Reflecting on my time on Firebase and Google
I’m writing this on my flight back to San Francisco from Bengaluru where I met with devs at I/O Connect. It was my first trip to India and I regret waiting this long to make it.
This is also my last workday on Firebase＆at Google. I start a new role on Monday, so this is a perfect moment to reflect on 9½ years of 🔥
I “discovered” Firebase like many early adopters with its April fools joke in 2012. They’d taken an Asteroids game and made it massively multiplayer, all in just client-side code. Sure the gameplay wasn’t great, but as a tech demo it was impressive.
Firebase (Realtime Database) was in a closed beta at the time, and you had to enter a reason why you wanted to join.
I entered “because I can’t wait to see how this changes the way people build apps”.
And that’s been my motivation every day since then, both on Firebase＆on Flutter.
I’ve always answered questions on Stack Overflow on my weekends to learn about new tech, and I started answering questions about Firebase too.
Fast forward a year, and the founders of Firebase reached out, which led to: “We like what you do for us, and want to hire you to keep doing that.”
That’s how I joined Firebase＆Google.
At Google I got to work with the most talented and motivated crew I could wish for, solving both the hard technical problems and fretting over each minute detail of the developer experience of our products.
I’ve loved every moment of it, and will miss them immensely going forward.
In the past 9+ years at Google, I have:
🆘 Answered 17,000+ questions on Stack Overflow
📹 Published 100+ videos
📢 Given 120+ in-person talks
Sharing tech with (future) devs is my happy place＆I look forward to continuing to do so.
Want me at your conference/meetup/etc? Contact me on socials, or LinkedIn.
Over time I learned that my biggest passion is to:
☝️ show devs how to build＆improve their apps
✌️ convince non-developers that they too can build apps
Really… you can! If you don’t believe me, come to an event I’m at or connect with me otherwise＆let me convince you.
For now, I just want to thank everyone who’s supported me somewhere, somehow in the past 9+ years.
I feel blessed for all the feedback and love I’ve received. I’m never sure what I did to deserve you all, but will do my best to continue to live up to it.
Thank you! 🙏🥹
puf
