A Google developer was let go after building a CLI for Google Workspace — a product Google itself doesn't offer.
Justin Poehnelt announced on social media that Google fired him, attributing the termination to his Google Workspace CLI project. Poehnelt had built the tool independently, giving developers a way to interact with Workspace from the command line. He attributed his dismissal directly to that project. No other cause was named.
The irony is hard to ignore: Google terminated an employee for filling a gap in its own product lineup. Workspace has long lacked a first-party CLI, and developer-built tools that scratch that itch have circulated for years — apparently without official blessing. When a company fires someone for doing unpaid product work that benefits the platform, it raises a fair question about where the line between side project and policy violation actually sits.
This is not the first time a tech giant has parted ways with an employee over a project that looked, from the outside, like a contribution rather than a threat. Whether Poehnelt's CLI competed with something in Google's roadmap or simply tripped a policy wire, the outcome is the same: the tool exists, the developer is gone, and the Hacker News crowd is noticing.