Episode Transcript
Qin En 00:06
Hi, I am Qin En. And this is the Parents in Tech podcast. Welcome to Season Two, where we interviewed dads who are technology company leaders based in Southeast Asia. After hearing from moms in Season One, now it's time to speak to dads who are raising kids while striving in their careers. Let's find out the stories, challenges and advice they have for us. In this episode, we speak to Eric, Director of Product Management at Ninja Van. Eric has more than a decade of experience in Product Management at Technology Companies such as iCar Asia, StoreHub and SEEK, born and raised in Malaysia. Eric is a firm believer in using technology to enable people to do great things. He's an actively engaged parent of a five year old daughter. Hey, Eric, welcome to the Parents in Tech show.
Eric 01:00
Hi, nice to meet you.
Qin En 01:02
Thanks. To begin with, can you tell us a bit more about your family?
Eric 01:05
So I have one kid. So my wife right now, I have a five year old daughter whose name is Sophie.
Qin En 01:12
Cool. Okay, so let's start. How did you meet your wife?
Eric 01:17
So my wife and I were actually ex-colleagues. We worked together in a company easily over 10 years ago. And I think, some two years or three years after we met each other from that work, we were never close at all, we were in different departments. And she reached out to me on Facebook, she claim that I had her first, I'm pretty sure she added me first. And that's where we started, and we just got to talking. And naturally, we decided to meet up and from there, started dating and eventually got married. And now we have a kid, which is really, really great.
Qin En 01:49
Very nice. So I got to ask, when did the topic of having kids and starting a family come into conversation?
Eric 01:58
So I'll be very honest, it never did. So my kid was not planned. It just sort of happened. But I'm honestly very, very glad it didn't happen that way. Because knowing who I was, and knowing what I prioritize in life, I think happened that way. I may not have had a kid at all, even to this day. And given having had my kid now for so many years, I'm so thankful. It's been so enriching and it's just broaden my entire life greatly, giving me new perspectives on life. And I just cannot imagine now not having a kid. So I'm so thankful how it happened. And things definitely worked out for the best.
Qin En 02:37
There's so much I can identify with that. But before I share, I would love to find out a bit more. So you talk about priorities in life, so tell me at the point when, perhaps before you had a kid, but probably after you're married, where were your priorities at?
Eric 02:52
There's a bit of a tough question for me, because as I mentioned, the kid wasn't very planned. So we didn't really have like a long time being married before having kids. So, in fact, a lot of the time leading up to the baby was planning how to have the kid, and but prior to that we were already living together. So let's count the time as a time where we will pre often marriage and having kids. I think it was definitely more prioritizing our lifestyles and trying to get most out of life in terms of traveling. My wife loves traveling, loves eating. We're foodies, so many trying to find new experiences and try get the most out of life given our sort of capabilities financially and also, physically, we also an adult. So even before we had a kid, so at a time, I guess our dog was sort of our kid prior to us having a real challenge.
Qin En 03:47
So I'm curious if I had to ask you to kind of dial back five, six years back, when you found out that you're having a kid, how did you feel about it? Were you worried? Were you anxious that your pursuits, to as an individual, as a couple might potentially be affected?
Eric 04:03
Well, once again, for me a bit different because it wasn't really planned. But I think, first of those definitely not anxiety, about the unknown and that's quite natural for most new parents. But once my wife decided that, hey, let's just do it. You know, let's just go all in, get married and have this kid and spend our life together, I think things started to become clearer. We definitely try our best to really identify what are the key things that need to be ready for the kid to come and how we need to change our lifestyle to sort of prepare for that to happen as well. So it was really something that we didn't really plan for. But we try our best to eventually do our own research and stuff and figure out what's the best thing to do to prepare.
Qin En 04:49
It's also not just about what happens to you, it's also a big part of how you react. So dealing with anxiety, maybe talk to me a bit more about that, perhaps what were you most anxious about if you can recall, and how what did you do to kind of address and mitigate it?
Eric 05:05
I think the biggest part that I had to deal this was just figuring out how to be that. Prior to that I have nephews before, but never really had any experience in parenthood. So really not knowing where to begin and how to sort of take the right steps to ramp up myself to be prepared to do the right thing. So I thought, what I want, any person would do just start buying books and start reading and doing research online and asking close family members and friends about what are the approaches and sort of what are the watch outs to look out for to prepare myself? I think, as a person, I'm someone who isn't the most emotional. I think, once I've made up my mind or something, I shut out a course or so what can I do to get to that point more easily? I felt that I dealt with anxiety pretty fast. Once the plan was pretty clear, this is what we're going to do. I ministration to like, let's figure out how to get there and what needs to be done, made plans and stuff. So it wasn't that big of an issue for me to figure things out. I pride myself on being someone who can learn quickly and adapt. So I'm glad that really served me well. But like, if we're talking about just leading up to the baby coming, that's one part. But after the movie came as a whole different thing that happened as well.
Qin En 06:24
Okay, we will get it. But first, Eric, you mentioned about getting advice, books, internet, friends, family, what is one piece of advice that you accept and found it to be very helpful, or you reject and it's like, “No, I tried that it didn't work”, either one?
Eric 06:42
I think one thing that I can remember, he told me probably was a close friend, the advice that he gave to me was take care of your wife. Because she's going to go through a lot of, how I don't want to use the word trauma, but it's gonna. She's gonna go to a lot, and childbirth is not a minor things. Really, really serious and really impactful to the woman who's giving birth. So the advice to me was to really take care of her and leading up to the appointment, she gives birth, and even after that, really try your best to step up and do what needs to be done to make sure that she's comfortable, she's happy. If you can afford to pay a bit more for some extra perks, like getting him massages and stuff, go and do it. Because they're gonna be returns on investment. So to speak, honestly, it's what I did. And I think really, she appreciated for sure. And you hear a lot of people speak about some mothers having like, postpartum depression and stuff. And I'm really fortunate that my wife didn't go to that. I think that to some extent, he was due to some of the things that I did to make her comfortable even after childbirth.
Qin En 07:47
That is good advice. I fully 100% agree, because I also got the same advice when I was preparing to be a dad and it's true. Because a lot of times, especially once the kid comes, everyone's attention and focus is fussing, including the mum, but then no one starts to remember that, hey, you want this, some who just went through an operation in some cases, but in any case, a traumatic experience physically for sure, because so giving the care, and I'm so glad that that was the one thing that you learned. Okay, so with that, we also talked a bit about our life change after your kid entered this world. So tell us a bit more about that. How crazy has the past five years been for you?
Eric 08:27
It's really been great. I strongly feel that parenthood is not for everyone. So some people adapt to it more easily, and some people struggle. I must say that I'm one of the lucky few that really took to parenthood very quickly, I connected very fast my kid. And I think because of that connection, I really tried to do more. So my entire life started evolving around my kid. And I wanted also, as mentioned earlier, to be there for my wife as well. So, one thing we did together was, my wife needed to get up early mornings to pump breast milk and stuff like that, and I didn't want him to be alone. And the kid also needed feeding. So the ritual that we did together was, when the kid cries in real life wakes up nice to drink milk, I will wake up with my wife. My wife would pump her breast milk, and I would feed the kid. So that at least that we're both awake at the same time. And she doesn't see his husband sleeping while she is trying to do something for a kid. So I really tried to be super hands on and really, therefore, everything's that way. And it was super tiring for sure. The first month, I would say after the baby came, it was super tiring. But after I was like getting within the first six months, I mean, after six months, my kids started to be able to sleep through night like, well at least get six hours of sleep kind of thing. So that helped a lot. And since then, it's been just trying to figure out how to help my kid discover herself, then express herself to us to really understand what she wants from life and the things that she's curious about, and bring her right path to develop into a great person. I can always see that she's really, really great. But want to make sure that put her in a good position so that the rest of the world can someone day see that as well.
Qin En 10:09
Got it. Now, Eric, this is fascinating. Because you have done something that I think very few that do. I myself included, I tried to wake up with my wife, I just couldn't, I needed to sleep. And of course, at that point, and even to now, you have your career ambitions, your goals, you want to show up at work and be there, how did you manage that? Because it's exhausting to wake up to have to deal with all this life changes. What did it look like for you and what worked?
Eric 10:35
I think what worked was, first off, I created awareness of everyone in my office that, this was happening for me, and I may be a bit out sometimes, but I'm in the midst of recovery, it's gonna get to a point where it gets easier for me. So please, bear with me, and things will get better soon. I must say that I was quite lucky that time where I had quite understanding colleagues to help me to give me the space needed to sort of like take care of my kid, but also take care of my duties at work. I think I was also quite lucky that I mentioned fine nanny that was quite close to my office. So it sort of worked out where I could drop off my kid and immediately hit the work. And after office hours, immediately pick her up and bring a home. So that worked well. I tried to not do too much work from home, because clearly was busy. So it was a lot of just expectations management with my peers and my bosses to make sure that they understood that I'm not trying to slack off, but I'm really trying to get my life in order, make sure I'm in a good place that I can really perform well, for the business as well. And I would say around seven months into my kid coming into the world, I changed jobs. I had this massive opportunity to join a much bigger company that offered much better perks and a lot more benefits to help take care my family. Also at the time, it just made sense for me to leave and join. So, once I joined that company, things were even easier, because they have more structure and most important in the right areas to make sure that people can still not work themselves to death and still get things done as well.
Qin En 12:14
Got it. Now, you mentioned about how this company that you enjoyed provided the right support the right structures. So maybe can you share what two or three things that the company or the organization or even a culture, did they kind of worked well, for you to support you as a dad?
Eric 12:28
Well, first off, I definitely the benefits, I would say, making sure that I mean, in a way, offering the right benefits is a way of the company communicating about their values, about what they care about. So the fact that they offered medical and specialist care for my family, not just for me was a very, very clear sort of show message that they cared and the will to help. So that was really great. So a lot of the bills expenses that I had to sort of like spend on my kid after she came. I don't know if you do the same in Singapore. But when it comes like every month, you bring him to a specialist checkup. So all of those checkups, I managed to claim which was really, really great for me.
Qin En 13:06
That's wonderful.
Eric 13:07
So that was really, really helpful. And at least, it relieved a burden financially for sure. The other thing, which I guess culturally, the company that I worked for. So I work for this company called SEEK. SEEK is an Australian company. And I would say one of the things that really will excel that is being people first. So just by the values in their culture, they would give people the space needed to solve their own lives first, before worrying about work. So having that kind of values and cultures definitely helped. Because through that, the way that all my colleagues are behaved and sort of support my manager give to me, was just easier. It wasn't like question of, would they sort of be supportive? There was by default, they will be supportive kind of thing. And it just made everything got easier. And soon enough, I was able to sort of recover from the post childbirth and tightness and really get back to the level where it really worked quite easily.
Qin En 14:06
That's really wonderful to hear that, Eric. I think just the ability to go into the work knowing that people understand, people get you, you don't ever have to explain yourself? I think that is truly quite empowering. Now, the external factors sounded like it worked well for you. But I think one of the challenges that we face also, it's often internal, which means, wanting to success, what need to succeed, wanting to push, wanting to strive. How did it look like for you to set boundaries? So for example, I remember you said, you don't bring work home much. That's something I struggle with. But how do you do that? Because I'm sure maybe, you did that before the kid came more often. But how do you set a boundary?
Eric 14:46
So I think it sort of changed with the role I was doing really. In the beginning, I was able to do work at a pace where didn't require me to bring stuff home. And then of course, it came to point in my life where I want to get a hit primarily to provide more for my family. I think one of the changes that literally I felt was that previously, a career was just for me, it's to meet for me to get a hit. But now, after being a father, being a husband as well, getting a hit in my career means helping provide better for my family, which is super important, because then it means better start living, better schools, better everything for family. So did it come to a point where I felt like I had to get ahead? And it didn't result in me sort of having to become more busy. Another thing that really didn't help was the pandemic. I don't know, I'm sure a lot of people can relate as well. But once we all reverted to working from home, it just became a lot more easy to work long hours, because the laptop is always there, your desk is always there at home, and you don't have to commute. So you're just working at your desk all time. And you end up, it's so natural to go back to your desk after dinner after wherever once a kid is going to bed. So it just got to a point where I was working definitely longer hours than I was before. And also primarily to also further myself in the company trying to get ahead, for sure. And there was a point where I realized that, it was not doing me any favors. It definitely made it a lot harder for me to feel engaged with the company, because it felt as though at some point, the company was taking advantage of me and stuff like that. So it complete the pandemic, and reworking has really changed my view on work life balance. It's made me realize that you know, to be able to be a best, there isn't really, in a way work life balance, because work and life sort of the same thing. Because you need to work to have a life kind of thing. So to be really excellent life, you'd have to also make sure that you're healthy, and you're doing okay, from a mental health perspective as well. So from that I've started to actually place a lot more importance on mental health and trying to make sure that my own reports that was at work, are they okay, or not, like just spending more time to just speak to them about how things are for them? That's just made this part of living a lot more important and clearer for me. That's something you have to prioritize as well.
Qin En 17:10
Certainly, what's maybe one or two things that you did to manage this whole work life balance or tension?
Eric 17:20
Well, first of all, setting, and I'm sitting here a little bit because I'm using a sort of a tip that I received from one of the talks I've seen online about managing what lifeguarding is. So in the past, we work in an office, the commute home is a very good event, or trigger for body and our brain to really tell the body like, we're shutting off now. We're disconnecting from work, we're going home to move into from work to like family work kind of thing. But with the pandemic, there was no more commute. So you need a new trigger, or a new sort of like event to transition yourself from work into a home person. So first off, setting very clear boundaries for myself, I tried to work till 5:30pm every day. And from 5:30 to 6:30pm, I would dedicate to playing my kid. So whether it would be like, taking her out to the playground, or just playing a board game you for just running around the house, or whatever it is. I tried very, very hard. Of course, sometimes I feel but for the most part, I think I tried to consistently make sure that at that time, I would just shut off not having meetings after. I try end meetings by 5:30 and just get off and spend time with her. And have that be the disconnect for me to like transition back into like a home sort of a mode. So there was one thing, another thing I suppose tried to do was to also normalize it with my team as well, making sure that people realize that they don't have to work long and crazy hours to get ahead. And especially if it means, it comes at a cost of their own mental health and satisfaction of life. It's just not worth it. So I wouldn't sort of talk to them about making sure they have enough time to spend with their family and also ensure that they don't try to work too much during night. If I see them online, I'll just never say Hey, is it something really urgent, perhaps something you can work on tomorrow? Because I think there's no better way of communicating something than through example. It's before I sort of like your values. I think that's a strongest way of getting others to sort of understand and see that, hey, this is probably what's important and what we care about. So, if my boss feels that way, then I think I can be comfortable to also follow him as well.
Qin En 19:27
Yeah, exactly. I think love the part about setting a role model. So thinking about what works for you, and also openly and directly communicating that with a team, that's inspiring. So Eric, I would love to find out how has being a dad helped you to be a better leader? And vice versa, how being a leader work helps you to be a better dad?
Eric 19:51
I would say the biggest thing that my kid has taught me and it's not something that's small at all like his patients. I think trying to teach young person about life and what's right and wrong is really, really hard. And when kids reach that to the trio age, they, they gain the ability to talk back to you and start to say, no, and want to do one thing. So having patience and knowing when to sort of use the right approaches with the kid, to make sure that they understand what you need from them. And also to sort of get your outcome that you want is really important, so that patients easily translates over to managing a team. Because by profession, I'm a product manager. So product management requires you to work a lot with other people. Obviously, other jobs as well. But typically, product management, you have to stakeholder manage quite a lot. So having the right patients to really talk to people and understand the needs properly and try and find some way to like, collaborate together is challenging, and the patients really help and vice versa, like how my work has helped me, my kid? One of the things I've learned from work is really to use tools and frameworks to help communicate and to solve problems. So I've used the same approach with my kid as well. I tried to make things very visual for her by showing her. So I'm one of those people who have a whiteboard in my house. So I tend to scribble things on the wall on the whiteboard and show her things. And when I teach them math and stuff, I try to use visual frameworks to help her understand this is how you sort of calculate things together and stuff. So it's really made me more aware about how I communicate defer, because like, when you're a kid, you have so little understanding of the world and using the right words, and the right visual stimulus to really help explain things to her is really, really helpful. So at least I found that to be really useful in trying to help me understand things, just using those certain sort of visual frameworks to help her figure things out has been really helpful.
Qin En 21:53
That's wonderful. I love that the whiteboard. Because it's something that you could just express yourself, your daughter can do so.
Eric 22:02
Exactly, exactly.
Qin En 22:04
Beautiful. It's really funny how you mentioned the two to three year old ages, when things start to get challenging, because I have written down here that I wanted to ask you, decoded the terrible twos. So tell me what was it like, I'm asking this not just for my audience, but for myself. Because my kid is 15 months old, the two year mark is not too far away. What happens when they enter this period? Let's start with that, then, of course, I'm gonna see how you respond to it?
Eric 22:30
The biggest change is that they just start responding with no, because prior to that, they're so young, and they don't know any better. And they don't really know what they like and don't like. So they just sort of go along with most things that you tell them to do. And when they hit that point in time in their life, they realize they don't like certain things. For example, I don't like showers, I don't wanna take a shower. So that you tell them, let's go take a shower now like no later, I want to play first kind of thing. So that's the real shock to the system. Where you start to realize that your kid has a personality, and she's her own person, and she will tell you what you think and you have to deal with it somehow. So I think that's the thing that most people, this is the real sort of shock that they receive. They suddenly realize that oh, now, even to a point, it feels disrespectful. Because you're the parent. But in fact, if you look at it from her eyes, first of all, she doesn't know any better. Because she doesn't know what respect really is? She just stopped telling you what she thinks, which is generally not wrong. And, so it's really trying to just absorb and sort of understand that change in her or your kid, where now she can express what she wants. And sometimes it doesn't align with what you want, and then dealing with it.
Qin En 23:52
So how do you deal with it?
Eric 23:54
Well, I'll admit that there were points in time, they were all screaming and crying for sure. So I feel it's unavoidable to feel things out. Because I think, as a new parent, as well, a lot of these things you're doing for first time. I would say, the first advice I would give to new parents is to first give us a break. You don't have to get everything 100% right the first time. So even if you do, if you don't get right, it's okay. Your kid doesn't really break. At least not permanently anyway. So it's okay to have a few episodes where things go really, really bad. And there's a lot of crying and screaming and stuff like that. That's probably okay. What I found worked, at least for me, was really expressing to her boundaries. It's okay for you to say no, but it's not okay to throw a tantrum. You can tell me what you want. But don't express it in a way that's going to cause a lot of anger and frustration for you and make you want to throw stuff around and all kinds of things. So I gave her the space to still be able to express what she wants, but make it clear to her that the alliance that she must not cross, if she doesn't want to get punished anyway, and punishment is a whole different another topic to cover as well.
Qin En 25:11
So I have to go into that, Eric. So how does disciplining a punishment look like? Because I'm trying to figure that out too. And, at least for me, I was brought up at a time where I came to what I know that that's very different camps around that. So what does it look like for you?
Eric 25:26
Punishment for me, so I'm also not big on hitting my kid for sure. I'll admit that there have been times when I have different little slap on the butt and stuff like that, to tell you that I'm not happy for you. But generally, how punishments like for me is that, I take away her toys. Because that's the thing that she enjoys the most. And like any other kid in the 21st century, I think we had devices. So she likes playing with my iPad, and she like TV. So if not behaving, then it just means that you don't get those privileges that you used to have. So toys, devices and I will say that our there's one other thing which I tried to do to her, which really scares her. So she's scared strangers, kids being scared to us. And I tell her that if she doesn't listen and doesn't want to behave, I'll call the screen he got downstairs for my condo to come and the school her. She gets really scared of that she doesn't want to have a stranger come up and scold her. We've never done it before. But we've tried to pick up the phone pretend like we call the screen got now and come here in middle school, you don't seem to care as well. But now today, it really depends what works for your kid also heavily depends on what kind of boundaries you set in the house. And also, what kind of privileges you do give to your kid. So there's, unfortunately no one size fits all solution for most people anyway. But I think the clearest thing I can sort of say is that set very clear boundaries for the kids understands like this is no, no, this is okay. And make sure that she's aware of what are the consequences that you will inflict on her if you cross the line.
Qin En 27:01
I like that, Eric. Because that sets predictability also. It’s one of the things that, it can be scary as for a kid, it's just being punished and not understanding why and then negative. But I think for you laid it out, once again, going back to the tools that the frameworks that you learned, I think that's great. Now, every early user mentioned a bit about pandemic and how it was challenging. You are based now in KL where, there was MCO, there was a lot of things that just made things very challenging. Glad to hear that things are better now. But let's dowel back to a year plus practical. How did it look like for you, and how did you manage?
Eric 27:36
I think the biggest change for me was first of all, my kid couldn't go to school. So it meant that she would be at home with me all the time, and I still had to work. So at the time was to seek so once again, I think the company really helped to give space cope with the pandemic, they knew that things would get a bit hard. So the message to everyone was to give yourself first, which was really, really helpful. But really trying to adapt to having my kid be there all the time and trying to work. And for my kid as well to adapt to stay at home. And previously mentioned that home should have a full attention. And suddenly, we're always at our desk, at our laptop, doing some something we call work, and she doesn't understand what it is. And she doesn't understand why does she not get the attention that she needs anymore? So it was really a coping time for both of us and it was really hard. There were times when she really got really upset. And we had to try to explain to her and she just couldn't understand and got really grumpy and upset. So it was really a hard time, we try our best to try to find activities or to do we download the worksheets, we found games that you could play on paper and stuff like that. Of course, then we all reverted to online shopping as well. So we bought puzzles and toys for her that we thought would fill the time. But all those were not really sustainable. I think what really eventually made it easier was when the government allowed childcare to open again. And we decided to allow my kids to provide childcare, to daycare, and the school sector. I think we intentionally tried to pay him more to make sure that we were in a school that had things done a bit more properly, had the right amount of teachers and they were trying their best to really protect the kids through the pandemic. So that really, really helped a lot. I think it was also really great. We're lucky that my kid immediately to the school, it helped me share a friend that who she knew, but she really felt comfortable and she taught us every day I want to go school and go school. And that made things easier, because if she didn't want to go school, it would be much more difficult time to figure things out but she really enjoyed it at today's she enjoys still going to the same school every day.
Qin En 29:52
That's really lucky to find the school that your daughter is excited but I think thanks for sharing that either. Pandemic truly has been tough and like you said, we're finding ways to engage your child to keep them occupied while you're busy at work that can be tricky. So I'm glad that's passed that. Now, I mean I noticed also recently, the change jobs and you are currently the Director of Product Management at Ninja Van – a role that does require you to move essentially, pretty soon. Tell me a bit more about that? Because for you, your wife, your daughter, I would say relatively comfortably situated and familiar with KL. Tell me about this move. How did it come about, and how did you guys work through it as a family?
Eric 30:36
So my wife and I have been talking about living abroad for quite some time. And then the pandemic hit, and things didn't really, we didn't really have a good plan anymore. But it was something that we've always been thinking about doing. And the primary drivers for that was better education for my kid. So I love Malaysia. Malaysia will always be my home where I grew up and everything, but it really doesn't do a few things very well. And one of the things that doesn't do very well is education. So I would be very happy if my kid doesn't need to go through our Malaysian local education. We want to drive us definitely to give my kids a better education. My wife also felt strongly that she wanted an environment that she felt more safe. I think the part of KL that we live in is relatively safe. But like she still wanted that additional sense of security, I can't fault her for that. So wanted to look for that as well. And lastly, for me as a career move as well, because unfortunately, Product Management as a career in Malaysia is quite limited. At some point, you hit the ceiling where there's really nowhere else to go and SEEK is probably one of the top three tech companies in Malaysia, in terms of ways of working the practices, sort of their rigor and trying to figure out to discover what's the right thing to do and really test it first before deploying it to the masses. So I knew that for me to really step up, and really do a role that I wanted to do, it may require me to move as well. So when this opportunity with Ninja Van came up, I was very happy to give it a go. And fortunately, the team there feels the same that they will also want to give me a go as well. So that's sort of how it all happen.
Qin En 32:18
Got it. So in preparation for the move, what are some top of mind concerns or things that you're planning to make sure that your family adjusts well?
Eric 32:29
So this is top of mind for me right now. The next, so I'm moving February. So I have only January to really figure things out before the move. And of course, the travels frictions between countries doesn't help as well. Fortunately, now between Malaysia, Singapore, this VTL, but it was temporarily paused due to the concerns about the rising cases being imported in. So top of mind for me right now is securing a good home and good school for my kids, and a school that we feel is, first of all has the right environment. And once again, because of the pandemic doesn't have too many kids in the class, and there's too many, you don't know where all the kids have been. So they try to minimize sort of crowding once again. So yeah, they'll definitely be first few things, trying to secure a good home in a good area that we really like, and try to secure a good school very nearby. I have completely given up trying to be near office or whatever. That's not even a concern for me anymore. My plan is to live near the school so that I can every morning what my kids to school drop off, then commute to work. I don't want to commute with my kid around. So it's best if I able to work or somewhere nearby and then only commuting to work.
Qin En 33:40
Yeah, got it. Well, we definitely wish you all the very best with the move. And I'm sure your family will be able to work things out on that. So Eric I want to understand - it seems like you are very active in the whole parenting with your wife. And I think that's something definitely to be encouraged. How do you think we can encourage more dads to share the parenting workload with mums?
Eric 34:04
I would say, first off probably my same answer that I gave earlier about helping my team as well. First of all, be the example you want others to follow. So I definitely sort of like tried to walk the talk. And really be there for my kid and support my wife, who wants to have to have a career as well, to sort of like do what needs to be done in the household, not just with the kid, but groceries or getting food for a house or whatever it is. So that she feels real supported as well. And so when I speak to my friends or my family about parenting and stuff, I can sort of really my own examples there I do for myself, and hopefully that some of the things I speak to him about resonate well and they are happy to sort of follow along as well. And as I mentioned earlier, I really feel that parenting is not for everyone. There are some people who just can't engage or resonate enough with it to really enjoy it a lot, to those people. I would encourage more steps to do you know, 180 in one day to fully change who you are. I think that's not reasonable, try and start small and just from like, not taking care of a kid at all, maybe try just half an hour or an hour day. And it doesn't have to be real taking care of the kid, it could just be playing your kid. So take your kid downstairs to the playground, we'll get around for a scooter ride or a bicycle ride somewhere around the neighborhood, kick a ball around with your kid, things like that, which you may also find fun. And it's a great way to connect and bond your kid as well. So really, just small things like this, I strongly believe will lead to like, more ease in doing more and more. So starting small and then slowly scaling up as you feel comfortable.
Qin En 35:44
Got it, that's wonderful. I like the idea of the small steps. It doesn't mean that, oh today, I put my job down and start taking care of my kid but just start with just a small gap, a small half an hour to be present. Yeah, I really like for sure. So, Eric, to wrap up our conversation today, what is one thing you have learned as a Parent in Tech?
Eric 36:06
Something that you probably said earlier as well, Tech and change won't stop. Tech moves very, very fast, and things are gonna keep changing and changing and it's never gonna slow down just for you. So as a father, as someone who I feel, wants to protect my family, I think it's important that I understand what's going on in the world. So that I can prepare my family and make sure that they have the right information. So that when they're engaging with all these different new technologies and stuff, they sort of know how to protect themselves. I used to work for an internet security company. So I'm very conscious about your own personal privacy, data privacy, and being trying to be anonymous on the internet, and how valuable that is. So I find that very important. So if anything, make sure that you sort of understand what's going on the world that what was the bigger trends are and prepare your family for it? If you feel that in any way, those trends could potentially impact your family somehow.
Qin En 37:06
Yeah, to know what's out there and actively prepare for it. I think that’s wonderful. So if our listeners would like to connect with you, Eric, how can they best do so?
Eric 37:15
You can search for me on LinkedIn. My name is Eric Wang. As Qin En said earlier, I'm the current Director of Product Management at Ninja Van. So if you find me, feel free to connect.
Qin En 37:24
Sure, we'll do that. Well, Eric, thanks so much for joining us today on the show. We really enjoyed this conversation.
Eric 37:30
Thanks a lot.
Qin En (OUTRO) 37:34
Thanks for listening to the Parents in Tech podcast with me, your host Qin En. We hope you were inspired on how to raise kids and build companies. To catch up on earlier episodes or stay updated with upcoming ones, head over to www.parents.fm to join our community of Parents in Tech. There you can also drop me a question, idea, feedback or suggestion. Once again, the website it's www.parents.fm. That's all for this episode, folks. See you next time.
