What Happened to Justin Poehnelt?

Justin Poehnelt, a Senior Developer Relations engineer at Google, developed an unofficial yet highly popular Command Line Interface (CLI) for Google Workspace, known as `gws`. The tool, designed for both human operators and AI agents, gained significant traction, topping Hacker News and accumulating thousands of GitHub stars and users. In April 2026, after nearly seven years at Google, Poehnelt was dismissed from his position.

The circumstances surrounding Poehnelt's firing are complex and have sparked considerable debate. Google's legal department reportedly raised concerns about branding issues, specifically the use of Google's logo and brand colors on a Google Workspace GitHub repository without proper internal approval. Critics on platforms like Hacker News acknowledged that releasing such a project without going through brand approval could be a policy violation. However, Poehnelt himself believes the underlying reason was a deeper anxiety within Google Workspace teams about the disruptive potential of AI agents, which his CLI was explicitly designed to facilitate. He stated that the fear "wasn't specific to my CLI, it was a broader fear in what agents meant for Workspace".

A critical turning point was the timing of his dismissal. Poehnelt was fired approximately two months after his `gws` CLI went viral. Adding to the irony, just two days before his termination, Google Cloud Next announced the upcoming official release of its own Workspace CLI. This juxtaposition highlighted the tension between internal employee-driven innovation and corporate product strategy, especially in the rapidly evolving AI landscape. The project was not a "20% side project" but part of his team's regular job in Workspace Developer Relations, which builds open-source layers over Google's APIs.

Poehnelt's public sharing of his experience on X (formerly Twitter) garnered over 2.6 million views, drawing widespread attention to the incident and igniting discussions across the tech community about employee side projects, intellectual property, and the management of innovation within large corporations. The event also underscored a broader trend of internal governance tension in the U.S. tech industry, where companies are grappling with the implications of AI agents and often reallocating resources towards officially controlled projects, sometimes leading to talent outflow.

As of June 24, 2026, Justin Poehnelt is no longer employed by Google. He has publicly discussed his experience, framing it as part of his personal story and healing process. Despite his dismissal, the Google Workspace CLI (gws) project he initiated remains active, and Google Cloud director Addy Osmani had previously promoted it as "built for humans and agents". The incident continues to serve as a case study in the ongoing challenges faced by tech giants in balancing innovation, employee autonomy, and corporate control in the age of AI.