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Comment by qmarchi | Hacker News Reader

Former Googler here, and one that has open-sourced projects while working in Cloud.

This is certainly not the case in other product areas and for specifically for something that uses the Google name.

If I was expected to go through a full IARC committee in order to get my little Discord bot open sourced under my own account, something that uses the Google name would likely have to get IARC + Legal approvals, along with a proper launch/privacy review.

The OP also notes that they had a competing product in the process of development when they "launched" theirs, likely leading to significant internal confusion, and is something that would've been caught during a review.

I'm gunna be real, this whole thing smells of "I'm purposely bit telling the whole truth" and looks like clout chasing.

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Google contains multitudes. I don't doubt that your personal experience was the opposite end of the spectrum from mine.

I maintain that firing is an extreme resolution here (taking the claims at face value of course). Surely this employee has demonstrated the capacity to deliver impact and could be redirected if properly incentivized.

As a Xoogler you should know that the "impact" they want is, making leadership look good, what you shipped or even whether or not you shipped is nigh irrelevant.

This did the opposite, didn’t it?

Create a product that people loved? This could have been redirected to make leadership look good. This event demonstrates that impactful products can be extremely polarizing - you could become the hero or the villain or a bit of both. You can no longer be a quiet contributor.

I don't see anything about the product that made Google leadership look bad? I don't see that anyone else external to Google thought so either, before they fired him? Firing him makes them look bad, however.

Shipping a personal project right before they were going to announce an official tool at Google IO seems like a bad idea.

So it was done on the clock as a project at Developer Relations team, I don't know if that should be called a personal project or not, maybe, it does seem Developer Relations projects could be one person's idea and execution, but just to be clear on what happened.

It was released 2 and a half months before Google IO.

The way I read this, they decided to announce it at Google IO because of the attention the project released by the Developer Relations team got. No one with inside knowledge has said the "official tool" (not from Dev Relations) was already planned when it was released. Maybe it was. Maybe a guy on the Dev Relations team would or should have known it was if it was. Easy for me to believe it was not however.

"Google contains multitudes"

It does not contain people who flout Google's privacy, security, or intellectual property policies. Those people are, quite rightfully, un-contained from Google with speed they can't muster for anything else in the company.

It's weird that he even had the ability to create public repos inside the official Google Workspace org then. That said, I agree that some information seems to be missing. Like, why not instead fire the guy who announced the project on X and who I presume is his manager? Confusing.

The manager, Addy Osmani, also reportedly left Google, which is interesting.

Also more interesting is the fact the repository is still alive and kicking.

I can see Google firing the dev but HR/Legal giving a bogus reason, as is regular practice.

Interesting. I did a bit of digging and the disclaimer about not being an officially supported Google product was there from the start. There was briefly a logo that used Google colors[0] but it seems extreme to fire someone over such a small misstep. I'd say either HR gave him a bogus reason like you said or he's not telling the whole story.

[0] https://github.com/googleworkspace/cli/blob/1991d536b4a45e60...

> This is certainly not the case in other product areas and for specifically for something that uses the Google name.

Sure, but it's a slap on the wrists. It seems like an extreme reaction.

> 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.

Again, they could have just asked them to retire theirs in favour of the official one. Rather than be a problem, it could have been an opportunity.

> ...likely leading to significant internal confusion...

Bonus-promotion disruption.

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