What I Write & Why

Welcome to my blog! I write on three main topics:

(1) Product Management — User research, leadership, data analysis, etc

(2) Interviewing Tips — What I've learned as a candidate and an employer

(3) Side Projects — Fun things I build to show off my technical skills

My goal is to share what I've learned after 15+ years in the tech industry (both knowledge and wisdom), specifically to potential future employers.

But beyond my personal brand, I genuinely want to help new and aspiring product managers. I know how hard it is to break into this role, so I hope my writing offers emotional support and concrete advice to help you succeed.

If you enjoy my articles, then please follow, clap, and share. Thank you!

Professional Biography

Three main phases in my adult life: Stanford University, Technical Writing, and Product Management.

First I went to Stanford University where I received my B.S. and M.S. in Electrical Engineering. My major was an interdisciplinary mix of math, physics, and computer science. I also developed my love for languages (Mandarin Chinese and Japanese), history (Rome and Greece), and philosophy (Kant and Plato).

After college I became a technical writer where I wrote API docs, end user help docs, and internal training — all with a goal of teaching how to complete a complex task. I also wrote content marketing (blog posts, brochures, website copy) to convince customers on how our product/service can help them succeed.

Currently I am in my dream role as a product manager. I am extremely passionate about customer experience and finding ways to make our users’ lives better. Product management for me is the bridge between the business side (sales, marketing, billing) and technology side (engineering, operations, etc) to make sure we're building exactly what our customers need.

The consistent theme across all three phases of my adult life is that I thrive in roles where I can use both my left brain (technical and analytical) and my right brain (creative and people-oriented).

For my specific resume, please see my LinkedIn profile.



What I’m Interested In

Computer Vision

For humans, sight is the primary sense in which we perceive the world, just like how smell is for dogs and hearing for bats. Therefore, the ability to emulate human sight and understanding through object recognition, image segmentation, semantic understanding, and more is truly amazing to me. Computer vision is also very much an interdisciplinary role (math, physics, and computer science) which appeals to me as well.

Robotics

When you can pair computer vision (understanding) with a simple mechanical task (action), then that's basically a robot right there. Applications that I’m interested in are: self-driving cars, autonomous checkout/retail (Amazon Go), Roombas, etc.

I am mostly interested in autonomous mobile robots (like roombas) because they are just plain cool. With many of them, you can even create a swarm (much like bees or ants) that can really do something cool together.

Artificial Intelligence & Ethics

Finally, I am interested in the human aspects of AI, mainly as an outgrowth from my interest in philosophy. General purpose AI (the common kind from science fiction) is the long term goal, but what exactly does that mean? What is the criteria to determine sentience? What rights or responsibilities do we have to artificial life? These are the questions that keep me up at night.



Continuing Education

While I'm done with my formal education, learning never really stops. I love Coursera because of its wide variety of courses, easy UX, and structured yet self-paced learning.

Completed Courses

Market Research, University of California at Davis. Math for Machine Learning, Imperial College of London. Business Analytics, University of Pennsylvania. Advanced Business Analytics, University of Colorado Boulder. Executive Data Science, John Hopkins University.

Upcoming Courses

First Principles of Computer Vision, Columbia University. AWS Cloud Practitioner Essentials, Amazon. Mind and Machine, University of Colorado, Boulder. Machine Learning, Stanford University. Robotics, University of Pennsylvania.



Outside of Work

I love running: 5K, 10K, half marathons, and full marathons. While I'm not that good — I only started after college — I enjoy it immensely. Personal records: 5K (24:45), 10K (53:49), half marathon (1:56:00), full marathon (4:48:00).

I also love to read (business, philosophy, history, fantasy, and science fiction), going to the beach, and visiting national parks.