3 ms·

Yeah this is super weird to me, because the processes at Google for employees to release and attribute ownership of open source projects are extremely clear and

Yeah this is super weird to me, because the processes at Google for employees to release and attribute ownership of open source projects are extremely clear and well established. It's genuinely hard for me to imagine this happening in a way that confused or caught the author off guard. 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.

QuantumGood 4mo ago
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 employee took the implication of consequences as being connected to ther actions as an aff(r)ont "They can just host it themselves"; "they can switch to another font/redesgin their site". When it was pointed out that the cause would not be known to most, and that budgets would have to be found to ferret out the cause and implement the solution, etc., etc., the Google employee stopped responding.
- bonsai_bar 4mo ago
  We take annual training that warns us against doing what this engineer did.
  - sleepybrett 4mo ago
    yes we all pay attention to 'the training'
    - sanderjd 4mo ago
      Again, I'm pretty skeptical that this person completely missed this part of the training for seven years.
      - deleted 4mo ago
        [deleted]
  - QuantumGood 4mo ago
    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.

QuantumGood 4mo ago

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 employee took the implication of consequences as being connected to ther actions as an aff(r)ont "They can just host it themselves"; "they can switch to another font/redesgin their site". When it was pointed out that the cause would not be known to most, and that budgets would have to be found to ferret out the cause and implement the solution, etc., etc., the Google employee stopped responding.

bonsai_bar 4mo ago
We take annual training that warns us against doing what this engineer did.
- sleepybrett 4mo ago
  yes we all pay attention to 'the training'
  - sanderjd 4mo ago
    Again, I'm pretty skeptical that this person completely missed this part of the training for seven years.
    - deleted 4mo ago
      [deleted]
- QuantumGood 4mo ago
  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.