Securing Firebase Cloud Functions with Workload Identity Federation
If you’re building a mobile app with Firebase and want to protect Cloud Functions that call paid APIs—AI services, databases, or external integrations—you need to understand a critical security gap: Firebase Auth validation happens inside your function, after it’s already running and billing you. This means every request to your function is billable, even if the token is invalid. Malicious actors can spam your endpoints with garbage tokens and drain your budget.
November 27, 2025
On Building vs Joining
I’ve been going down the startup path over the last 12 months, a very different life to the decades I spent in big tech companies. Someone recently asked me which was “better”, joining an established company or building your own thing. It made me laugh a little, not because it’s silly, but because I’ve spent the better part of 25 years convinced I knew the answer, only to completely reverse my position… twice.
November 20, 2025
On Legacy
On my last day at AWS, after 8 and a half years, I posted one final message to my team. It was that meme from The Usual Suspects, you know the one, with the caption “and like that, he’s gone.” Then I removed myself from the Slack channel and shut down my laptop. I’d left companies before. Twice from Microsoft, and both times I’d felt that surge of panic, the “oh shit, what have I just done?
November 15, 2025
On Change
“Everything changes all the time.” I heard this phrase so many times at AWS that it became almost like a mantra. I can’t remember which manager said it first, or even if it was always the same person saying it, but I heard it over and over. In a company moving at AWS’s pace, where new services launched every week and teams reorganized every quarter, it wasn’t profound wisdom so much as observed reality.
October 29, 2025
On Long-term Thinking
There’s a concept in evolutionary biology called the “adjacent possible”, it’s about exploring what’s reachable from where you are now, the space of possibilities that opens up with each step forward. Stuart Kauffman used it to describe how biological systems evolve, but I’ve come to see it as the perfect metaphor for navigating careers in our accelerating world. Hence why I named my company Adjacent Possible Tech. The irony of writing about long-term thinking in 2025 is that the very concept feels like it’s undergoing time dilation.
October 22, 2025
On Imposter Syndrome
This is going to be a hard one. Imposter syndrome is something I’ve wrestled with my entire career, and I suspect many of you have too. After 25 years in tech, multiple career transitions, and countless “oh shit” moments, I’ve come to realize something counterintuitive: imposter syndrome might actually be a feature, not a bug. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me start by unpacking what this beast actually is, where it comes from, and why it’s simultaneously the thing that’s held me back and pushed me forward throughout my career.
October 1, 2025
On Theories, Laws and Effects
When I started at AWS in 2016, I didn’t know it at the time but I was about to start learning about various theories, laws and effects. My manager, Simon, introduced me to the first one that caught my attention (for purely technical reasons), but soon after I started taking more and more notice of these seemingly universal and well-accepted statements about situations and behaviours. Now I’ve had time to absorb them and see how they apply in the real world, I wanted to call out some of my favourites and talk about my experiences with them.
September 16, 2025
On GenAI Optimism
If you’ve been anywhere near the internet lately, you’ve probably noticed that Generative AI (GenAI) has gone from “that weird thing that makes creepy faces” to “the technology that’s apparently going to either save or destroy civilization.” But here’s what’s fascinating: depending on who you ask, you’ll get wildly different takes on what this technology actually is and what it means for our future. I’ve noticed something curious in conversations about AI.
September 9, 2025
Building an Infinite Canvas with Skia in React Native
Building an infinite canvas in React Native seems straightforward until you actually try to do it. You quickly run into performance issues, coordinate system headaches, and gesture conflicts that make you question your life choices. After spending way too much time figuring this out, here’s everything I learned about building a proper infinite canvas that actually works. Why React Native Skia? First, why not just use a ScrollView? Because ScrollView has fixed dimensions and doesn’t give you the fine-grained control you need for things like:
September 8, 2025
On Nonlinear Impact
Throughout my life I’ve met many different types of people, some content to lead a simple life, some striving for something more. A simple life, with family and friends, is absolutely a wonderful aspiration that can be fulfilling for many. There are however some who for some reason need to find meaning in something more than the simple life, who have a need to have “impact”, whatever that means for them.
December 8, 2024