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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 discl

by cdata 3mo ago

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.

reactordev 3mo ago
Used to be part of Google’s culture until the AI wars and walled garden present we find ourselves in.
frollogaston 3mo ago
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 3mo ago
  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 3mo ago
    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 3mo ago
      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.
      - magicalist 3mo ago
        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 3mo ago
        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 https://developers.google.com/workspace/drive/api/samples
        magicalist 3mo ago
        It's a fair point that it's still up, though looking just now for two minutes there are at least some issues with auth[1] which would make me really not trust it. It was just speculation about what could be bad enough if they really did have permission to release it, but the OP is being so cagey below now I'm just wondering if they got release permission but misrepresented what they would be releasing or something. > and is official [1] FWIW no idea what you're trying to point out on that page unless you mean the one link to a different project in the same github org indicates the org is official, but that never seemed in doubt in this thread of comments. [1] https://github.com/googleworkspace/cli/issues/780 https://github.com/googleworkspace/cli/issues/780
- whstl 3mo ago
  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 3mo ago
  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 https://github.com/googleworkspace/cli [2] https://github.com/googleworkspace https://github.com/googleworkspace [3] https://github.com/googleworkspace/redriveapp https://github.com/googleworkspace/redriveapp
bonsai_bar 3mo ago
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)
- financltravsty 3mo ago
  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.
  - financltravsty 3mo ago
    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.
    - debo_ 3mo ago
      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 3mo ago
qmarchi 3mo ago
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 3mo ago
  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 3mo ago
    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?
    - etruong42 3mo ago
      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.
    - jrochkind1 3mo ago
      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.
khazhoux 3mo ago
> 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 3mo ago
  How do you know that a HN commenter worked at Google - they will tell you.
  - frollogaston 3mo ago
    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
jameslk 3mo ago
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 3mo ago
  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.
WheelsAtLarge 3mo ago
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.
- nailer 3mo ago
  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.
  - magicalist 3mo ago
    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 3mo ago
      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
  - WheelsAtLarge 3mo ago
NikolaNovak 3mo ago
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 3mo ago
  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 3mo ago
    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.
neya 3mo ago
> 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 3mo ago
  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 3mo ago
    > 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-contractors-regularly-hear-confidential-details-on-siri-recordings 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.
    - 3mo ago
izacus 3mo ago
Did you consider that the person might be just outright withholding information and not telling the whole story?
wisty 3mo ago
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 3mo ago
  > 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 3mo ago
  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.
alexwwang 3mo ago
The situation has been changed. Google is no longer the one it was.
FabCH 3mo ago
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.
etruong42 3mo ago
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 3mo ago
  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 3mo ago
    > 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.
kakwa_ 3mo ago
> 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.

by cdata 3mo ago

reactordev 3mo ago

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

frollogaston 3mo ago

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 3mo ago
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 3mo ago
  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 3mo ago
    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.
    - magicalist 3mo ago
      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 3mo ago
        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 https://developers.google.com/workspace/drive/api/samples
        magicalist 3mo ago
        It's a fair point that it's still up, though looking just now for two minutes there are at least some issues with auth[1] which would make me really not trust it. It was just speculation about what could be bad enough if they really did have permission to release it, but the OP is being so cagey below now I'm just wondering if they got release permission but misrepresented what they would be releasing or something. > and is official [1] FWIW no idea what you're trying to point out on that page unless you mean the one link to a different project in the same github org indicates the org is official, but that never seemed in doubt in this thread of comments. [1] https://github.com/googleworkspace/cli/issues/780 https://github.com/googleworkspace/cli/issues/780
whstl 3mo ago
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 3mo ago
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 https://github.com/googleworkspace/cli [2] https://github.com/googleworkspace https://github.com/googleworkspace [3] https://github.com/googleworkspace/redriveapp https://github.com/googleworkspace/redriveapp

bonsai_bar 3mo ago

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)

financltravsty 3mo ago
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.
- financltravsty 3mo ago
  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.
  - debo_ 3mo ago
    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 3mo ago

qmarchi 3mo ago

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 3mo ago
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 3mo ago
  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?
  - etruong42 3mo ago
    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.
  - jrochkind1 3mo ago
    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.

khazhoux 3mo ago

> 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 3mo ago
How do you know that a HN commenter worked at Google - they will tell you.
- frollogaston 3mo ago
  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

jameslk 3mo ago

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 3mo ago
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.

WheelsAtLarge 3mo ago

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.

nailer 3mo ago
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.
- magicalist 3mo ago
  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 3mo ago
    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
- WheelsAtLarge 3mo ago

NikolaNovak 3mo ago

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 3mo ago
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 3mo ago
  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.

neya 3mo ago

> 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 3mo ago
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 3mo ago
  > 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-contractors-regularly-hear-confidential-details-on-siri-recordings 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.
  - 3mo ago

izacus 3mo ago

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

wisty 3mo ago

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 3mo ago
> 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 3mo ago
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.

alexwwang 3mo ago

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

FabCH 3mo ago

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.

etruong42 3mo ago

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 3mo ago
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 3mo ago
  > 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.

kakwa_ 3mo ago

> 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.