Another Ten Years
Some personal reflections on my tech and policy career journey so far...
I received a job offer from Google in mid-2015, already more than ten years ago. About two months later in the same year, I received another offer -- from then Facebook (now known as Meta). Yes, I was interviewing both Google and Facebook around the same time in 2015 and my decision was to join Facebook, taking up the position as the first head of public policy based in Hong Kong, Greater China regional HQ for Facebook.
Recently I was preparing for a lecture for my Master of Public Administration (MPA) students about the growing importance of having a “Chief Public Policy Officer” for every multinational corp and I happened to find the offer letters from Google and Facebook (and some others -- I was pitched by Apple too, for example) during my research, well, which was more like search through my old files.
I’ve been teaching my course “Digital Society and Governance” at The University of Hong Kong since 2023 (and for Schwarzman Scholars at Tsinghua University in Beijing, starting from this May), based on my own real-world experience in dealing with some of the world’s most challenging policy issues around new technologies.
Companies like Google, Facebook, and Microsoft realised the value of public policy work in the early days. Now more and more MNCs began to add similar jobs to help their C-Suites to make better informed decisions as our world goes more uncertain. This is also what we do at The Asia Group (my day job).
A different decision could lead you to a very different life journey. Of course, there is no such thing like “what if” for our life journey.
I’m grateful for what I’ve learned and achieved over the past decade (and also for the work I did and people who I met in my early career too). One question that remains unchanged for me is how to continue to make impact. Don’t lose your faith and don’t forget how we began our life journey.
Believe in what you do and learn from every chapter of our life journey. That’s how we keep growing. Every one of us does.
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