reason, as is regular practice.

[olalonde]

Interesting. I did a bit of digging and the disclaimer about not being an officially supported Google product was there from the start. There was briefly a logo that used Google colors[0] but it seems extreme to fire someone over such a small misstep. I'd say either HR gave him a bogus reason like you said or he's not telling the whole story.

[0] https://github.com/googleworkspace/cli/blob/1991d536b4a45e60...

[bArray]

> This is certainly not the case in other product areas and for specifically for something that uses the Google name.

Sure, but it's a slap on the wrists. It seems like an extreme reaction.

> The OP also notes that they had a competing product in the process of development when they "launched" theirs, likely leading to significant internal confusion, and is something that would've been caught during a review.

Again, they could have just asked them to retire theirs in favour of the official one. Rather than be a problem, it could have been an opportunity.

[dude250711]

> ...likely leading to significant internal confusion...

Bonus-promotion disruption.

[bonsai_bar]

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. Why would you release this without getting a go-ahead?

I'm sad that a clearly talented engineer who cares about users was fired. I wish more engineers cared enough to make things like this. But it seems like poor judgment from the engineer's side :(

(Note: I do work at Google. This is my personal writing, though. Nothing to do with my employer)

[jedc]

It looks like the account where this repo was published was the one used by Google Workspace DevRel? (And that’s the team this guy worked on.)

That makes this quite a bit different situation than publishing the repo on a personal account.

[morpheuskafka]

> getting grilled by legal about why the Google logo and brand colors are on the Google Workspace GitHub code repositories.

The wording is very ambiguous, but to me it suggests the opposite. If legal was question why the logo was on the account profile picture, not just that specific repo's content, that would imply the entire account was unauthorized, right?

[Ukv]

> If legal was question why the logo was on the account profile picture [...] that would imply the entire account was unauthorized, right?

This relies on assuming legal's action made sense, when Justin is likely mentioning it specifically because it didn't make sense.

The Github account is linked to on https://developers.google.com/workspace ("Code Samples" near the bottom).

[WinstonSmith84]

> That makes this quite a bit different situation than publishing the repo on a personal account.

If that was the issue, it's not very hard to delete it either... Either nobody cares, or that repo is not as bad as for Google as it seems.

[ashdksnndck]

It seems like the guy believed he was just doing his job for Google, not moonlighting? He released the project on Google’s own GitHub. It seems more like he misunderstood the necessary steps before making that release.

[fooqux]

Exactly my thoughts. This reads to me like a case of the right hand not knowing what the left is doing, and a scape goat being jettisoned to save face afterwards.

The repo wasn't even taken down.

[hn_throwaway_99]

> It seems more like he misunderstood the necessary steps before making that release.

Dude worked there for 7 years. Saying "oh, he just didn't understand the policy for going through legal/management approval" just does absolutely not pass the sniff test.

[whstl]

Plus there are 57 projects in that workspace from the same team, most using the same API, in quite a few the fired dev is participating. On top of that, the CLI project wasn't even deleted.

If there were/are real problems there, Google hasn't acted on them in any proper manner, and has not communicated properly with any of the parts involved, which is natural when legal/HR is involved.

[pydry]

This is definitely helps make the case that it was a spiteful exec primarily concerned with their own fiefdom that got the guy canned.

I did think when the guy released the tool that it seemed a bit out of character for google to be that responsive to customer feedback.

[PurpleRamen]

Policies change or have subtle context-specific details. Even after 7 years, people can lack basic knowledge for certain situations.

[cromka]

There's a small chance they actually still don't get it and that blog post is just a testimony to how unfairly hurt they feel.

[lokar]

Even setting the legal process aside, I would ask the team before releasing a tool for their product.

Seems kind of rude.

[whstl]

The tool was publicly announced by the person's manager.

It clearly wasn't moonlighting or done without management's support/knowledge.

[lokar]

Wow, depending on what exactly the manager said / did, that's pretty bad

[financltravsty]

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.

[davidgay]

The open source policy described above was in place 16 years ago (I went through it to continue working on some existing projects), and I doubt it was very new then.

[Grombobulous]

And it's not just about open source, it's about the author of this tool using trademarks and effectively impersonating Google.

Judging by the screenshot of the repo, I think most people who download this would think that it's official Google software.

[whstl]

This is clearly something done in official capacity, during working hours, with the knowledge and support of his manager, who announced the CLI.

It says "This is not an officially supported Google product" because it's a DevRel sample/experiment, just like dozens of other Google repositories made by Google employees as part of their job.

Even some other tools in github.com/google have as much: https://github.com/google/python-fire / https://github.com/google/pytype/blob/main/docs/index.md / https://github.com/google/dopamine / https://github.com/google/go-tika

[modo_mario]

That's because from what i gather so far it is a google repo with other tools using the same api they kept it in there since and even had it announced by the guy's manager at the time.

[michaellee8]

tbh i assumed that is an official product too

[Grombobulous]

You know this GitHub account might be more official than I thought? Maybe the problem is more to do with their approval process, which I guess negates a lot of my comments.

[Arainach]

Build cool shit and follow the proper release procedures for it. There is a huge difference between something unrelated to your employer on a personal repo, youremployerrepo/api-samples, and calling something "Employer Majorproduct CLI" on an official employer repo which is bound to be confused for an official release.

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.

[DANmode]

> follow the proper release procedures for it

What happens when your thing

or nothing close to your thing

will ever see the light of day?

[no-name-here]

1. If google said ok but don't release under google’s name/in google’s repo, do that.

2. If google said no this goes against our goals for the product, don't release it if you want to keep working for google?

[whstl]

It was clearly greenlighted by management. The person who made the announcement was Addy Osmani, who was manager of the fired developer at the time.

This is in a Google-owned organization, with several other similar repositories, a lot of them using the same API.

[sib]

Is that relevant here,

given that Google was creating an official thing

quite close to his thing

at the same time?

(And why are we writing like this?)

[seanhunter]

Fair to point out,

the official google thing,

was quite a lot worse

than his thing.

(I’m quite into the whole “Posting in free verse” idea)

[gedy]

Would you like them

in a house?

Would you like them

with a mouse?

[DANmode]

> Google was creating an official thing quite close to his thing

Just link to it.

[Arainach]

None of that is relevant. You're working on things for their employer, they control when and if anything is released. Most of us have worked on projects that were cancelled - even when that happens you don't just release it anyway.

[DANmode]

> they control when and if anything is released

I don’t think that’s how APIs work at all.

Upon reflection, the only thing this guy did wrong was put his name on the thing…

[Suppafly]

>Build cool shit and follow the proper release procedures for it.

By all reasonable measures, they did.

[financltravsty]

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.

[mh2266]

I'd much rather be an "engineer" than a "Googler" (I don't work at Google) or any other corporate cutesy name. No thanks...

[debo_]

I was there in 2005 and we were basically told point-blank that we couldn't open source _anything_ without running it by a manager first. This was at a time where all engineers were basically housed in the main 4 buildings on the north campus, so not yet all that big. Not sure what grace they fell from, but I found it to be a nauseating sanctimonious place even then.

[DangitBobby]

According to the Twitter thread his manager is the one who announced it.

[vachina]

Ya we all can build cool shit all day if the world isn’t a litigious bitch.

“Actions have consequences”

[mapkkk]

Am I crazy for thinking that an employer should and has no say in whatever the fuck I do outside of work? As long as I'm not messing with company IP, I should be able to do what I want, no?

Like, 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. This would include working on extending a company's products, so long as I don't use the proprietary knowledge I'm privy to.

I realize that this guy published his thing under an alias directly tied to his work. My question was sparked from the general sentiment of your reply - and I am being genuine, sometimes I feel like this stance of mine is somehow "too radical"

I understand that this is not reality in most of the world, but I'm genuinely asking. I'm in the EU and I'm not in the software/silicon valley industry; if that helps with context.

[NBJack]

Regardless of what you or I think of the policy, most major software companies (Google included) have clauses in your employment contract around how you represent the company in a real or percieved official capacity. This wasn't just some account persona; it was published as if it were an official open source product endorsed by Google (complete with branding). The author apparently didn't have permission or legal right to do so, and publicly violated their agreement.

Was the response short sighted? Up for debate. But unfortunately for the author, they have no real legal standing on this matter. Had it been their own repo, sans any branding, it would likely have been fine.

[me-vs-cat]

> 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 criticize in an angry manner".

If I read this correctly, then you believe your employer should be able to fire you if you angrily criticize them in public under your name. I agree in principle, that could damage their trust in your ability to do your job. Depending on specifics, that damage could be enough to justify firing you.

I don't understand why doing so anonymously should change the potential damage to their trust in you, if they later learn you said what you did.

[mapkkk]

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.

[me-vs-cat]

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.)

[saghm]

I pretty much agree with you in principle. I'm in the US (not in silicon valley but working in software for over a decade).

Given my stance on a lot of things though I don't know how much evidence this is that this view isn't "too radical" but my (biased) take is that a lot of good ideas are radical until they aren't, and usually the ones don't ever become mainstream have better counterarguments than anything I've heard or been able to come up with against this view. I still don't really expect it to change in my lifetime though (in terms of what's legally allowed) just because of how massive a shift it would be.

[mapkkk]

Thank you, I appreciate you sharing your views on this.

Coincidentally, I've only recently learned of the Overton Window [0] which describes that the spectrum of acceptable ideas in a society is subject to shift.

[0] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window>

[DANmode]

Being an employee of Google doesn’t give them any sway over my board position at an animal rescue,

or anywhere else,

unless my contract and pay reflects that.

[sib]

Pretty sure that the agreement that Google employees sign (a "contract") when hired reflects exactly that. At least at did when I joined (I left > 3 years ago, speaking here only for myself...)

[DANmode]

Is it legal (or moral) for an employer to keep you from being a board member of a dog rescue or a glove repair company without review?

[radishingr]

The answer is not that it matters, but as a matter of financial and legal controls they need to know and approve. Do they care? They probably are delighted, but also want to get all the paperwork set up to avoid problems.

The space this comes from is the legal undue influence side where they need to give notice to shareholders about potential conflicts of interest, and it needs to be in the form of having a clear positive audit trail that they have told people to follow a clear policy with no grey area so that any deviation is an accident not willful failure to get people to tell them.

[altmanaltman]

Legally, yes. I mean it still depends on a lot of things but mostly at will employment contracts will have clauses about such things. You will have to get approval from legal before you can get on a board of even a dog rescue or a glove repair company. A practical consideration is simple like if you are a google exec and you are on board of a dog rescue company and that company gets hit with allgeations that you are just shooting all the dogs and selling their meat to some foreign nation. News will cover it as "Google Exec on Board of Evil Dog Rescue Company" so you extend that repuation risk to Google as well since you are actively employed there. Obviously an extereme example but that's the kind of logic they think of.

Morals imo often have nothing to do with law, but fairness does.

[DANmode]

> if you are a google exec

But that’s not who is being discussed. Why create a new topic?

If a low-level employee is part of a rescue accused of shooting all of the dogs, that’s just another day.

> News will cover it as "Google Exec on Board of Evil Dog Rescue Company" so you extend that repuation risk to Google as well since you are actively employed there

No problem with a standard morality clause in the contract, so they can pull the plug when you embarrass them.

I do have a problem with the idea that I need to check in with my employer every time I take a shit in my personal life.

[OkayPhysicist]

In California, no. Under Labor Code section 96(k), you generally cannot be disciplined or fired for engaging in legal outside of work activities. If they do, you can sue for lost wages.

[nl]

The obvious answer is that "obvious lines" aren't at all obvious at the scale of Google.

Googlers are well paid, and that pay reflects this.

[DANmode]

People said the same thing about non-compete agreements.

Sorry, not buying that’s for anyone’s good.

[usea]

Another way to frame that question is: Should we remove the right for people to enter into such contracts?

[saghm]

"Right" is a pretty dubious way of framing it when basically every company works this way. You don't really have any choice in the matter. Passing a law about this wouldn't be removing any rights of individuals any more than we "removed" their right to enter a contract for pay lower than minimum wage or with unsafe working conditions.

A more fair way of phrasing it would be to say that we should remove the right of companies to require it.

[rpigab]

Obviously a Hackernews thread on Google internal policy is related to Google (your employer).

[etruong42]

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 :)

[shaftway]

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.

[etruong42]

> 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.

[WheelsAtLarge]

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 it would have been hell for him. They also had a case for criminal fraud. All in all he's lucky he only got fired.

[fhub]

The director that did the announcement tweet may have provided some authority. He seems to have left Google voluntarily recently after 14 years.

[imtringued]

>They had a case for suing him for millions.

No they didn't. Any judge would laugh the big corporation out of the courtroom over this. The amount of evidence in favor of the employee would turn this into a frivolous lawsuit.

>Of Course, they wouldn't have been able to collect but it would have been hell for him.

You're assuming that an improbable event happens and are extrapolating from there. A more realistic case is that this is settled out of court simply to avoid involving the court, which is exactly what happened here: they fired him.

>They also had a case for criminal fraud.

No, they didn't.

I'm not sure in what alternative universe you're living in here.

[matheusmoreira]

> and then you have a random guy put out a self create product

Random guy? He was a Google employee. Looks like he was just doing his job.

> Google has spent billions to protect its reputation

Not sure billions are enough here, since Google's reputation is terrible in spite of it, and this episode certainly isn't helping.

[vintermann]

Are you suggesting Google's lawyers haven't done a good job at protecting Google's reputation? Watch out, you don't want to get sued by them!

[mewpmewp2]

Going for the little guy who wants to build cool stuff here would be the thing that makes them waste their billions on the wrong thing.

[nailer]

It’s a CLI for Google Workspace. Google Workspace is a genuine Google Product.

Edit reply to person below (sorry, rate limit):

> Just because you work for Google does not mean you can release products under their name.

Releasing open source projects that use company APIs is about 50% of the work of devrel staff. The rest is making content about what you and your customers did/could build.

[WheelsAtLarge]

Google Workspace is but the CLI is not. These are 2 related but different products. Had he just released it under his name then that wouldn't have been such a big issue, maybe, but he used the Google logo which implied it was Google blessed. If I did the same thing, they would have a case for suing me. Just because you work for Google does not mean you can release products under their name. Google spends countless of man-hours to make sure whatever product they put out is as good as possible. And support it on any issues that are found along the way. All companies protect their logo to a high degree simply because of the implications it has when people see it.

[whstl]

It was not released under his name. It is in Google's own googleworkspace Github Organization, alongside 57 other similar projects that consume from the same API.

The organization hosts repos shown here: https://developers.google.com/workspace/drive/api/samples

> Google spends countless of man-hours to make sure whatever product they put out is as good as possible

That's 100% not true for those kinds of projects. There's plenty of "not officially supported" projects in Google's Github.

[nailer]

Not complaining about the downvoting but everything in this comment is verifiable from the links you provided.

[whstl]

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.

[magicalist]

I mean, the GP is being overdramatic but releasing a vibe coded cli frontend for an official product in a google github org and that uses your google account credentials is a big deal no matter how unofficial you claim it is in the readme.

[dnfmfnfnfb]

This is extremely precedented. Google developer relations people do exactly that, all the time. Or at least they used to, all the folks I used to follow have left the company. You’ll find lots of open source projects in Google’s repositories which are just personal tools they built to scratch an itch, but are published under Google‘s name because that’s the preferred approach per their internal legal guidance.

I don’t know if this guy is telling the full story or not, I can see potential aggravating factors, but on the surface it’s a lot more reasonable than you’re letting on

[mewpmewp2]

To me the random guy comes off much more likable here than someone who has spent billions protecting its reputation and still failing.

[teitoklien]

You made a typo, it should be "Google spent billions eroding its reputation" [0]

[0](https://killedbygoogle.com/)

[frollogaston]

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

[frollogaston]

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.

[cdata]

Simply put: all work published to Google repos is implicitly affiliated with Google.

In my team's case we would include expectation-setting language in the README.md so that it was clear that the project was not an officially-supported Google product.

As far as I know, no-one ever lost their job for failing to set that expectation. A gentle correction from legal was sufficient to set the world right.

[frollogaston]

But there's an approval process to create such a repo under the Google name, right? I'm not seeing that he followed that.

[cdata]

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 person violated that process, it is an extreme consequence to fire them for that infraction.

[msm_]

>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.

[frollogaston]

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.

[magicalist]

Releasing vibe coded handling of google account credentials seems like the biggest problem with this.

Agreed it's gross if the big problem with execs was that it got social media buzz and it embarrassed official products or something.

[whstl]

The repo is still online and is official [1], so Google doesn't really seem to care about its existence.

[1] https://developers.google.com/workspace/drive/api/samples

[whstl]

This project is in an organization that has 57 other public repos with code by several other Google employees, is linked to by Google own documentation, and the only public member of the organization is (hopefully still) a Google employee.

Google has multiple Github Organizations that have all degrees of oficial-ness to it.

This is not someone releasing something in their private account and plastering Google logos over it.

[jrochkind1]

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

[wisty]

You don't need to work at google to have common sense. An employee who does no real damage isn't getting canned unless they made someone look bad.

Maybe he did some damage? Did it create a security issue, e.g. if someone handed it to a bad llm agent? Maaaaybe.

Or was someone up the food chain doing the same thing, wit2h 20x the budget and a 12 month timeframe and now looks stupid?

Or maybe it's a bit of both, or maybe how he reacted to being told off?

Anyway, I can't believe how many people are commenting how ABSOLUTELY you get fired for any tiny breach of policy, have they ever held down a job?

[saghm]

> Maybe he did some damage? Did it create a security issue, e.g. if someone handed it to a bad llm agent? Maaaaybe.

Evidently not enough damage that it's worth deleting the repo

[SpicyLemonZest]

It's true that it's rare to get fired for a tiny breach of policy, which is why I'm skeptical that the breach was so tiny as the post makes it seem. Corporate legal departments are busy, they do not generally go around grilling people (his words!) unless something's gone terribly wrong.

One obvious scenario where someone might be canned despite doing no real damage, and where legal might be forced to intervene, is if they made a knowingly false representation to obtain launch approval.

[reactordev]

Used to be part of Google’s culture until the AI wars and walled garden present we find ourselves in.

[kakwa_]

> 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.

[FabCH]

Yeah I think I he could have done a better job communicating in that thread that creating Workspace CLI was literally his job. He didn’t go rouge or didn’t follow the process.

He was officially Google DevRel and routinely created such tools in the past. It’s not crazy to assume that if you build 56 tools and everything was fine, 57th tool should be the same.

That massively changes the story in his favor.

[jameslk]

Most big companies attract rule followers. They err on the side of avoiding taking risks like this, which is why they work there (and why there’s so many in this thread talking about rules). It benefits big companies to have mostly rule followers because you can’t have a too many people going in different directions. You need stability and a unified direction, that usually comes from the rulers making the rules. The fewer rule breakers generally find their way to the top, or get canned

This employee’s decision to break the rules, while addressing a real need in the market, must have really pissed off some people above, for better or worse. Google could have just rolled with it but I’m sure it would have stepped on someone else’s plans. Career defining moment, but they didn’t have the political capital it seems. I don’t think they will have much trouble finding work elsewhere though

See also: Power: Why Some People Have It--And Others Don't

[radishingr]

Corporations have money and money attracts lawyers. Some discipline would have been required for the trademark stuff because you have to be very careful about it or lose your job.

Now, did something cause other issues that converted this from formal "don't do that, use the official process" and nothing more? Sounds like something caused this to escalate. It could be toes were stepped on, could be a bad reaction to the warning, or could just be wanting to cut employee numbers in a shortsighted way.

[NikolaNovak]

Fascinating!

First, to your point, I'm Not a googler or ex googler.

That being said, for what little may be worth, No company I worked for would be ok for me releasing unauthorized code to official public report with official logo and company name without some approval / discussion / disclosure, at whatever appropriate level that may be m. I'm curious, On your previous team, did your manager know and approve of open source publications? Team mates? Did they have names like "Google Hangouts X" and accompanying logos etc?

I guess what strikes me negatively and mutes my empathy is the "zero lessons learned" part of the tweet:

>>"I think the cause was that Workspace and certain leaders (and projects) were afraid of being disrupted"

I'm not quite silicon valley enough to use the word disrupted unironically, and certainly not self-unaware enough to proclaim that as the one and only reason for my misfortunes. I hope they and any family they have are ok. I feel if they had actual grievance with the firing, they should've gone through appropriate legal remedy. Twitter drama is just a zero-win game to me :-/

[mewpmewp2]

So if this is a case where they weren't legally in the right, but were morally in the right, which is far more subjective, it makes sense to go the Twitter route since if they were morally in the right people would support them while legal discourse not. So morally they had a cool idea, put a lot of imagination and effort into it, it's an idea that was valuable to people, and maybe a big corp was blocking them for egotistical or whatever reasons, to me it makes sense what they did. I don't know if that was the case, but if a corporation is forcing you to with legal means not do what is perhaps your life work and good value for the society, there must be way beyond legal to do it. But clearly the pettiness of the company is showing here, who cares if this confuses people a bit, there's many other good ways to solve the situation by Google.

[frollogaston]

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.

[mewpmewp2]

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 publish something as a new repository in their devrel github org if the release process is so vital for whatever reason.

Even if you have or had the legal right or whatever, it doesn't mean that you have to actually act on it. It speaks to some other sort of motivation to me.

[frollogaston]

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.

[frollogaston]

> I'm not quite silicon valley enough to use the word disrupted unironically,

Same. Especially next to Google, all I can think of is "serious consequences for disruptive behavior" which meant breaking into an exec's office to protest

[alexwwang]

The situation has been changed. Google is no longer the one it was.

[izacus]

Did you consider that the person might be just outright withholding information and not telling the whole story?

[khazhoux]

> I'm noticing a few commenters who work (worked?) at Google (inferred from comment history) who are critical of this person's actions.

Tangent: did you really go through people’s histories far back enough to find out they were googlers/ex-googlers? Did you use an agent to do that?

[blitzar]

How do you know that a HN commenter worked at Google - they will tell you.

[frollogaston]

If one Googler mentions anything about the past, another with supposedly longer tenure will come to call him/her not an OG original googler, and say that year wasn't the golden era of Google but an earlier year was

[neya]

> 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.

[LoganDark]

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 shareholder.

[neya]

> 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.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jul/26/apple-con...

    Apple told the Guardian: “A small portion of Siri requests are analysed to improve Siri and dictation. User requests are not associated with the user’s Apple ID. Siri responses are analysed in secure facilities and all reviewers are under the obligation to adhere to Apple’s strict confidentiality requirements.” The company added that a very small random subset, less than 1% of daily Siri activations, are used for grading, and those used are typically only a few seconds long.

> Apple didn't want your phone to shut off at 15% when the battery can't supply enough current to sustain full performance.

That's what they told you to believe. Every other manufacturer also had smartphones with batteries at the time and they were not doing this FYI. That was just marketing speak by Apple. Please stop citing marketing speak.

This is not the core issue, though. The core issue is not disclosing financial incentives while commenting something positive / negative.

[LoganDark]

How does that disprove anything I said?

> That's what they told you to believe. Every other manufacturer also had smartphones with batteries at the time and they were not doing this FYI. That was just marketing speak by Apple. Please stop citing marketing speak.

So? Apple could just be the only vendor that cares enough about older devices in the wild to ensure they continue to function properly. Keep in mind that this very issue, of shutting off before the battery is actually depleted, plagues all sorts of older Android devices. Also keep in mind that Android devices typically struggle to get updates for 2-3 years as opposed to Apple's norm of 5-7 years. This only changed recently for a few vendors.

> This is not the core issue, though. The core issue is not disclosing financial incentives while commenting something positive / negative.

Having opinions on something you're invested in is a big gray area in general. It tends to cause people to blanket ignore you.

[neya]

> How does that disprove anything I said?

>> 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.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jul/26/apple-con...

[LoganDark]

I read it again. Is that really spying? Is it spying that the activations were accidental, is it spying that they are grading them, or is it spying that sensitive data sometimes appears in recordings? Is it spying that the sensitive data ends up making its way to subcontractors? I don't get what makes this spying to you. All of the above?

[frollogaston]

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