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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
Especially that he's an "engineer" not a "Googler" or "a person."
God what a fall from grace.
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.
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.
Even if this person violated that process, it is an extreme consequence to fire them for that infraction.
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?
OP crank out a pretty decent and well received, by the community, product and get absolutely canned because they are well out of touch of how Google now works. You don't do risk (without reward) at Google and you certainly don't show a bit of ankle or look exciting. Google are well out of the market for being interesting (outside of the balance sheet and P&L for those who fetishise in accountancy.
Unfortunately: going viral isn't always a good thing as anyone who has experienced a nasty virus will attest.
I feel sorry for this person, but I would be surprised if this would have been okay at Google in the past 20 years. It wouldn't have been okay at any company I've ever worked at, big or small.
I think there's a valid argument that this started as a simple DevRel script or trick, but due to the way you can write a lot of code very quickly with AI it expanded to something that resembled a full-blown product.
Maybe uncharted territory as the previous assumption was that an individual DevRel person releasing scripts couldn't be mistaken for a supported product because one person couldn't produce that much code in the past.
Google can never be exciting or interesting evermore by design and intent. They dived on in and went "money" full on. They exist to generate revenue for their shareholders. They dumped the "Don't be evil" thing without blushing.
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.
1: https://opensource.google/documentation/reference/releasing/...
Why does the repo say "This is not an officially supported Google product."?
Is it actually approved by Google or not?
You need to actually answer these questions instead of dodging them.
Definitely they put some manager and/or team in a very uncomfortable position releasing this.
I don't know the legal situation, so maybe they felt like they had to do this to not face liability of some sort, but this feels like the wrong outcome vs e.g. having engineers rewrite it from scratch or move it to a less obviously google affiliated place.
You shouldn't use your employer's branding for unsanctioned projects, so Google is certainly well within their rights, but I think this is unnecessarily conservative vs someone who was trying to promote the employer's mission/products.
Imagine any leader that is not sundar trying to get this person fired. At some point, that leader would need to justify to either their leader, or a similarly leveled peer why they budgeted x SWE-years(where x is probably > 25) for a project that took this person far less than 1 SWE-year.
Clearing up the issue would take a single comment that all the correct processes were followed. The fact he hasn't said as much is the elephant in the room here.
This is not even an endorsement of those policies or of this action in enforcing them. I'm just saying it's very well documented there what you can and can't do and how to do things the "right" way. Lots of people understandable chafe at those rules, but the consequences of just saying yolo and ignoring them are fairly predictable...
But allowing customers and agents access to their data is the opposite of Google's purpose here. They fired him and took this down because they don't want to do good by their customers and their Google Workspace: they would rather limit and control how their Workspace products are used and force people to use Gemini.
We have a lot more people here who like bending rules as opposed to following them.
People like the OP, Justin Poehnelt, who build cool things out of self-motivation that others find interesting and want to use, are now at the mercy of those inside Google who care more about the company's internal bureaucracy and their own role and importance within it. To them, the fact that the OP's project was an instant github hit meant nothing.
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EDIT: Others here are saying that Justin released his code with Google's branding without asking for approval. If that's true, it wasn't right of him, and his firing was justifiable. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48650310 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48650192
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I like the law because you can quite easily formulate it without bias.
Large enough orgs will indeed get people whose job is more closely aligned with the goal vs people whose job is more closely aligned with the existence of the org. _Because_ you need to keep investing energy to keep the org in existence. You can’t just do the goal only.
But being responsible for keeping the org in existence is not the same as responsible for the goals that the org was created for in the first place.
_and_ I can see how the people whose job it is to ensure the org keeps existing will gain the majority vote.
It’s like a law of nature: the way things fall out if you’re not consciously working to have them fall out differently.
(So it can be good for google to fire them from a “let’s keep existing standpoint” even though it might be contrary to having the easiest/optimal to use product. And if that is so, the keep existing vote will have the power) I don’t use google products really that much so I can’t speak to the merits of this example.
But in the long term, we are all dead
Google has gone from encouraging 20% time (to create amazing projects like this) to firing people for doing it.
There seems to be some true maliciousness going on at Google. You have this, you have the open source Gemini CLI getting replaced with a shittier closed source Antigravity CLI, etc... etc... What is going on there?
In other words, he created an extremely official-looking product and released it in a way that made it look extremely official and blindsided everyone when suddenly there's a viral Google Workspace tool released by a Googler with Google branding that wasn't released by Google.
I'm not saying he should have been fired, necessarily, but he demonstrated _extremely_ poor judgement in doing this the way he did and put his manager and everyone else in an extremely awkward and uncomfortable position.
I think there is probably way more to this story - maybe he was told about the upcoming official use/variant and was asked to not preempt it before the cloud next conference with his one?
I actually thought when it was released that it was a pretty clever move by google in a sea of bad decisions but they've cleared that misapprehension right up.
How do you know that's true? Do you have information the rest of us don't?
Google may be a big bureaucracy now, but launch approvals and processes are there for a reason.
Good ideas are now risky because it steps on the toes of someone's fiefdom
1. Any work you do during company time/resources/equipment, is company property.
2. Anything public related to work, or that could be considered as competing or providing the service in the same space as work, needs to be vetted by the company.
Along with public communication, etc.
In my experience, this isn't some "what happens when MBA's run company" or "they run out of ideas", it's literally every company I've ever worked for.
Was google previously an exception here, or are people just unfamiliar with the details of the 20% policy? Surely they didn't allow you to work on, for example, something for a competitor? There had to be some limitations, rather than a pure free for all, as seems to be suggested in the comments.
Interesting. Did they read their contract before signing it?
If I released a tool personally that I hadn't told anyone at work about and put my company's logos all over it and it went insanely viral then I would expect an extremely uncomfortable conversation with my manager, his manager, HR, and at least one lawyer.
"Fired for making a thing" is different from "fired for not following the rules".
Hence many people are wondering if you released this without approval (that's my guess), if you used a Google repo to do it (from what I can tell you did use a google repo, but not an officially supported one, and other teams at google use this repo to publish code), and whether there were other extenuating circumstances, or if it was "the workspace SVP called my division's VP and told him to fire me" (just a guess for another firing mechanism).
>This includes side projects that have not gone through IARC, even for DevRel engineers.
So did you do this "Launcher2" or "Ariane" thing and get the approvals? If so, it seems your ass would be covered. If not...
I can sympathize that the process seems convoluted and could particularly bite a DevRel accustomed to more autonomy. One would hope Google would do the whole blame free retrospective thing and improve the systems.
Since I’ve never work at FAANG, does Google have strict procedures (and approvals) before launching a product? And if so, did this go through that process?
I worked at Google in the past, most recently ending in early 2015, and can confirm that the answer to this question was yes when I was there - presumably still the case today with different details.
I have no idea whether the procedures were followed in this case, nor do I have any other inside information on this story, nor am I speaking for Google or Alphabet here.
Everyone just launched tools internally, although it was pretty easy to get approval to launch something externally, although most people didn't bother. The environment back then had tons of internal tools all over the place.
It seemed to mostly work. Some people complained it was too slow, others seemed to manage fine.
I think Chris DiBonas’ team ran all of that.
Thank you for your work on the tool! Paired with a claude skill I wrote around it, it saves me a ton of time creating a logseq meeting note page for important meetings.
I wish you the best of luck landing somewhere that appreciates you a lot more than G did.
(edit: not saying that was the case here, working on devrel usually makes it part of your job to publish code)
I would never fire an employee unilaterally, especially over something like this, when there's valuable IP at stake and you can just talk the person into agreeing to sign over whatever it is you need.
“I think the cause was that Workspace and certain leaders (and projects) were afraid of being disrupted.”
Suggests that there is much more to it. I suspect it’s actually about disregarding Google’s internal processes (which is forgivable) and then demanding to work unilaterally (unforgivable). The amount of positive feedback may have given the author too much confidence that he could dictate to leadership what comes next.
A Google Workspace CLI is a useful project idea but it isn’t groundbreaking, it’s something that the Google Workspace team should be involved in. I suspect he just wanted go steamroll over them. Shipping stuff in a team is never about just producing the code.
So, something does not add up. It might be the story of the person fired. It might also be on the other side; that our external impression on what's been going on inside of Google needs to be re-adjusted, and this company will be a lot weaker in ten years than I would have originally estimated.
However, google is filled with personalities and egos and sometimes engineers are the collateral damage.
I'm guessing something more happened here. Maybe someone was displeased with how the author initially responded, or some powerful exec really wanted to make an example out of him (sounds like another group was working on an identically-named official product with the same name?), or they were just looking for an excuse to cut this particular role.
So what is this thing?
Can anyone rely on it with confidence?
Does Google even acknowledge its existence?
If it's not officially supported, why is your name, a (former) Google employee, on it?
> This is not an officially supported Google product.
Why was this project published under an account named "Google Workspace"? Google seems to want to have their cake and eat it too, same with the cli creator.
If you want to publish a project under open source and you are the sole creator/owner -> do it in your own time, under your OWN individual github account. Nothing good has ever come from ceeding control of these things to giant corporations who only care how much it will increase their profit next quarter.
Thats my experience at Apple. I even tried to ask for alternatives, mentors, etc. all denied by my one manager because I was reorged into their team and a new manager had something to prove. Directors who I talked to just shrugged their shoulders.
Leadership at these companies is pretty much shit. It’s not surprising something this happens at Google.
Companies could give zero f’s about you, how long you have been there, or what you have done or accomplished there.
Seriously. If you know you have a bad manager (you’ll definitely know) then you need to get the hell out asap. Don’t think if you tough it out it’ll work out. I lasted 5 years total and the last two years with this unnecessary insane stress caused by him. They will let you go after your dog suddenly gets cancer and they dont care you have a mortgage or need health insurance.
I’m sure there are good management out there, but not my experience and clearly not the experience of who posted this on x.
Management and leadership at these companies needs to fucking treat people that work for them like they care. At all.
But also, the worst managers I've ever had were at Google.
These people. Man.
This manager I had would also be hard to contact, he would schedule meetings on my calendar just to cancel them or change them last minute, all the time. He told me I would never be a software engineer even though I have 15 years experience. He denied me a mentor when I wasn’t too busy or on a pip or anything.
He started this stuff 3 months after be was promoted to management by his best friend. Who I learned from some other people that they have been friends since high school. He is protected by this guy and he controls his narrative better than anyone else.
But ultimately he’s a piece of shit. When I was reorged to this team with the product I worked on it was just me. My first manager told me on our last 1:1 that he fucking hated those people. So I dealt with that for more than 2 years.
I wanted nothing more in my career to work at Apple. And then after two different managers this guy gets promoted and immediately starts this and emailing me about things i didn’t do.
I had good to great performance reviews before him.
Now I have no job for more than half a year and am about to be on the edge of selling my house without somewhere to live. And I’ve applied at soooo many places and I have a great resume.
I enjoy tech but the job market is worse than ive experienced ever. And my beagle of 13 years passed. So it’s been a great year.
Look at the entire Bard-to-Gemini launch, and from my experience, Gemini's performance is slipping hard recently. Then you have the sheer scale of the Google graveyard. And finally, take a look at Youtube lately.
The company increasingly feels optimized for internal politics and corporate metrics rather than building the best possible products for real people. I guess this is why monopolies suck.
They monopolize opportunities, suppressing natural-born entrepreneurs; force us into very narrow roles and fire us if we step out of line ever to slightly. Even when it is beneficial to them.
IMO, we should get rid of trademark laws. They didn't mind their LLMs ripping off people's copyrights. Why should anyone uphold trademarks?
If I work at Google and want to represent myself as Google, I should be able to.
I feel like, even if I don't work at Google, I should be able to use the logo. It's the consumer's mistake for inferring a relationship. I'm just showing a logo of a well known company and letting their dumbass jump to a conclusion.
I suspect the core issue here is that he launched it with Google logos without following any sort of process
But regardless once escalated by legal there have been a process to mitigate this, so either the director fired the OP or someone higher. The direct manger would be not really in the decision making here. There is a clear path to release open source at G, and it seems it wasnt followed. The OP claimed that its confusing, but it isn't - usual the launch tool to get the approval and you covered your bases. If the OP didnt have all launch approvals after 7 years at G, wow thats on him. If the OP actually had all the launch approvals then he has an actually big case against G.
Launch approvals are for all product - internal and external, it usually requires L8+ (Director) levels approvals.
I guess we all get to continue trusting GAM (https://github.com/GAM-team/GAM) with an entire companies most precious data, instead of, I don’t know…Google?
If you do an end-run around the normal open source publishing you can get in trouble- up to and including termination- but my guess is there is more context around the firing than just "posted open source code to work with standard Google APIs". For example, you can get punished at google (up to and including termination) for raising your voice in a meeting.
And if you look at the history, the main maintainer for the project was really just one person.
Even today, the repo clearly says "This is not an officially supported Google product." So what is this?
If you told me the "googleworkspace" account is owned and controlled by this individual, not Google, I would have believed it.
Calling an idea nonsense is fine, calling it not profitable is great, and saying its a waste of time is a Monday. Attacking someone as a fucking moron is pointless, just fire them, deprioritize them, or move on.
> I think the cause was that Workspace and certain leaders (and projects) were afraid of being disrupted. But the fear wasn't specific to my CLI, it was a broader fear in what agents meant for Workspace.
Seems to me your management chain was thinking “Why the hell is someone on our team releasing a vibe-coded CLI that’s branded to look like an official API, when we’re 2 weeks from announcing the actual CLI??” If you didn’t know there was an official CLI in the works, that’s one thing, but if you did know then that’s pretty shitty to your teammates in Workspace and bad for users who would adopt one CLI (thinking it’s official) just to then see another one 2 weeks later.
Still, I would expect a talking-to and not an actual firing… but who knows what actually happened since you’re not responding to anyone. :shrug:
Some days I think it would be nice to be able to punch someone in the face through the screen.
Not to judge the feeling you express - I'm sure we can all relate. But as an HN comment it's pretty well guaranteed to turn the thread away from good places.
(* I suppose I'm more sensitive about this since the episode I wrote about here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48427800 ("in one case I saw"))
Trying to change that globally would amount to modifying human evolution. That kind of task you can't even call biting off more than you can chew; it's more the kind that bites you off, and then chews you in your entirety.
But that doesn't mean we can't do something at an individual level, and even a group level.
> You had my sympathy until you mentioned your healing. Now I know you were fired for being a pussy.
I was expecting some more substantial motivation for that but it's not even motivated by some weird disagreement about acceptable behavior at work, it's just this weird insanely toxic belief that taking care of yourself is "pussy behavior".
Also, see the last rule in the Guidelines
Said the HN community has become over time (sadly) more toxic like Twitter/X.
The moderation here is fine, though it can be questionable at times why there’s some post suppression on certain topics.
> I think the cause was that Workspace and certain leaders (and projects) were afraid of being disrupted.
I normally don't defend Google - this pure Evil should not exist. Degoogling is a holy act. But it is also kind of silly to create a project, attach Google logo etc... to it while working at Google. Or perhaps it was a genius move. Either way I am not entirely certain whether the description is as clear here. If it was an internal tool only, did it need a logo? If it was external, who would use it when a Google logo is attached? That's all very strange to me.
> But the fear wasn't specific to my CLI, it was a broader fear in what agents meant for Workspace.
That may be the case - Google lies to humans all the time. See when they killed ublock origin via fake "arguments" that were lies (killed it in the sense that the Google store crippled it: https://chromewebstore.google.com/search/ublock%20origin?hl=... - I just tried to find the old webpage on chrome webstore but the search results no longer show it, only alternative names that are fake projects. I should have bookmarked the old link, Google is REALLY so annoying. The world wide web needs to overcome its number #1 enemy here. Which is Google.)
Nah. Fuck Google. Reasonable humans would talk to him, fix it, and move on. They don't need you carrying an ounce of water.
Sucks for the author. Hope they land a good gig at a frontier lab.