Giving Kids a Choice, The Art of Experimenting and Having a Work-Life Balance with Zi Xin

• [00:40] - Introduction of today’s guest, Zi Xin
• [01:15] - Can you tell us more about your family?
• [01:38] - How did you meet your wife?
• [02:21] - Food stories and journeys with his wife
• [02:58] - When did having children come into the picture?
• [04:20] - What are the plans of having child #2? 
• [06:25] - Sleep training their son
• [07:37] - What was the journey like in building his start-up company?
• [09:39] - What was the transition like from being founder to employee?
• [10:56] - Zi Xin’s advice to his son in his career path in the future
• [13:23] - Differences of parenting styles of Zi Xin and his wife
• [15:59] - Where do you learn your parenting skills from?
• [18:32] - Reading and quality time with his wife despite the busy schedule 
• [19:08] - Discipline approach towards his son
• [21:58] - What is the best part about being a dad?
• [23:42] - How do you manage working from home and having a work-life balance?
• [27:57] - Connect with Zi Xin

Qin En 0:08

I am Qin En and this is the Parents in Tech Podcast.

Welcome to Season 2, where we interview dads, who are technology company leaders, based in Southeast Asia. After hearing from moms in season 1, now it's time to speak to dads who are raising kids whilst diving in their careers. Let's find out the stories, challenges, and advice they have for us.

In this episode, we speak to Zi Xin, Senior Product Manager at PayPal. Born and bred in Singapore, Zi Xin enjoys using technology to solve problems. He loves and lives to eat, but hates to queue - leading him to co-found Appic Technologies while in university. Appic Technologies was acquired by CHope in 2014, and since then Zi Xin has worked in product management leadership roles. In his free time, Zi Xin and his wife scouts for food haunts across Singapore. He is a father of a 3 year old son, Arthur.

Qin En 0:12

Hey, Zi Xin! Welcome to the Parents in Tech Podcast. So excited to have you on here today. And to begin with, could you tell us a bit more about your family? 

Zi Xin 1:19

Yeah. Hey Qin En. Thanks for having me. So I'm married to my beautiful wife for five years now.

I have a three-year-old boy. His name is Arthur. He goes to school now. So that's when I have some time to get some work done. 

Qin En 1:34

Get some work done and enjoy the podcast. Okay. So, Zi Xin, how did you meet your wife? 

Zi Xin 1:39

We actually met through a mutual friend when I was studying in university. She loves to eat too. And that's my hobby. And I thought like, oh, so we hung out a few times together and my mutual friend went to like, Go JB and have dinner supper together. 

And after that, we kind of got along. I remember our first date being, I brought her to actually watch one FC.

Qin En 2:02

Is that the fight thing?

Zi Xin 2:05

Yeah. 

So not actually the typical movie date kind, but I have tickets at that time I was also going for a friend and then my friend said, “Do you want to ask a girl along?”

Qin En 2:15

Wow, that's nice. Okay. So both of you share this common passion for food. Tell me some of the food stories, the food journeys that both of you have embarked on together. 

Zi Xin 2:25

Wow. So I think we go around looking for places.

We do some research on what would be the best of a certain dish of food. Like, so it could be like, it could be steak, it could be Japanese. And then we just go around exploring what would be good places to have something like that whether it is Singapore or overseas. I actually remember once my wife telling me that going overseas with me is just all about eating. We go from place to place. The only rest time you get in between is the commute. 

Qin En 2:54

Nice! So coming back, you got married to your beautiful wife five years ago. When did children come into the picture?

Zi Xin 3:02

So the truth is that we didn't actually plan to have one. Yet, we knew that we always wanted to have a kid.

And we also know that the earlier the better in the sense, because you have more energy to do, if the kid and can have more fun. And then also at a later stage, when the kids are older and more independent, then we can have our lives back to ourselves. So we kind of have that idea in mind, but the truth is Arthur wasn't exactly planned, and now we know, so we'll plan better for the next.

Qin En 3:35

Okay. Okay. So I was going to ask you that. So you say that there will be a next one. How many, and what was the conversation like? Was it something that you and your wife were agreeable to? Both of you wanted the same number?

Zi Xin 3:47

Yeah, I think so. We were thinking that we will stop at two. And the reason for that is because I think dealing with one, while it is enjoyable, it is quite tiring and we are pretty lazy.

So we want to have kind of have time for ourselves. So we thought, okay. Two seems like a good number. And also my son lives in a room of his own right now. But we’re quite particular about sleep training and kids having his own room to sleep. So then you kind of get limited by how big your house is. 

Qin En 4:18

Right. Got it. Okay.

So now that Arthur is three or so, what's the thinking or the plans for child number 2? 

Zi Xin 4:24

So we actually just moved house recently. Like I move about two months ago, move to a bigger place, nearer to my in-laws. So making all the right moves in preparation for kid number two, but that said, we don't really have a time.

It's not as if that is a goal to say, let's have a kid by end of this year. And so we are just taking it easy and because we just moved, we thought, okay, maybe let's just get used to the new place a bit, chill for a little while, before we actually made any concrete plans to go ahead. 

Qin En 4:57

That's nice. Okay. So earlier Zi Xin, you also mentioned that you are quite big on sleep training, perhaps the parents who are new to this, what is sleep training and why sleep train?

Zi Xin 5:10

The “why sleep training” is quite straightforward for me because once the child sleeps better, then we have more time for ourselves. And it was also more resting time. So that the next day we can engage the kid better because if we are tired ourselves, I feel like I can engage fully with my kid. And then sometimes maybe my temper gets short.

And it becomes this vicious cycle of bad experience by both myself and the child, which is not basically what I want. So that covers the why as for the what, to be honest, I'm not actually the pro here. My wife is really good at it. Like she takes notes every morning. It's calculated on a daily basis of what the nap time should be.

And therefore what the night bedtime should be, because we have a baby monitor as well. So she reviews this baby monitor every morning to see like, oh, the history route the night before, how many times did he roll around? Was there any wake time in the middle of the night? Because one thing about Arthur is that he is even when he wakes up in the middle of the night, he doesn't call for us.

He doesn't wake us up. So we do get that peaceful sleep all the way, which I really appreciate both Arthur doing that for us and my wife calculating his sleep time. 

Qin En 6:18 

Got it. Wow. So it's really interesting. It's almost like your wife is doing this sleep research study analyzing.. How much time does she spend each day doing that? Cause I can imagine it does take effort and time. 

Zi Xin 6:29

I think she spent quite a bit of time at the beginning, researching, understanding, and reading on it. I think it becomes quite second nature to her. So when she wakes up in the morning, maybe she spends the first 15 minutes also just reviewing the videos from last night, determining what the nap time should be.

After Arthur wakes up from his afternoon nap, then also review that because afternoon nap is only about two hours or so. So it becomes quite easy to review at like 8 and 10, maybe think about five minutes that to decide what the nighttime would be. I remember like one of the bigger challenges being like what the total wake time should be.

So total wake time is just how long of a period the kids should be awake for the entire day. Right? And then, changes, depending on sometimes the kid has grown older or what, so that time increases. So sometimes what is overtime? What is undertime?  It’s something that we spend a bit more time discussing, but I'm not the pro like..

Qin En 7:24

So you play the supporting role in there.

Zi Xin 7:26

Yeah. She tells me tonight, he goes to bed, at this time I stopped… Okay!

Qin En 7:32

Yeah, executed. Nice! Now, maybe I'm going to shift gears a bit to what you do professionally. You built your career, you built a company first and you sold it to Chope. That's incredible. Can you tell us a bit more about what the company was? What the journey was like in a nutshell?

Zi Xin 7:46

In my final year in university, I started a company with two other friends and it's the same mentality of let's do it earlier than later, because I know that startup life may not have a proper salary, they are not there. Right? 

So let's try earlier. Right? So we're in the business of like queuing, me and my co-founders, we all like to eat. And we see like long queues at restaurants, but yet people can't do much about it. We thought, okay, let's try and solve that problem for them.

So we built this system where people can self-service, join queues at restaurants. And then the restaurant on the other hand has a separate system where they can monitor the queues and automatically call people when it's their turn. 

Fast forward. About two years, we were going through fundraising at a time and we were lucky enough to have a few offers on the table and we found Chope and we were supposed to talk about it's a good combination.

It was strategy in the sense that they are in the business of restaurants, around their business or restaurants to the leadership team on Chope. Nice people to work with. And we thought like, okay, we could get along was a young culture and everyone wanted to solve problems or solve the food problem. I thought that was a really good fit, which is why we joined them on that journey. Its nice to work with people who have the same interests,passion about one thing to solve the same tower problems. And the acquisition was good too, because I am grateful to now be able to have a proper salary. I be living off my wife for the longest time. And we also do go to our restaurants that we had back then. Now they are part of a bigger ecosystem where there are most of these as they are relevant to help them in running the operations.

Qin En 9:23

Well, it sounds like so much of a life. How you got started in your career, how you get started with your family is around food. And that's so interesting and fascinating. So to say going through that journey, there was something I was going to ask. So being a founder to being an employee, what was that transition like? Was it challenging?

Zi Xin 9:41

So actually not for me, the time that shift happened was when we joined Chope. But I think we were given a lot of freedom, I'm empowered a lot. I joined as the Second Product Manager on the Chope team and the First Product Manager then became the CTO. So I was the only Product Manager back then and they gave me a lot of room to define where the products should hit towards.

And these have inputs on where the business should hit to where the product point of view. So I didn't feel a big part of becoming an employee. To me becoming an employee has a lot more feeling around like being constrained. There are things that you want to do but can't. And I felt none of that at Chope. After Chope, by then, because Chope became bigger. I think when I joined, it was 30, 40 people.

When I left, it was about 200 across the entire organization. So there will be a bit more of such, I guess, corporate processes in place. And that got me ready for my next journey at Gulf Tech, which when I joined, I also particularly joined this small team where I think I would have more freedom to define what I'm able to do.

Qin En 10:47

Interesting. And so the next time when Arthur grows up and he thinks about what to do with his life, what kind of advice would you give to him? Given that you've gone through this exciting journey of starting your own thing, selling it, and then joining, and then leading a team, seeing things from small to scale up. 

Zi Xin 11:03

I think the biggest one would be doing something that you love, or like, it sounds very cliche, but also it's what I truly believe in.

And even how we bring him up today, I feel like we give him a lot of choice. What I maybe internally, sometimes struggle with is whether I should be giving him that much freedom. But then. It's better to take some of this risk earlier than later, because you have so much lesser to lose and anything that can be reversed is a good. You can go the other way and if the rest as wrong, okay. You can come back and try again. 

And all these days you have a lot of freedom or you have a lot of you have a really long runway to mix up these mistakes. 

Qin En 11:48

Yeah. You mentioned about giving him freedom. Tell me a bit more about how that looks like. Cause I'm sure you also have friends who are parents, so you will know like how it's different. Tell me an example. 

Zi Xin 11:57

Yeah, so I think eating being one of them, if he says that he's full, then okay, then you are full and we won't force you to eat more. And there are times where maybe, he has eaten too little. right? Like we noticed too little, and maybe he doesn't like the food. He just says that he's done. I think we respect that.

And we just say, okay, if you are hungry later, you will eat more. If you don't eat so much for lunch, then maybe you get hungry during dinner more for dinner and adding overall that's fine. I think the other one it's dressing up. And there's where my wife and I don't agree with that much. And it's not so much about disagreeing about giving him the choice to dress it up, but sometimes I just let him choose what he wants to wear.

He picks on his clothes himself. And they do look a bit odd. The combination looks a bit odd at times, but I think, okay, it is his choice. We may sometimes say, oh, do you want to pair it with this other T-shirt instead? And if you say it's not okay, it's your choice. Go for it. And that's where I think, I don't know whether too much freedom is always a good thing.

Maybe it impedes his creativity or eye for aesthetical dressings or..

Qin En 13:17 

I think that's nice. Well, I think he picked the small things that you've already made. It doesn't look what's, I guess, conventional that you give him the freedom. And you said that there was the differences between you and your wife.

I guess clothes is one thing, but if I can zoom out a bit more philosophically, parenting styles, tell me about what was different between you and your wife along this parenting journey. 

Zi Xin 13:37

Actually, I don't think there were a lot loss of glee. I think we both know that we are new to this. And so we are just learning together.

So we don't actually disagree on a lot of things. We agreed to say, let's try something out and if it doesn't work, we will change it. I don't think we have fundamental differences, in like, principles of how we should bring up the kid. We are both like, okay, let's give this one way or try. And if that doesn't work okay, we'll reverse it.I'm trying that method. 

Qin En 14:09

You're lucky to have that similarity, but maybe give me an example. Tell me a story or something that you and your wife tried doesn't work and you had to change. 

Zi Xin 14:18

So I'm a believer of running experiments and..

Qin En 14:23

From the Product Manager to your Dad Sales, right? 

Zi Xin 14:25

So both product and my product, our homes, which is my son.

So I think in the very early stages, it was a small thing when it comes to feeding. I remember Day 3 when Arthur was about three or four days old, the nurses at a hospital say that, okay, don't go for auto feeding because there'll be nipple confusion and all that. And we were like, okay, the nurses recommended cup feeding, and cup feeding is I think really difficult for first timers.

What angle you hold a cup at? And how much force are you holding the child? All of these differences and at the end. Okay. And Arthur at three days old was having some difficulty drinking milk from a cup and I'll say, okay, let's try. What are the different ways to fit a three day or an infant? I'm going to buy a whole bunch of different things, ranging from actual proper things like there's this spoon for the bottle behind that you can adjust. 

And then I tried the normal metal spoon, but you have to pour it from the bottle while holding onto the kid. And then you don't know how much to apply. You don't want to waste the milk.

 The funny thing was that I was at this provision shop nearby and I was just looking for feeding cups and they didn't have any. I ended up buying, you know, those little red cups that used for worshipping. And I give that a try just to see which one is the best. So that was one experiment that I ran. And what I really liked is the feedback loop is so shocking. If it works, what's that? Okay. Let's double down on this method, five more or such cups or something.

And if it doesn't work, we just go ahead and try the other one. Yeah. So there was all my most, I guess, memorable experiments that I run as a first-time parent. 

Qin En 15:59

Wow, at three days old. And you're probably tired. You probably don't know what's going on. So you pick whatever you can, which is a red cups. 

Nice. Okay. Now, just thinking you also earlier mentioned that for you and your wife, you recognize that you are new to this. You are learning. So where do you and your wife learn parenting from?

Zi Xin 16:21

Uh, oh, that's a good question. Actually. I think we learned it from friends. We have friends who have kids earlier than us, or we have some learnings from there. We learn from parents. Arthur is being taken care of mostly by my mother-in-law or my in-laws.

I think I learned a lot off how to take care of a kid from her. So my wife has two other siblings. Okay. Yeah. They seem to be doing fine. So you're doing something right. I know nothing I'll learn from you. And I think I've also learned a lot from books. I do like to read and I think parenting books, I actually, one of the quite interesting books for me, mainly because after I pick up that knowledge, I can run the experiment, apply what I've learned immediately. So it is fulfilling for me. 

Qin En 17:07

You are a Product Manager, but I have to ask. What books? Uh, interesting what books are memorable?

Zi Xin 17:12

So I remember No Drama Discipline. I think it was mainly for disciplining that I was small concerned about in the beginning. And because I do think that if we discipline in a wrong way, it can have very like lasting effects on a child. Which is why I thought, okay, maybe there's something that is important to get right at the beginning. 

How do I afford this? There's so many disciplining by like how to guide your kid instead of forcing your values on them, understanding things from their point of view. I think one of my biggest takeaways was that, and a few books mentioned the same thing.

They are ultimately still one year old, two year old, three, or they're really still young and you can’t expect. They don't have a lot of knowledge of this water. They have a lot of knowledge of how these things work. So just put yourself in the position of the kid. Empathize with them. I was like, oh, wow.

Yeah. Okay. And so I'm, these are things that I do try and apply a lot. And every book, new book that I read sometimes are quite similar in what they are trying to teach, which then starts as a good reminder to me about this other things that I should be doing more. 

Qin En 18:20

Got it. And where do you find the time to read given your busy schedule. You have work, taking care of your family, you like to eat. So you go about your eating phases. So how do you find those pockets of time?

Zi Xin 18:32

So. I do most of my reading at night before I sleep after maybe a few pages, I get tired and I fall asleep, which is why I think a long time to read a book.

But then after sleep ends, maybe about 7:00 to 8:00 PM every night. So the time after that is time that my wife can spend together. Although it has to be at home. So yeah, I think most of my reading time is done at night or when I go traveling, which was a long time ago, but I'll make sure to bring a book with me, like to go to places where it's more relaxing walking around.

Although you usually need to walk quite a bit for like the good food. 

Qin En 19:08

Yeah, absolutely. You have to walk a bit that you have to get into queue and then you get your food. Okay. Okay. So let's say I want to double click a bit into the discipline portion. What is your style of discipline especially at this age where they’re starting to be more aware, starting to, to expanded vocabulary and language and I guess talking back. So what's your discipline approach? 

Zi Xin 19:31

I think the two main things are trying to understand from him, his perspective, getting him to agree and then no beating. Yeah. That is sometimes most of my cool a bit or what, but I try not to do that.

I think that is one of those things that for you is harmful to a kid, essentially, I don't want to instill fear. I want to inspire more. I actually do want them to see me as a friend who is helping them along the way, supporting them then to say, Hey, you do this and you do that. I think there are boundaries that we have to set and that should be informed early.

For example, if we were to explain what are the boundaries beforehand and then let him operate within those boundaries. Yeah. 

Qin En 20:15

Well, can you give me an example of a time where maybe he did something wrong. How did you go about with it? 

Zi Xin 20:21

So I think he's at an age where, like I said, it'd be more disagreeable when he goes to the playground for example. If he doesn't get his way, then sometimes he gets a bit more physical and all that. And the other one doesn't want to acknowledge when people are talking to him because he's still doing his thing. Maybe he doesn't want to be bothered, so he doesn't want to be disturbed. 

So I try to solve that from I think, a more fundamental first principles approach to it. It's something that I'm trying to improve on myself too. What I told him is that the principle being, if you want someone to do something to you do the same to that person. And the in reverse is true, which is if you don't want someone to do something to you, don't do it to that person.

And that as the base principle, when I apply it to the playground, it will be like, do you like it when people push you? You don't right? So don't push other people. At home, do you like it? When you ask us something, we do not reply you and it's like, no. So therefore, when we talk to you, it was only correct or courteous that you reply as well.

So I've been trying to operate on that first principles approach. That's the only one that came over so far, so still trying to optimize on that. 

Qin En 21:31

But I think it's a great one because I think a lot of times, if we just go ahead at school, the children without really explaining what's wrong. They just feel negative about it, but they don't really learn and grow.

But I like the part about almost forcing him to think and develop a sense of empathy, which of course are because they're still growing in many aspects is really about showing them which directions we want them to move. So I appreciate your sharing that Zi Xin. Now, what is the best part of being a dad?

Zi Xin 21:58

 I think it's reliving my childhood personally.

Qin En 22:01

Oh wow, tell me more.

Zi Xin 22:02

Yeah. So going to the zoo or going to Toys R Us, they're going to places where you get to experience it as a kid, I guess, because like the zoo doesn't have a lot of special or good food. We don't go to the zoo a lot, but now there is a chance that when you go back and you're like, oh, actually this is a nice place.

I learned just by going back through the zoo again. Right. All that I like looking at Kaleidoscope. We had habits. I enjoyed trying out things, something that I don't usually do. And I think because I want to expose my child to various experiences. So I kind of go through the experience myself again. So I think that's the first one reliving the childhood.

I think the second one is, watching him grow, watching how someone, or in the case of a startup, something that you have invested a lot of time and effort in and seeing how that growing up. But also, kind of changing how or like impacting society in a sense, maybe not so much for a child yet though I do want to hopefully bring up after to be someone who be able to contribute back to society in a meaningful way.

In the case of a startup, it's got some little startup, right. And the kids will start out trying to solve a business problem or trying to help restaurants, uh, solve their operational problems better. And seeing that, Hey, actually, it's working. That I think is a very fulfilling feeling as a parent.

Qin En 23:35

Absolutely. I think the idea that you're able to shape and mold a life and hopefully to be something that creates positive impact on society, the opportunity. And even though you're only three years into this journey with many more decades to go, I think it's part of the joys of being a parent. 

So tell me a bit more also about work-life balance and managing that doesn't cause you work in tech, your work in product there’s always fires to put out. Now my guess is you're probably working from home. So how do you manage all of that? 

Zi Xin 23:55

Yeah, I think I've been quite fortunate to be in companies where we value work-life balance a lot. I think from a employee / parent perspective, I want that balance because obviously you want to spend more time with my kid. From the employer perspective, having been on the other side before where I was having to manage or startup back then, I feel that from an employee standpoint, it’s also seeing that in the longer term, this is more sustainable by giving your employees a bit more freedom and giving them the time for them to do what they want to do. Whether is it something that they are passionate in or bringing up their kids. I think basically some long time that is not doing what is meaningful for an employer. 

What I do see is I guess, different employers have different constraints possibly.

So obviously this long-term sustainability thing. The definition of a longterm, it's not the same for all kinds of companies. When you are in a smaller company, sometimes you have six months later’s paycheck to worry about, then you have to prioritize or you will try and make your staff more because that is what you are chasing.

In other companies that like now that I'm in a global company, I'm at PayPal now where you have colleagues that are at different times zones. And so it's no longer about after 7:00 PM, I log off. It is a different timing in San Jose and we need to still communicate with them so the work gets done. In the case of Chope back then, restaurants, they're like dinner service, there's the busiest time, Friday dinner, or like Saturday dinner. Those are, when if things happen, we need to be able to respond quickly. 

So I think what life balance shouldn't come in terms of hours at what clock in and clock out. It should come at just having the freedom to do what you need to do, but yet still getting the work done.

Qin En 25:50

Yeah, absolutely. It's about managing time and energy in a way that works. Not necessarily saying, drawing the line very clearly that, okay. I'm going to start work at night. I'm going to get off at five and that's it. So perhaps what's one or two things that has worked in terms of helping you to really draw the line and plug out when it's time to put it down and spend time with our family or even take time for yourself?

Zi Xin 26:14

Yeah. I think the difficult thing about this working from home right now is you are just a few steps away from your desk so when an email comes in or it becomes very tempting to go and deal with it. Unlike back in the office where, okay, it's time on leaving my office now. Mentally, you have this switch off phase. It's not that you don't get any work done outside of work once you leave the office. But there is this very obvious physical transition, which I think is not so clear when it comes to working from home. But what has helped me a lot is I prioritize putting Arthur to being in bed every night.

If a meeting comes, I try to block out that time of the day to make sure that okay, I prepared before bed, reviewed the story. And then I put into a bit before I come back to work, I guess there are times when this is not possible. I tried to make that very, very exceptional. 

Qin En 27:07

Got it. Yeah. I liked that about protecting and knowing when it's a special moment so that you can protect it and enjoy that time with your son.

This has been a really fascinating conversation Zi Xin. So if I had to ask you to sum up, what is one lesson you have learned as a parent in tech? What would that be? 

Zi Xin 27:25

Experimentation. I think even all the physicians that make today when it comes to parenting, it may not be super clear whether it's the right one or how far that will go, right? So just having big broad principles that are a correct direction in general, I guess. And then trying out smaller ways to test or make that process better. I think that has guided me a lot in the last few years, at least.

Qin En 27:52

Nice. I love that. Well, if our parents want to connect with you, Zi Xin, how can they best do so?

Zi Xin 27:58

They can reach me on LinkedIn or just through you?

Qin En 28:00

Got it. Well, thank you so much for taking time off and joining me today on the show. It's a pleasure to speak with you. Thank you. 

Zi Xin 28:06

Thank you Qin En.

Qin En 28:12

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.