Peter Friese, Developer Advocate at Google on the Firebase team

Peter works as a Developer Advocate for Google’s Firebase platform. His focus is the iOS/Mac side of things. It is a role that has him doing all kinds of things all around the world. Mostly he works from his home office though.

Peter on:

• His blog: https://peterfriese.dev/
•  Twitter: @peterfriese

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Transcript

Jeroen Leenarts: 0:45

Hi, and welcome to another special edition of my podcast. I'm sitting here with Peter Pisa. That's if you're German, if you're Dutch, you would say Peter FreeCiv. And if you're English, especially don't call him Peter fries, because that's horrible to do to him. Just call him Peter fleece, and then you will be alright. So Peter, welcome. How are you doing today?

Peter Friese: 1:08

I'm great. Thanks for having me.

Jeroen Leenarts: 1:09

So, um, you work at Google, apparently. And you work with a platform called Firebase? I don't know if people have heard of that. I guess so. And you are the developer advocate for the platform for iOS. So can you tell us a little bit about what your day to day looks like?

Peter Friese: 1:26

Sure, yeah. So as a developer advocate, I see myself as a two way communication channel. Oh, and by the way, I'm not the only developer advocate on the team. So we're actually the the developer relations team for Firebase is quite sizable. So we've got many developer advocates on our team and a couple of developer relations engineers. So my job essentially, is communicating between the internal product teams and the outside world, and to make sure that the product teams know what developers out there need and where they are running into any issues with our product. And on the other hand, I need to make sure that people out there know what we're working on what's coming up all the good things that we've launched recently, there is so much going on. And sometimes it's really, really hard to know, what's the best way to do things. And so I try to build samples, right on my blog, or on our medium channel, or on our official blog about stuff that we're working on. We create videos for our YouTube channel. And we talk at conferences, virtual or in person. So, for example, I'm super excited to be talking at swift leads. coming up in October, this is going to be the first in person conference in like, I know, like, almost two years now. And I'm super thrilled and also a bit nervous about all the logistics about around that because, you know, oh, it was having done a lot of traveling in the past couple of months. So it's going to be exciting.

Jeroen Leenarts: 3:17

So you mentioned that you're going to swiftlet a conference in the UK? And how did you get on stage with this conference? Was it through through Google? Or did you pitch a CFP to them? Is that something that you that you get some benefit there? Because you work at Google at the Firebase advocacy team?

Peter Friese: 3:41

Yeah, so the way it worked this way is that when they I think I saw Antoine's tweet about that he's speaking at this conference, and how it is aptly named, and that he needs to speak there because of his family name, which is Lee. So I got interested. And then I had a look at their website. I had a CFP, open. And then I was creating a couple of outlines for talks anyways. So I suggested a couple of talks, linked them to my abstracts, and said, Oh, you know, I can talk about building swift UI components, for example, or async, await, or Firebase and iOS. And then a while later, they reached out and said, Oh, you know, he, we would like you to speak about Firebase and iOS, which, you know, made me really happy. Because oftentimes, when when you reach out to conferences, and you want to talk about your product that you represent, people often think, Oh, you're just a marketing drone. And you just want to, you know, iterate the company's message, which is not I'm true. I mean, I represent the company. But the real, what I often most often do is I try to, to write a narrative arc for my talks, which showcase how to use Firebase with all the latest and greatest iOS technologies. Right. So and, and this comes from, from from part of my work. So for example, with the async and await stuff that Apple just recently launched. As soon as we heard about this coming about, I decided to dig deeper into it and find out what we need to do in the Firebase iOS SDK to make sure that we work smoothly with that. So I basically Download it the early compiler tool chain drops, installed on my machine and then tried to make the work where Firebase. And then I found out that essentially, there is not much that we need to do except for a couple of renaming, maybe to make method signatures look a little bit nicer. And maybe a couple of methods that we probably would have to restructure because we were doing things slightly differently than what Apple expects there. So this was kind of my research to make the product better, and help the development team. And then I tried to build this into my talk. And this will be actually part of the talk I'll be giving that sort of bleeds. So I'll be showing people how easy it is to our call Firebase SDK, on API method, cause using async await. And how this will make your code so much easier to read. So

Jeroen Leenarts: 6:50

just to highlight something that you set there. So if I'm correct, you actually said that you're using the new features from the iOS 15. SDK. And while you were creating your talk, creating your content and creating your sample, you discovered, hey, there needs to be some small tweaks or changes to the Firebase SDK, and you report those back to the development team within Google. And they picked up on your information and improve the way that the SDK would work with with the latest iOS SDK, is

Peter Friese: 7:20

that correct? Yes, that's correct. And that's the way how this stuff often works, right? So I will go out and try new stuff in iOS, it will turn out that either things work smoothly, or sometimes there will be, you know, some hurdles that we need to overcome. And then what I do, I write a sample application that highlights the issue. And I will put together a one pager or sometimes it's a multi pager for the intel team. Highlighting here is the problem. And here is maybe even a solution that I was able to prototype. And then I will circulate that with the SDK teams. And then we will have our discussion, which is really nice, because we're using Google Docs. So you can have this nice conversation inside the document. And then ideally, what happens is that they will implement the changes. And that happens out in the public. So all the development in the SDK is is open source. So if you're interested, you can basically go to the repository and see the pull request that we're sending ourselves to repository, to see what's brewing and what we're working on. And, you know, for example, for async, and await, there was a few minor changes that we had to make in Cloud Storage. And there was a pull request that my colleague Paul created where he, you know, made those changes and had a couple of additional methods, because obviously, we don't want to break existing API's. So those existing API methods needed to stay in place. And then he created the new ones that are compatible with async and await

Jeroen Leenarts: 9:17

a cool. And of course, creating presentations and pitching to conferences is one part of your work. You also create other types of content, like maybe video and written articles. So how much time do you spend off your day, seeking out challenges creating content and writing compared to software development? And then that compared to interacting with people inside and outside of Google?

Peter Friese: 9:47

Oh, that that's, that's really tough to to answer it, because, you know, it all blends into each other. Honestly, right. So, um, when you say software development, for example, I've got a couple of apps that I'm building on the side, but I'm mostly using them to experiment with technologies. So for example, I'm currently working on on an application that replicates pocket. So I replayed her style of app because I wanted to have something for myself to make it easier to to collect links and take notes about them. And also because I wanted to be able to collect internal links and analyze them. I didn't want to start this on an external cloud. And that was one of the main reasons so and you could say, well, this is kind of like a side project. But it is a project that I use to exercise our API is to experiment with Swift UI with all the new things that are coming from Apple. And then maybe eventually it will turn into a sample application, or I might even launch it as a side project. Who knows. So so that's one thing. And then out of that, I will develop articles, for example. So I will, you know, when I started working on this, I noticed oh, I need to implement a screen that allows me to tag my articles. And then I decided, oh, let's try how to do that using combined. Because I want to on the UI to update accordingly to put your selected. So if you if you add a tag, I wanted it to bubble up to the top of the lists, if you also want to update a number of articles that are tagged with this tag and things like that. And it turned out that this is a really nice thing to do with combine. And then so my idea was, okay, let's write an article about that. And this is in the pipeline. Pun intended. So it's, I'm going to publish this article in a couple of weeks. And that's often how things happen. So I'm working on something, to find out how stuff works. And then I realized, oh, this would be a nice way to explain this, or that and then write an article about that, or create a video about it. So it's, that takes up a lot of my time. And because I am based in Hamburg, and most of the rest of the team is based in the United States, I get the advantage of having most of the early date to myself. And then there are a couple of meetings in the afternoon, and maybe in the early evening. So I will meet my colleagues later the day. And you know, it. So meeting people that might be probably two hours a day or something like that. Sometimes it's a little bit more, especially if we're running up to a conference. And we have to create a lot of content for the conference, or work together with the teams that we want to create content for. So it's, I think it's a good, good mixture. So I am able to keep the number of hours I am stuck in meetings to a minimum.

Jeroen Leenarts: 13:32

So and say, How long have you been working for Google? In total?

Peter Friese: 13:39

So I joined in 2014, back back in London, so I, I lived in London for a couple of years. And in 14, they reached out and asked, Hey, how would you like to work for us? And I said, Well, I would. But I don't know if I'm able to jump the hiring bar. So that was a huge question I had, but apparently it did work out. And when I started, I worked on the Google Plus developer advocacy team for a couple of months. And then soon after, the team was restructured and we became bought is known as the partner Developer Relations team. So I worked for a couple of years on that team. And what I did was I worked with well known app developers out there. So for example, with Microsoft ever node to do is bring and a couple of others to help them build better apps on on any platform really, that Google offers. So a lot of that, obviously, was Android and I worked on Android Wear, right in the beginning when it was even before it was publicly launched. But also worked on google assistant. And we, you know, often people think, oh, you know, Google only is interested in their own technology. And you know, that means I'm Android or the or the web and things like that. But I also worked with people to make their iOS apps better. You know, we provided guidance there and made sure that our API's and SDKs for iOS work well. And yeah, so

Jeroen Leenarts: 15:33

when, when since 2014, did you get really started with iOS development in a way that you would say yeah, then I really started digging into the SDKs and became somewhat competent with whatever tools.

Peter Friese: 15:47

So I started iOS development. I don't know. I mean, let me think probably might have been 2007 or eight. I'm pretty early on. So, you know, I remember the times when Xcode I think I used Xcode three even or Yeah, three. And then quickly after that it was four. When I Xcode really looked not afraid that was a bit different than when it was a multi window,

Jeroen Leenarts: 16:18

Interface Builder, a separate app and stuff like that. Yeah,

Peter Friese: 16:22

so yeah, exactly. And, and back then everything was in Objective C, and when when I started out, and I was working at a consulting company, and I, I had so many surprises. So a friend of mine and I were working on on an app, and then we realized, Oh, you need to do reference, or you need to, you need to do memory management on your own. Right, you need to do that. And I was like, No way. Because because I was coming from the Java world. And I was like, no way that that's not possible. And then it turns out, yeah, it's, it's that way, right? You you need to manage the memory yourself. And then we also were really, really unhappy with how how the code looked like. So all those square brackets and stuff like that. So and because that consulting company was in the business of, of Model Driven Development and Model Driven architecture, what happened was that we said, okay, let's use this, and create a code generator that can generate iOS apps. So we had just started building a domain specific language for building domain specific languages. It's called X text. And then we basically developed a DSL, domain specific language for specifying iOS apps. And the funny thing is, it's still out there. So it's on GitHub. It's called applause. And we haven't done anything for the past couple of years, obviously. But some of the concepts are really similar to what Apple has been doing with Swift UI recently. So you know, describing what goes on instead of describing in an imperative way, how it goes on. So that was pretty interesting to see. But you know, we then realized, well, generating software might not be the best choice for for all kinds of apps. I mean, it's possible for anything that's data driven. But then we decided, okay, let's let's build software properly and manually to specifications. So I guess in the years after that, I really got into iOS development, we built a couple of apps for, for example, we had one app for a TV program app. So basically, several of us that would present the TV programs to you in an EPG way, or in a list way. And I remember all the challenges that were involved with making this perform smoothly on devices, such as the iPad three, which had this massive high resolution screen, but a very underpowered CPU. So that was a huge challenge back then.

Jeroen Leenarts: 19:32

Just to just to put things a little bit on the timeline. What year did you start working professionally as a as a software developer?

Peter Friese: 19:44

Let me see. So it's, um,

Jeroen Leenarts: 19:47

was it this century or the previous one?

Peter Friese: 19:51

I think it was the previous because so I, the first, the first program that I got paid for I wrote at the age of probably 15. So I got into software development at the age of 14, because I needed something to learn my vocabulary with so I decided to write a vocabulary trainer for myself. And I built that in quick basic four. And then soon after the company, a friend of my parents, they had a company that God offers software for DOS, and they asked me hey, would you like to work for us? spare time, and then I develop a directory browser. For them for for their text processor, and that was written in C, so not even C++, but plain level C. So I, I read early coning and Ritchie C books, and then learn C. So that was the first professional software I built at the age of 15. And then there was a huge gap where I didn't work professionally. I started computer sciences and Business Administration, starting in 1996. Finished in 2000. And worked at Lufthansa at the time. So it was a dual studies, basically, the company pays your tuition fees. And you work at the company at the same time. So three months, you're at uni and three months, you're at the company. And I got to know a couple of different departments inside Lufthansa and then I stayed at Lufthansa systems, which is they're pretty sizable IT department. So several 1000s employees work there. And I first I developed in Delphi, and then soon after I jumped into Java and J to E development.

Jeroen Leenarts: 22:04

Yeah, I still remember those days with HBS. And having like manifest files, and I think it was three files to just create one object. Now the the the interface, the home interface and the implementation. Yeah, it still still brings back nightmares. But so you started that Lufthansa in in 2000s. So right at when people were afraid of the millennium bug. So and you got started with iOS development in 2007. And you started at Google in 2014. Are there any highlights between 2002 1014 Besides the things that you already mentioned, the the domain specific language, the applause framework that you created with a with a colleague? What were some things that you that you worked on that you that you really think and also were like, really achievements or things that i i would recommend people to try the hands on as well.

Peter Friese: 23:10

So, I mean, a couple of really important things happen in that time. For example, we got our children. So I've got three kids, there are no almost grown up. So the first was born in 2000, actually, and professionals professionally, I think the the most important thing that happened to me was that my my then team lead, Lufthansa said, we can't afford you, you going to a conference. So basically, I wanted to go to a conference. And he said, No, we can't afford that. And it's not because of the money. But because the fact you'll be away for a week. I was like, wow, that's that sucks. And then I decided, okay, so I'm not going to let that happen again. And then I applied to speak at a conference instead of just attending because I said, Okay, so if the conference invites me to speak, nobody can take that away from me. Right. And that was how I got into speaking at conferences. And I think that was the start of my, of my career as a developer advocate. So that was, you know, people often say if, if life hands you lemons make lemonade. It's kind of that right? So basically turning a negative situation into something positive. I was really bummed out at the time. And afterwards, I, you know, I often thought I should have gone back and said thank you to him, because he's, he's honestly a nice guy. So he didn't mean bad or anything. And I still think he's a nice guy, I never found the time to go back and say thank you. So maybe this is the opportunity, I'll send the podcast to him.

Jeroen Leenarts: 25:07

That's a good one. Um, so you're basically saying that, besides just your main task of writing code, also try and develop new skills. In your case, it was triggered by wanting to go to a conference and then being a speaker would like, well, of course, your company can hardly say no, or you will say, Well, I'll do them a private time then and I'll work on a compensate the time on a weekend if needed. But so you started speaking at conferences continuously since then, or was it something that you did on and off depending on basically what states Have your career URL.

Peter Friese: 25:49

I did it for most of the time. So I think the only time when I didn't speak at conferences much was when I started to work at Google, because because I was on on a partnership focus team, and there was little opportunity to find topics that you would be able to talk at other conferences about. And also I, you know, I needed to find my bearing, essentially, in set the company, which, you know, all the companies I worked at before were European and German companies. And then I'm joining a US company, if you've worked for German companies before, that's quite a step, I would say. So

Jeroen Leenarts: 26:43

quite a step. In what sense? Is it like the company culture that's different? Or is it the way that people work together? Or

Peter Friese: 26:52

it's all of it, right? So it's, and I think the biggest difference between us American companies and in junk companies probably is that the way how you are appreciated. So for example, in previous companies, I would probably have a career development conversation with my manager, I don't know, I'm on a yearly basis, if at all. And I'm in Google, you have conversations like that on much more frequent basis, and you meet with your, with your manager on a much more frequent basis. And you also need to make sure that you're, everything that you do is well documented. So you can go back and say, oh, you know, I worked on this and that thing, and it was really important, and it was really complicated. So to, to, to really talk up the work that you do, right, and that feels uncomfortable in the beginning, because it feels like bragging to, at least it did to me. But when in fact, it really just is to talk about what you did. Because if you I mean, why not look back at the time at Lufthansa, for example, when you meet with your manager for that yearly appreciation, conversation and there and then they tell you how they see you. And then at the end, you've got Titan minutes to say how you view the past year? I mean, that's not fair. Right. So I think the model that Google uses as a is, is a lot fairer, where you get to write your, your notes ahead of time, you get to to say what you worked on, you get to mention all the projects you've worked on and what you did. And then the manager might have a couple of questions. And then you have a much more informed conversation. And you can you can much clearer communicate what what you've done and what your value to a company means. Right? So it seems fair to me now, but it is, you know, it can feel challenging, because you have to say what you worked on and how great it was.

Jeroen Leenarts: 29:21

So that's a big difference. Because what I also understood was that in German companies, it's quite often that that hierarchy is very important and very much adhere to, is that different in in, for instance, where you are working now? Or is it? Is it a general comparison or difference that you can see between us and German companies?

Peter Friese: 29:45

I would say that, um, yeah, it's, it's true, that hierarchy is much more a thing in in traditional slash German companies, at least for the ones I've worked in. And you you can have a much more eye to eye conversation with people in a, you know, in a US based company. So for example, when, when we were talking about me going to Swift leads, I had a look at heart travel regulations, and they say, oh, you know, if you're going to a level so and so country, you need to get approval from your manager. And, or even from your, from your director. And it wasn't a big thing for me to basically approach the director and say, Hey, we decided to it would be a good idea for me to speak at the conference, but I need your approval. And he was like, yep, that's fine. by me, but you know, take care of yourself, if things get worse, do the right thing and consider not attending take care of yourself. And also, can you please write a report so that we learn from it? Right. And that's, I think that's, that's one of the things that all of this, writing about your work makes beneficial. Because it, you write down what you're working on, and your experiences and other people can benefit from that. So it's, I found that super useful myself. Because, um, you have, you have access to so much information inside of Google. And you can, you can figure out what your colleagues are working on, we've got a system, which is called snippets. And I can, I can have a look at what my teammates are working on. And I can I can learn from, from their experiences, it will link out to documents that they've created. So it is, it is extremely useful.

Jeroen Leenarts: 31:48

And you mentioned that the extra level of approval that you needed to obtain within the company was was mostly due to the world circumstances with travel and COVID, right.

Peter Friese: 32:00

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, usually, that's so before, before COVID, if I wanted to go and speak at a conference, I would basically send a CFP or submit a talk to the CFP. And then once it got approved, I would book my travel and go write a report. And that's it. Right. So because it falls within my objectives and key results. So it is I don't need any sort of approval for doing my work. Right. To help us with doing that concerns,

Jeroen Leenarts: 32:36

there's of course, some some extra safeguards in place to, for instance, if like the the European health authorities would say that UK was a dangerous place to go to then of course, Google would say, Are you sure? And then, yeah, of course they have they have their reasons. So but in general, if you look at your career, where are you at right now? Is it something that that developed and progressed pretty much naturally? Or were there instances that people really gave you a push in some direction? Hopefully, the right one? Or was it something that was like, from how to yourself that you on a self motivated way, chose to do different things at some point.

Peter Friese: 33:21

Um, I would say that it was mostly myself who made choices. And I did have a couple of people that I talk with on a regular basis that, you know, that are helpful and mirroring, and reflecting, and, you know, asking hard questions as to, you know, what is it that you really want to do and what is important? So, um, and these are, you know, these are not mentors in a formal way, but mostly friends that I, you know, talk with on a regular basis. And we will talk about what they do what I do, and then, out of those conversations, you develop an understanding of, oh, what I'm currently doing is great, but there might be something else that I can do, right. And also, you know, my wife has always been a person who was always very encouraging. And, you know, she gave me a couple of really useful inputs. So for example, she was, she was the one who is responsible that I started, my study is in the first place, because she said, Oh, you need to sit down and write your application.

Jeroen Leenarts: 34:45

So and you mentioned that your wife motivated you to do some studies. Are you talking about formal education or more self study?

Peter Friese: 34:56

No, it was. So when when we first met I, I was working as what's called CV Dienstleister, which is basically a community service, which you do what you did after school, and before going into any sort of further education, and she encouraged me to apply to you for university

Jeroen Leenarts: 35:21

that's a thing in Germany or is it used to be a thing in Germany, it went into military service for a year or you did community service for a year. Right.

Peter Friese: 35:30

Exactly. That used to be a thing. They, they basically stopped doing that a couple of years ago.

Jeroen Leenarts: 35:37

And can you share what, what community service you did back then? Because that's always very interesting to hear.

Peter Friese: 35:43

Yeah, I work at and elderly is home. So that was, it was a very interesting experience. So I worked on a ward where we had, I think 30 Other the people and they had their everyone had their own separate rooms, which were like a living room, right. So it was kind of cozy, and they had their, their bathrooms in there. So and then they, we would help them in the morning and in the evening to get dressed. And there was a place where they would come to, to have their, their meals, so we would prepare the meals for them and things like that. And yeah, I had some really deep experiences there with you know, you, it's, for example, it was the first time that you, you experience, people getting close to death, right. And so that is a very deep experience that nobody can prepare you for. So it was really, really useful to help that early on in life, I

Jeroen Leenarts: 37:01

think. Yeah, and especially that you, of course, you grow an attachment to the people that you take care of. But still, they're not your own family members, I guess. And that, but yeah, still, it's a big confrontation to, to see that, indeed, life has an end. And that these people that you've taken care of are much closer to that, that ends and you as a young person are at that point in time. So because another conversation I had with, with somebody on my podcast, he was also situated in Germany. And he did community service in, in a clinic, treating people with addictions. So there was also something he shared with me that was like, Yeah, that's it, I think it's something that is very worthwhile for people to just it, of course, back then in your day, it was like mandatory in Germany, but to just experience something that is completely out there different than what your path that you see for yourself in your life is. But would you say that doing something like community service that it actually has as helped you come up with a direction for yourself in life? Or that it gives you gave you some reference that you can can base some of your decisions

Peter Friese: 38:18

on? Yeah, I think so. So, um, I think I think back to that time, on a regular basis, for for many, many reasons. So for example, my, my, has my kids grow up, and they have to make decisions for their lives, what they want to do on you obviously tried to, to mentor them and tell them, you know, what you did, and what might be interesting for them. So, you know, I did recommend doing something similar, you can do it on a voluntary basis now. And so, yeah, that's, that's one aspect. And then obviously, this, this confrontation with the life not being endless, but you know, there being death, which puts an end to live at some point, that's, you know, the older you get, the more the more relevant it gets, obviously. And I think Steve Jobs in one of his speeches said, you know, if that's not something that makes you think about the choices in your life, then you're, you're lost, right? So, um, you know, it's not every day that I wake up and say, Okay, so I've got 24 hours, or, you know, minus sleep. Make it count, you know, you sometimes wake up and then you're like, oh, I don't feel much like doing any work today, I'd much rather sit in the sun and read a book. And maybe that's a good decision as well. And sometimes you've got to stop yourself and say, well, it's not just work that counts. You know, relationships to other people count as well. And, you know, you need to look after yourself, you can't just work work work all the time. And that's definitely something you know, especially working across time zones, which is a thing that I need to get better at, right. So when when my kids were a little bit younger, and I had to get up early to do to make sure they have breakfast and see them off to school, and then start working And then in the afternoon have have meetings. That tended to be a long day, right. And then sometimes after the meetings, I would say, okay, but there's still so much I want to do. So I would continue working. And then in the end, you end up working way more than just eight hours in a day. And you've got to, to be observant of that and say, well, that's not healthy, I need to make a couple of changes. And now I've got a much more balanced routine in my day, where in the middle of the day, I'll have a longer break where thanks to COVID I, I'm responsible for for making lunch and stuff like that. So it puts this nice buffer in the middle of the day where you do something entirely different. And then you have the second half of the

Jeroen Leenarts: 41:37

work, besides changing your routine, to just reduce the amount of working hours that you have, what are some things that you do to to unwind because I know a lot of software developers, they have a tendency that to, to relax, they either do some side project for themselves, or they start watching some TV series. But that's probably not the best thing to do so but what are you what are some things that you do to unwind after a day's worth of work?

Peter Friese: 42:09

So I, I read a lot. So that's something that I feel really helps me to get down and you know, relax, especially if it's something that doesn't have to do anything with with work. So at the moment, I'm, I'm reading the androids book by Ted Hawes, which is kind of work related because he talks about all the team members of the early Android team. So that's not helping much. But, you know, usually I read a lot of thrillers and crime books. So that does help, you know, because you get into this completely different mindset. And then I'm, I'm, I'm a musician, I play bass in a band. So that's also helpful, you know, to go on band practice. And, you know, just immerse yourself in the music. That's, that's even more, I think it helps to, to switch to a completely different mindset.

Jeroen Leenarts: 43:23

Just in a completely different question. What was the first computer that you got your hands on? Because you already mentioned that your first programming was with quick, basic, but was it also the first computer?

Peter Friese: 43:34

No, it wasn't. So the first computer we ever had at home was a Phillips Ms. Like

Jeroen Leenarts: 43:43

my dad was like, completely into Phillips, he actually worked at the Philips factory. And he did a lot of actual soldiering on on devices. And we had like a video to 1000s system at home. And he demanded that we did not get a VHS system because it was inferior. MSX that's great. What year are we talking about, then?

Peter Friese: 44:08

I don't know, I must have been in the 80s. Probably I, the funny thing is, I, I think last year, or the year before that, I actually found it on eBay. So because apparently my dad gave it away at one point. And then I found this very machine on eBay. So it's, it looks that the form factor is similar to the C 64. So basically, it's the keyboard, and everything is below the keyboard, so it looks like a wedge. And then but the keyboard is black. And then the keys on the keyboard, they look similar to the keys on the MacBook, right? So they're, they're black, and they've got a lot of a lot of graphic symbols on them. And then you've got the cartridge where you can plug in a game cartridge. And then I found it on eBay and and I bid on it and won the bid. And then I saw a picture of that to my dad. And he was like, Oh, this looks very similar to to that machine that we had. And I was like, yeah, it's the exact model.

Jeroen Leenarts: 45:19

So you were able to find the exact same model that you had back in your home. Yeah, so you mentioned C 64. People that don't know that that's the Commodore 64 That was also like one of these computers. Back in the day. I actually got started with a sonic spectrum. So that was with these rubber dome, rubbery keyboards and then that upgraded it to like the bigger bulkier while it basically Nowadays, you would say it looks like a mechanical keyboard, but then a little bit bulkier. And it was also a lot of fun with tape decks and stuff like that. So did you play a lot of games on this on this MSX? Or other things as well, so and what was the computer that you did your first programming on? Was that that was that QuickBASIC? You mentioned when you were 14.

Peter Friese: 46:08

Yeah, so we did have one game cartridge. And it was because little boy, which ran around in this kind of park, and you had to jump over ponds, and then you could use you'd have to jump over balls and stuff like that. That was the only game we had. And then in the manual, they had a couple of basic programs, and I typed them in, I didn't understand a thing of what they were doing. And I remember there was one, one program that would draw a rocket on the screen, and then you'd press probably the spacebar and then it would launch and I tried to modify the program, and it completely broke. So that's, that's my first, you know, the first thing that I remember about my programming career, I had no idea and I think for the entire time, we had this computer, I had such a hard time understanding what was going on in those basic programs. So, you know, to reminisce a bit about that he would type them in, and then you could save them on your cassette. So you'd have the cassette tape connected to the computer, and you would write it out to this cassette. So it would take you know, a couple of minutes to actually store it on there. And then you would have to rewind to to to load it back into your computer. So that was really something different from from today. So I didn't get the hang of basic at all during this time. And then the next machine that we had was an IBM PC X t compatible machine. And that was the first time that I actually did understand what I was doing. So we had on that machine. It ran as does probably version 211, I guess. And it had GW basic on it. And that was the first time that I started to understand how basic works. And I wrote It's a bit embarrassing. I wrote a program to encrypt data, because I wanted to be able to exchange secret notes with my friends on the schoolyard. And so it basically would, it was an implementation of Caesar cipher. So I thought I was being immensely clever for you know, switching all A's to A, B, and all B's to see and so on so forth. I didn't even know it was called Caesar cipher back then. And then only later on when I learned about encryption and cryptography on today, I realized that this was such a weak way of encrypting things that basically everybody would have been able to decrypt it in an instant.

Jeroen Leenarts: 49:07

So, um, so is there anything that we've forgot to talk about something that we specifically need to mention you're going to Swift leads soon? You work at Google as a developer advocate, as one of the developer advocates at the Firebase team. And yeah, how did you end up in London? Because you you worked at in London for a while you mentioned and but nowadays, you live in Hamburg, and your name is distinctly German. So we didn't dig into that yet. So I reckon that you that you grew up in Germany, and then at some point, you moved over to London. So So what happened there?

Peter Friese: 49:49

Yeah. So I joined a consulting company in Hamburg. And when I joined them, I said, Well, you've got an office in, in London. And that was a time when when I did hire, you know, I desperately wanted to live in, in a foreign country. So I had a couple of companies lined up that I was applying to. So one was VMware in San Francisco. There was another one called number four, which was in Berlin. So that's not abroad. But it was an exciting company. And there was another one, which is called suka, which is a Swiss consulting company, which has offices in which had offices back then in Switzerland, in Germany, and also in London. So I said, Well, if I join you, I'd like to work in the London office, and they were like, Yeah, but we need somebody to help us set up the hammer of his career. So why don't you join us for the Hamburg office for one or maybe two years? And then we can talk about you moving to, to London. So that's what we did. I started in Hamburg. And then I said, Okay, so let me move to London now. I had a check with the team in London, they were happy with what I had to offer. So we moved to London as a family, which was quite challenging, because everything's so much more expensive. That's one thing. And then we had to figure out what's cool, and all the things, find new friends, and essentially, I started a new life. And then it was really funny, because as soon as I updated my LinkedIn profile, and say, I no longer work in Hamburg, by working in London, the volume of inbound, recruiters reaching out, just increased twice. Right? So and then one of them actually was from Google and said, you know, would you like to work with us. And that was just half a year after I moved to London with with that consulting company. So at one point, during Christmas break, I needed to hand in my notice, I needed to be in the company at a specific time. So I had to find out my, my manager, his home address, wrote a personal letter, and then popped it into his, his mailbox. And he wasn't at home. So he arrived from his, from his Christmas break, and then he had this letter with, with my resignation notice, which probably wasn't the best. But come back message for him. But that's

Jeroen Leenarts: 52:36

one of switching your jobs. Really? Um, so yeah. So and then at some point, you decided to move back to Hamburg, again, from London? Because to be closer to family, or what, what was the reasoning there? If I, if I'm at liberty to ask of course.

Peter Friese: 52:53

Yeah. So we, you know, when we moved to London, we always said, Well, it's not going to be forever, mostly because of family. Right? So our family lives in Germany, as you correctly assumed. So we said, well, that's let's go back. And also, we thought it would be easier for the kids and for their school education to, to get back into the German school system. And because they're all three years apart, you know, it's, it was not quite easy to figure out what would be the best time to come back. So we said, well, that's, that's, let's say, for two or three years, and then we can come back. And that's what we did.

Jeroen Leenarts: 53:36

Cool. And you expect to be working at at Google for a long time. Now, or?

Peter Friese: 53:44

Yeah, it's interesting. You know, I remember distinctly when having conversations with my father. I said, Well, I can't possibly imagine staying with the same company for such a long time, as you did. So in the beginning of my career, I switched companies a couple of times. And then when I arrived at Google, I think it was probably after a couple of weeks that I realized, wow, this is probably the first company that I could see myself working for for a very, very long time. Because it's there are so many things that you can do so many possible career paths that you can take so many projects that you can work on, it's never going to get boring. Quite the contrary, is to

Jeroen Leenarts: 54:36

care. It's always something new to discover within Google, I can imagine. Yeah, we're all we're already past our designated end time. So Peter, I'd like to say to wrap things up. Where can people find you online?

Peter Friese: 54:55

It's pretty easy. Just use my first name and last name. So you can find me on Peter freeze dot Dev, which is my personal blog. I'm also on Twitter at Peter freeze. I have started a YouTube channel a couple of months ago, which also uses the same handle so it's youtube.com/c/peter Freeze. And that's mostly it. I'm also on medium but I know people have mixed emotions about me and so I and that's why I cross post why my personal blog most and

Jeroen Leenarts: 55:32

I'll make sure to link up those things youtube, twitter and personal blog. And yeah, I'd like to thank you for your time. It was a it was an enjoyable conversation I might have and who knows so Best of luck in on in the UK at swift leads because I think it's going to be a wild experience to do an in person conference again after like one and a half. And look forward to your experience there. And that just just keeps updated online when you're traveling there and how things are in person on the stage again. Look forward to see the video afterwards.

Peter Friese: 56:12

Yeah, thanks. Thanks for having me.