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Posted by justinwp 2 days ago

Fired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI(twitter.com)
https://xcancel.com/JPoehnelt/status/2069482265953087602
715 points | 421 commentspage 7
spacebacon 2 days ago|
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tomsop 2 days ago||
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transformerash 1 day ago||
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elzbardico 2 days ago||
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_doctor_love 2 days ago||
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dang 2 days 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.

(* 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"))

_doctor_love 2 days ago|||
You bet. I got triggered.
dang 2 days ago||
Appreciated!
_doctor_love 1 day ago||
Welcome! These are trying times generally and it's on all of us to try and be the change.
tracerbulletx 2 days ago|||
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 2 days 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.

solid_fuel 2 days 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".

dlahoda 2 days ago|||
I reported it to Twitter as violation of it terms with relevant category.

Twitter said naming people Pussy is fine.

shevy-java 2 days ago||
It's twitter right? Ever since a billionaire bought it it went downhill.
testfrequency 2 days ago|||
HN is slowly starting to feel this way also, sadly
verdverm 2 days ago||
HN still has the best mods (official and community)

Also, see the last rule in the Guidelines

testfrequency 2 days 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.

konart 2 days ago|||
This is host most of the internet is in general.
websap 2 days 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.

xendo 2 days 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.
shevy-java 2 days 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.)

efreak 16 hours ago||
The logo isn't attached to the project. The logo is attached to the organization, run by Google (presumably), that Google (presumably) uses to distribute software made by employees.
jasonlotito 2 days 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 2 days 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 2 days 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 2 days 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.
bonsai_bar 2 days ago||
Doesn't seem like many are taking his side based on this thread.