1018: Google fires Workspace CLI Creator

**Scott Tolinski** (0:00)
So I didn't get fired, but I quit soon after that, but it's just the red tape of large corporations.

**Wes Bos** (0:05)
I think that them firing this guy was a big loss.

**CJ Avilla** (0:09)
To me, that initiative is a positive trait, and you should harness that rather than being like, all right, you're out.

**Wes Bos** (0:17)
I think a lot of them are just like, let's get as many paying customers in the door right now, and we'll worry about the profitability in the coming months as we IPO.

**Scott Tolinski** (0:35)
Welcome to Syntax, welcome to Syntax Weekly, your weekly live show here with the Syntax crew. This week, we're gonna be talking about how Google fired the Workspace CLI creator. Also, GPT 5.6 is coming. We're gonna tell you all about it. Astro 7 was rewritten in Rust, and we've got a lot of other fun stuff to share with you as well. Today, I am joined by Scott and Wes. Scott, how are you doing today?

**CJ Avilla** (1:01)
Me, I'm doing good, man. Doing good.

**Scott Tolinski** (1:04)
Nice.

**CJ Avilla** (1:05)
Yeah, just chilling, big chilling. In fact, Wes and I were just talking about, in the summer, the AC absolutely freezes the first level of the house, and the second level gets boiling hot. I mean, I'm literally chilling, literally freezing in there.

**Scott Tolinski** (1:21)
Yeah, same thing. What about you, Wes, how are you doing?

**Wes Bos** (1:23)
Yeah, freezing out as well, but stoked to be here, stoked to talk about all the crazy stuff that's been going on the last week, lots to talk about.

**Scott Tolinski** (1:31)
Definitely. So if you're watching us live, throw a message in the chat, say hello. Also, if you have more news to share that we don't cover, throw it in the chat, we'll be talking about that at the end of the episode.
Without further ado, I think we should jump right in. Wes, what do you got for us?

**Wes Bos** (1:47)
Yes, this is kind of a crazy one. So Justin Ponout, who was a creator of the Google Workspace CLI. So a couple of months ago, Google seemingly put out a CLI to interact with Google Workspace, meaning that you can interact with your calendar, your email, all of the Google Workspace products. And at the time when it had launched, everybody was like, finally, this is exactly what I want. I want a CLI that I can give to my agents to be able to interact with all of my Google products. And I posted about it, over a million on my own, my own post alone. Like that's how big this was. It was just like everybody was freaking out about it. And they released it. They released it on the like official Google Workspace GitHub.
And when I had posted it, everybody's like, this is not officially supported. And it was really weird. Like everyone was like, this replying, it's not officially supported, but it's like on the Google Workspace thing. Adios Mani posted about it. Like he's like announcing the CLI from Google.
And like he was working in an AI role at the time at Google. So like it seemed like it was official and everybody was really happy with it. I used it, it worked really well. However, it seems like the guy very shortly after, Justin who built this thing was canned and Google had fired him. So he posted on Twitter, two months ago, he was fired by Google for creating the Google Workspace CLI. It went viral, et cetera, et cetera. I think the cause was that Workspace and certain leaders and projects were afraid of being disrupted. The fear wasn't specific to my CLI. It was a broader fear in what agents meant for Workspace. Either way, the irony of my termination, the announcement at Google Cloud Next two days before I was fired and the official Workspace. Oh, sorry. Am I not sharing my screen here?
I am the worst live streamer ever.

**Scott Tolinski** (3:50)
Professional live streamers out here.

**Wes Bos** (3:52)
Professional live streamer. Here we go. Here's the post.
So he basically said they announced their own version of the CLI at the time. And it's kind of interesting. Everybody was freaking out being like, why would Google do this? This guy, he was like a dev rel for Workspace. And he saw that people had a need of like, I want to be able to interact with it.
There were some third party things out there at the time, but there was no nothing that was like official, basically the entire Google SDK, but in a CLI. So he obviously made one up and released it to everybody. And then he got fired for that, which everybody's like, why would you do this? He obviously saw a need for this and put it out there. And I think there's kind of like two ways that, like why this happened, right? Like there's one which is like, he just said like the, internally at Google, there's like just like smaller businesses and they're all fighting for their thing. And if somebody comes around and makes a product that wasn't officially blessed or like changes how their job, you know, like at big companies, people internally are always just fighting for whatever it is that they want. And they don't necessarily care about like the end product, which is the consumer. I certainly think that happens inside of Google. And then the other aspect people are saying is like, you just can't make stuff and release it under officially under Google. And like there's processes and apparently this wasn't actually approved. So maybe just by not following that is one of the reasons why he was canned as well. I don't know. What do you guys think?