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cdata 14 minutes 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.
xnx 4 hours ago [-]
Yikes. The lack of judgement involved in personally releasing something that could be confused for an official release (I was confused) by your employer is someone who has huge wildcard risk in the future. I would expect significant disciplinary action if they didn't follow procedure, and termination if they were directly warned at any point.
gerdesj 50 minutes ago [-]
The real problem is that OP is or wants to be an old school disruptor working at what used to be an exciting and disruptive employer (but isn't any more - its just a boring old money maker).
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.
sanderjd 2 hours ago [-]
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.
jrochkind1 7 minutes ago [-]
I don't know what happened, but I'm not sure it was that. It sort of sounds like he thought it was an official project, until it wasn't.
@JPoehnelt:
> No, I was on the Workspace DevRel, we regularly create open source layers and abstractions over APIs.
ingvay7 3 hours ago [-]
Particularly for a company that possibly has to navigate high-volume, often frivolous litigation and brand attacks from trolls. I have been in similar situations having to partner with legal defending the most frivolous things on products released. You literally sign docs to not do such things when u onboard. Not sure what the point of broadcasting this is though.
ktm5j 3 hours ago [-]
Yeah that's kind of the impression that I had.. should have ran it past his superiors. Hope he learns something from this instead of deflecting like he seems to be doing.
3 hours ago [-]
justinwp 52 minutes ago [-]
You are assuming that it was "personally" releasing something and that the process wasn't followed.
cmeacham98 45 minutes ago [-]
You continue to dance around this question on this post - did you or did you not follow Google's open source approval process[1]? Did you have an approved Ariane/Launcher2 entry?
Did you have your launch approved? So did you follow the process?
busterarm 3 hours ago [-]
Not only that but not clearing with your management that you're not working on something that is actually being worked on as a product.
Definitely they put some manager and/or team in a very uncomfortable position releasing this.
jbm 4 hours ago [-]
Your ships would have been sunk during the 2002 Millennial challenge and an entire bureaucracy would defend you for the next 20 years.
zerobees 5 minutes ago [-]
It'd be a fairly major faux pas to release a "non-product" open-source project in a way that smells like a product, but I don't think it's an automatic firing offense in most of big tech, especially if you're just releasing some technical (CLI) tool. It's more of a "stern talking-to" situation.
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.
echoangle 4 hours ago [-]
Interesting that people here seem so sympathetic to the fired guy. Wouldn’t you kind of expect to be fired if you release a project under your employers name that’s not even associated with them and hasn’t been cleared? Working for them actually makes it worse because people could look up your name and would see that you actually work for google. It’s kind of obvious that this is a bad idea, right?
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.
genxy 32 minutes ago [-]
DevRel does generally get free reign to post stuff to github all the time. Many teams and projects do not have to comply with the standardized open source releasing process.
djeastm 60 minutes ago [-]
He seems to be a good coder with poor judgment. But I think it would be wiser to manage him better than to fire him so long as he recognizes what he did was wrong. I'm a bit of a softie for the clueless, brilliant coders, though.
Stevvo 56 minutes ago [-]
He doesn't recognize it. He claims in the post he was fired because certain leaders were afraid of being disrupted.
pydry 9 minutes ago [-]
This seems pretty plausible. This tool probably did threaten some product line or other with cannibalisation.
teraflop 44 minutes ago [-]
Where are you getting the information that this project hadn't been cleared? That seems like a big assumption, and I don't see anything in the linked tweet, or the replies, or any of the linked pages that supports it. Unless I missed something?
AOsborn 24 minutes ago [-]
He's being intentionally vague and combative in his statements. I think it's fair to assume there was a process issue when even as he admits he was "grilled by legal about why the Google logo and brand colors are on the Google Workspace GitHub code repositories".
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.
sanderjd 2 hours ago [-]
Yeah I'm struggling to believe that this person who worked at Google for 7 years was surprised by this outcome. Google has very clear processes for contributing to open source as an employee. I'm skeptical that this person never navigate to go/opensource (not remembering exactly the link, but it might literally be that) and read the policies there in that amount of time...
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...
jauntywundrkind 26 minutes ago [-]
I agree it's problematic, but I'm pretty sympathetic because it was an obvious and straightforward thing to do, whose benefit is incredibly obvious and good, that made sense. This should obviously be a thing, and not having it hurts customers of your products.
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.
jrochkind1 4 minutes ago [-]
It doesn't look like anything has been taken down.
throwaway23597 4 hours ago [-]
I tend to agree with you here. This is the equivalent of that scene in Better Call Saul where Jimmy makes a commercial without getting sign-off from the partners. It doesn't matter whether the thing worked - this is essentially a mutiny from the product roadmap.
56 minutes ago [-]
chaostheory 3 hours ago [-]
Ofcourse. This is HN and not LinkedIn.
We have a lot more people here who like bending rules as opposed to following them.
echoangle 1 hours ago [-]
You’re supposed to bend stupid rules but the one bent here is kind of important. I couldn’t trust an employee that does this, so I wouldn’t want to continue to employ them.
sanderjd 2 hours ago [-]
Yes, fair. I do feel like the twitter post walks this line a bit though, between "yes, I broke the rules, for a good reason!" which I think many of us here can probably respect to various degrees and "I don't understand what I did that was wrong".
lukewarm707 2 hours ago [-]
haha "liquidity in human capital" am i right?
cs702 4 hours ago [-]
Looks like a textbook example of Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy.[a]
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.
Google is worth $4+ TRILLION. There is natural and needed bureaucracy in preserving that. This type of probably well-meaning, but cowboy activity is not worth the risk to Google.
BLKNSLVR 54 minutes ago [-]
Sounds like exactly why they're now a lumbering ineffectual beast, rather than the center for innovation that they used to be.
jauco 3 hours ago [-]
You’re not disagreeing with gp.
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.
judge2020 4 hours ago [-]
Unlikely that the bureaucracy is what will keep them valuable in the long-term.
worik 3 hours ago [-]
Yes, very true
But in the long term, we are all dead
josefritzishere 3 hours ago [-]
How long is has a different answer for everyone.
overfeed 1 hours ago [-]
Google will likely outlast everyone walking the earth at this moment.
BrenBarn 4 hours ago [-]
Actually it means less than nothing, it's a negative, because it shows that working outside the system can be popular and potentially woo away users, which challenges the supremacy of the organization.
logicchains 4 hours ago [-]
People ask why Google's Gemini is falling behind the competition in spite of Google's immense resources, this kind of thing is an example why.
FuriouslyAdrift 4 hours ago [-]
the Antigravity AI suite is hugely popular among non-developers
stogot 4 hours ago [-]
So is every other AI tool
throwaway23597 4 hours ago [-]
Who is in charge of naming things at Google? Like a five syllable word followed by "AI", I couldn't think of a worse name for a product competing for mind share.
nickv 5 hours ago [-]
Yikes. I see Justin posted this, and I'm sure he can't say much - but this is an absolutely insane story.
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?
danudey 2 hours ago [-]
It sounds like a big part of why he was let go is that he created a work-related product, possibly using his '20% time' meaning he created it while at work, and then released it with Google branding and logos, all of which without clearing it with anyone at the company, while his name is attached to the company.
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.
dwroberts 45 minutes ago [-]
The branding and logo on the embed comes from the org it is attached to, which is an official GitHub organisation owned by Google and contains many other open source repositories.
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?
pydry 4 minutes ago [-]
Struggling to see how google was harmed by this but yea it's true he didn't dot the i's and cross the ts.
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.
jrochkind1 2 minutes ago [-]
> but yea it's true he didn't dot the i's and cross the ts.
How do you know that's true? Do you have information the rest of us don't?
dmazzoni 3 hours ago [-]
When has 20% projects ever been about bypassing every launch process and just posting your product publicly?
Google may be a big bureaucracy now, but launch approvals and processes are there for a reason.
notfromhere 4 hours ago [-]
its what happens when a company runs out of ideas and is mostly run by people with MBAs.
Good ideas are now risky because it steps on the toes of someone's fiefdom
lokar 4 hours ago [-]
There have always been lots of ideas. The issue is the management consultants and finance took over.
toomuchtodo 3 hours ago [-]
They’ve been GE’d.
ex-aws-dude 4 hours ago [-]
Maybe the policy is that you can’t just release 20% time projects publically?
nomel 4 hours ago [-]
I've never worked for an employer, from pizza delivery, to corporate intern, to multiple startup, to FAANG, that didn't have this VERY CLEARLY worded in the employment agreement, right up top:
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.
dekhn 36 minutes ago [-]
The policy was always crystal clear, but at the same time, tons of people found it confusing. "I wrote this at home on my personal computer in my free time? Why does google own it? how can that be legal" came up a lot. People would get into huge fights with OSPO over this.
woadwarrior01 46 minutes ago [-]
You're absolutely allowed to release 20% time projects publicly. As in any large bureaucracy, there's a process for that which is taught during onboarding. What you're not allowed to do is skip the process. There's nothing Google specific about it and I've seen similar firings at other companies too. Skipping legal and corp comms review on any external public communication is grounds for termination.
danudey 1 hours ago [-]
He released the product with Google branding making it look extremely like an official Google project, and then it went viral and blindsided everyone who would have been involved in creating or approving this kind of tool internally.
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.
justinwp 5 hours ago [-]
I am not going to share much more than what I already have, but I think this speaks to the experience of working in big tech and the disruption caused by AI both at the level of teams/roadmaps/incentives and changing user behavior.
anon84873628 4 hours ago [-]
It would help if you clarify whether you followed the OSS release process guidelines, which are very clearly documented.
"Fired for making a thing" is different from "fired for not following the rules".
Something in the explanation is missing here. It's still not clear to me from any of the provided context whether you got approval to release this. At least from my understanding of your role, if you had approval and used an official google repository, you would not get fired for merely publishing code that accesses a documented API through documented endpoints.
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).
computerdork 3 hours ago [-]
...By the way, on a different subject, 4 days ago, had read your comments on a different post dealing with Alzheimer's. Just now, asked you a follow up question, and it's easy for them to get buried in your hackernews comments threads, so thought I'd just mention it. Thanks!
anon84873628 3 hours ago [-]
Straight from that page:
>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.
pinkmuffinere 2 hours ago [-]
Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but it really sounds like you knew the policy in depth, and even contributed to the design of the policy, but when it came to your pet project you ignored it by skipping the release process? Am I missing something?
Ferret7446 3 hours ago [-]
The OSS release process has always stated that you can't use Google branding for a unilateral launch. You aren't making yourself look better
3 hours ago [-]
alberth 4 hours ago [-]
Sorry to hear your story.
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?
jkaplowitz 4 hours ago [-]
> does Google have strict procedures (and approvals) before launching a product?
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.
trollbridge 3 hours ago [-]
It was certainly the case for me back circa... I can barely remember, 2008/2009?
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.
Tomte 4 hours ago [-]
Their process is a well-known template other organizations look at when creating their own:
I’ve been gone a few years, but there was a process for contributing OSS code outside the company, and another for releasing company code externally, etc
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.
freedomben 4 hours ago [-]
Really sorry to hear about this. It's so ironic because your tool is something that made G workspace so much more useful to me personally and was a deciding factor in which calendar project I used. Getting fired for making a product more useful to customers is quite ironic.
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.
fragmede 4 hours ago [-]
I haven't been following along with your story closely so forgive me for asking you to repeat things that you've probably already said, but did they just fire you out of the blue or did they talk to you and it didn't go well?
danielodievich 3 hours ago [-]
5 years ago out of necessity I made a CLI around a private product API to manage something it wasn't making publicly, by reverse-engineering the API and complex logons and etc. It was very useful to ~ 100 people worldwide but it was enough of an audience. But I couldn't get any traction releasing it publicly until a distinguished engineer very far away from my org was in need of just this tool for his project. All of a sudden I got an innovation award from company leadership and legal fast tracked open-sourcing it. Pushing something like this out into public repo without legal review is suicidal.
3 hours ago [-]
arjie 4 hours ago [-]
The concerns seem to be primarily around trademark and logos? Unless there's more to it, those seem trivial to remedy by requiring removal of logos and renaming in the style of Clawdbot -> Moltbot -> OpenClaw. Google is well-known to be pretty sparing with firing people even for performance, so either this is a change in stance (entirely possible) or there's more to it.
cynicalkane 4 hours ago [-]
For over the last >1 year, Google has been dismissing people without warning or cause. The days where it was nearly impossible to be fired are over; now you might be severed by surprise for no given reason at all.
collabs 4 hours ago [-]
Anecdotally speaking, I have seen a change in behavior even from early 2024.
I was in a meeting (online) with a few people from Google shortly before Google IO about something fairly small. The technical engineer actually spoke(!) and he talked about revenue and stuff. I was dumbfounded that technical engineers at Google would ever care about "moving the needle".
stogot 4 hours ago [-]
Are you sure it wasn’t a “customer engineer” role?
lern_too_spel 4 hours ago [-]
I know many people at Google who have been waiting to get laid off to get better terms than they would from just quitting. Now they know what to do.
tonfa 4 hours ago [-]
People don't typically get a nice severance package if they're fired for violating company policy.
(edit: not saying that was the case here, working on devrel usually makes it part of your job to publish code)
trollbridge 4 hours ago [-]
Firings like this often include a technically voluntary separation agreement that gives you a few extra weeks' pay or some additional months of health benefits etc. precisely to avoid that problem. (Also gets them out of paying unemployment, and means they can get a fresh set of NDAs/nondisparagement etc. signed with the employee.)
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.
manwithopinions 4 hours ago [-]
I think that’s a good instinct but this line…
“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.
squidi 2 hours ago [-]
Justin’s blog is the consistently the best resource for Google Apps Script content and he genuinely seemed to connect with the platform. He always stood out, as Googlers don’t typically seem to connect with anyone/anything.
827a 3 hours ago [-]
IMO: If the project leverages Google branding or authority improperly, then it shouldn't be on github and should not be under active development by Google employees; yet it is. If Google is suddenly alright with the way the project leveraged Google branding and authority, then the cause for firing the original developer, especially given Google's famously lax stance toward 20% projects and internal open source, is a lot weaker. In other words: Healthy companies do not fire individuals simply for breaching branding guidelines in a way that is ultimately beneficial and looked favorably upon by the company. That's literally just not a thing that happens; at worst you get a reprimand, and in many healthy companies you'd actually get a promotion.
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.
dekhn 32 minutes ago [-]
There are more than a few plausible scenarios here. I've been inside google and I've seen other "i was fired" posts before. almost always, there is some additional context which gets left out. For example, I could see a path where the author wrote the code, got approval, published it, and then another part of the company (workspace) found out and wanted to use the same space/place or another place to publish their "competing but official" system, and the author refused (programmers are notorious for this) to take down his code when asked, at which point any number of different paths could lead to the employee being fired for not complying.
However, google is filled with personalities and egos and sometimes engineers are the collateral damage.
Do not use the brand without permission is taught on Day 1. Who can give you permission, not so much.
qsxfthnkp2322 2 hours ago [-]
At big tech you do what your piece of shit manager wants you to do (assuming you have one of the typical big tech managers). That’s all you are allowed to do.
Thats my experience at Apple. I even tried to ask for alternatives, mentors, etc. all denied by my one manager because I was reorged into their team and a new manager had something to prove. Directors who I talked to just shrugged their shoulders.
Leadership at 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.
dekhn 2 hours ago [-]
A long long time ago, Google management cared more about its employees. I saw folks with cancer who were not fired (even though they couldn't work) to keep them access to healthcare. And a coworker whose parachute did not deploy and was brain damaged- my manager spent hours on the phone calling his parents in Iran, arranging special health care, etc. Intrinsic motivation- making a new product out of nothing- was incentivzed, not punished (unless you leaked code intentionally).
But also, the worst managers I've ever had were at Google.
qsxfthnkp2322 1 hours ago [-]
The good days of tech are over due to people like this who have a stronghold in management.
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.
This reminds me of how the founders of the so-called 'open source' cryptocurrency project I joined suppressed my work in the community.
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.
xendo 4 hours ago [-]
Around that time I built a CLI to access and manage monitoring cameras that my company is selling. After giving a demo to my leadership I strongly adviced against releasing it to public. Giving agents access to some stuff is bad for customers.
OJFord 4 hours ago [-]
I don't get it – you called the GitHub org 'googleworkspace' and used the Google logo? Presumably without permission? Don't Googlers regularly open-source side projects under the official org(s)? Did you really think this was going to be fine, or was it 'growth hacking' with tougher consequences than expected?
dekhn 4 hours ago [-]
I believe it's an official or semi-official Google github org. Typically at Google there is some process you are supposed to follow when opensourcing your code, and a repo like this exists specifically to get more people to use the API. The CLI still exists at the repo and the repo still has the Google branding, so it's 99% certain this is a Google repo.
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.
OJFord 3 hours ago [-]
Ah ok, that makes a lot more sense. Makes it a lot less clear why he was fired, but his side as told makes more sense at least!
fragmede 4 hours ago [-]
Yes, berating a coworker for being a fucking moron is unacceptable in corporate America.
hilariously 4 hours ago [-]
The truth is that in decent workplaces we've figured out attacking people doesn't generally get what you want, unless what you want is to have a tantrum.
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.
firefax 4 hours ago [-]
So... they fired him for doing a 20% time project? I'm glad I don't have any of their stock to sell, what terrible management.
sanderjd 2 hours ago [-]
Not for doing it, for releasing it publicly, presumably without permission. (If he did have permission, he probably has a pretty good case to bring.)
outside1234 4 hours ago [-]
20% time project != able to just launch it YOLO style
I suspect the core issue here is that he launched it with Google logos without following any sort of process
sourdecor 4 hours ago [-]
Yeah, endorsement matters. It can represent the whole. You have to be careful with it.
ex-aws-dude 4 hours ago [-]
That would be dumb but I don’t think it should result in firing still
sanderjd 2 hours ago [-]
Maybe it should not, but when I worked there, I certainly knew something like this probably would. At least, if it blew up and drew a lot of eyeballs.
free652 4 hours ago [-]
2 months later, I think we can assume some kind of process behind that didnt go well for our friend here.
dolmen 3 hours ago [-]
It looks like he wants his former manager to be fired too. This only gives bad signals to hiring teams.
free652 2 hours ago [-]
His manager would the first line manager, and really not a decision maker at G. it possible that his manager would put him under a bus after getting called out by legal. Dunno.
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.
ex-aws-dude 2 hours ago [-]
Yeah there is always more to these stories
Ferret7446 3 hours ago [-]
I'd guess he was fired for refusing to comply after legal talked with him
testfrequency 4 hours ago [-]
Very lame of Google.
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?
elzbardico 4 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
_doctor_love 4 hours ago [-]
Wow...one of the comments on there says "now I know you were fired for being a pussy."
Some days I think it would be nice to be able to punch someone in the face through the screen.
dang 4 hours ago [-]
Can we please focus on thoughtful conversation instead of importing the worst comments from other forums*?
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.
Agreed. You've probably noticed this too, but I think 90% of the very dumb, mean spirited, and inflammatory things I see are from someone purporting to dunk on it, or refute it, or tell us how it made them mad. Its probably the main mechanism by which is spreads. I think a lot of people do it organically, but I also think coordinated marketing campaigns will intentionally post things as if they're in opposition because its such an effective mechanism of spreading it. TLDR rage bait is bad don't fall for it!
dang 27 minutes ago [-]
It's the way the human psyche works, which is why the second-order versions from marketers, media, etc., exist in the first place.
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.
15 minutes ago [-]
solid_fuel 4 hours ago [-]
I think the full text of that is even worse:
> 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".
shevy-java 4 hours ago [-]
It's twitter right? Ever since a billionaire bought it it went downhill.
konart 4 hours ago [-]
This is host most of the internet is in general.
testfrequency 4 hours ago [-]
HN is slowly starting to feel this way also, sadly
verdverm 4 hours ago [-]
HN still has the best mods (official and community)
Also, see the last rule in the Guidelines
testfrequency 4 hours ago [-]
The one that says don’t compare HN to Reddit?
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.
websap 4 hours ago [-]
This is what happens when companies are run by boomers who care more about building their orgs, instead of doing hard cutting edge engineering work.
Sucks for the author. Hope they land a good gig at a frontier lab.
shevy-java 4 hours ago [-]
> getting grilled by legal about why the Google logo and brand colors are on the Google Workspace GitHub code repositories.
> 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.)
jasonlotito 4 hours ago [-]
> But it is also kind of silly to create a project, attach Google logo etc... to it while working at 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.
trollbridge 3 hours ago [-]
Yeah, the reasonable thing here is a stern talking-to about company policies, and then leveraging this thing to get more goodwill in the community about AI, which is an area Google is currently lacking in.
Ferret7446 3 hours ago [-]
He probably got that talking to, and continued to be stubborn and unapologetic. Getting fired is quite difficult, as there will be multiple attempts at resolving any issue.
bigstrat2003 1 hours ago [-]
Google is sorely lacking in goodwill, period. I don't know why this guy got fired, and I don't expect we ever will know the whole truth. But even so this seems like a very foolish PR move for Google. Rightly or wrongly people are going to take his side, and they can't really afford to burn goodwill with their customers.
4 hours ago [-]
speak_plainly 4 hours ago [-]
Google seems to be filled with really talented people, technology, and every resource anyone would ever need, but their execution and management seems to be severely lacking. This account is a pretty damning indictment of Google.
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.
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.
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.
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.
https://xcancel.com/dpetrou/status/2069503267210404262#m
@dpetrou: > 20% project?
@JPoehnelt: > No, I was on the Workspace DevRel, we regularly create open source layers and abstractions over APIs.
1: https://opensource.google/documentation/reference/releasing/...
Definitely they put some manager and/or team in a very uncomfortable position releasing this.
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.
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.
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.
--
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
---
[a] https://jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html
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.
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.
https://opensource.google/documentation/reference/releasing
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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?
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.
Sucks for the author. Hope they land a good gig at a frontier lab.
> 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.
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.