alt Hacker NewsFired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI
Comments
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.
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?
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.
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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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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?
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.
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.
Great that it was available, but compared to Peter's version this one is inferior. It didn't have draft email as a default and asking it to write a draft would just send the email, oops lol. And doesn't have mutli-account support or a number of other features. I think one thing it could do better was inline commenting (maybe), but neither CLI can initiate their own comments...
Gog cli - https://github.com/openclaw/gogcli
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.
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.
On the plus side, this is the best marketing ever for a new job. "I'm the guy Google fired for making a workspace CLI". Keep on getting rid of your talented dedicated people, Google, we'd love to hire them.
You would think the devrel would be more familiar with OSS policies than anyone else.
Something about their LinkedIn job title at Google ("Developer Relations (Mostly SWE)" also reads odd.
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.
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.
Usable link for anyone else without a twitter account: https://xcancel.com/JPoehnelt/status/2069482265953087602
The repo clearly says "This is not an officially supported Google product."
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?
Yes. While they may have been justified in firing him for not following policy, they also lost a talented engineer. (I'm sure they don't care) I would have done the intelligent thing here and looked at how the project could have been made official. But that decision would have had to been made at a very high level, maybe even the CEO, because anyone lower down would have made a narrow and parochial decision in favour of the org they were protecting, rather than in the best interests of the company.
Do not use the brand without permission is taught on Day 1. Who can give you permission, not so much.
How foolish creating something of value while under the foot of such evil
Doesn’t appear to be at feature parity to GAM yet. https://github.com/GAM-team/GAM/wiki
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.
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.
Former Google employee here. This is exactly the kind of shit-for-brains action I'd expect from Google executives. Bravo on further dragging your image through the mud.
How do the permissions work on Googles GitHub orgs where this guy could somehow create an unapproved public repo. I work for a MUCH smaller org and creating a repo at all requires review, creating a public repo many times more so.
In the README
> 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.
I remember when Google was a bit rogue, full of brilliant people developing awesome things.
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.
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?
I see justinwp is commenting here… Justin, people are asking questions that you’re not replying to. Sorry, but it’s pretty disingenuous to tweet your story and post it here, but then refuse to answer requests for more info.
> 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:
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?
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.
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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.
> 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.)
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.
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.
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.