From Engineering Leadership to Stay-at-Home Dad to CTO: Ran Chen's Unconventional Journey
Welcome to the 16th episode of Silicon & Spice, where tech leaders share life's unique flavors.
In this conversation, Yiyang Hibner speaks with Ran Chen, CTO of Pure Global, about an unconventional career path: from engineering director, to intentional stay-at-home dad, to C-level executive.
The discussion covers startup career growth, PM and engineering partnerships in ML/AI, the decision to take a two-year career break as a stay-at-home dad, turning fragmented naptime into side-hustle experiments, and the mindset shift from employee to business owner.
Topics
- Ran's “rocket ship” strategy for fast career growth
- The dynamics of PM and engineering partnerships in ML/AI
- Taking a two-year career break as a stay-at-home dad
- Exploring 50+ side hustles and regulated industries
- Sales, customer relationships, and C-level leadership
- Why hands-on CTOs who join sales calls can build simpler AI solutions
Chapters
- 00:00 Journey into Engineering Leadership
- 10:29 The Decision to Become a Stay-at-Home Dad
- 14:57 Transitioning Back to Tech: A New Role as CTO
- 26:36 The Business Owner Mindset
- 27:14 A Day in the Life of a CTO
- 33:09 Exploring Side Hustles: Tips and Insights
Links
文字稿
机器转写，已做轻度分段整理，可能有识别错误。
00:00:00 A：Welcome to the latest podcast of Silicon and Spice where tech leaders share life's unique flavors. And today we have Ran. Here you want to wave. Hi.
00:00:08 B：Hello everyone. I'm Ran.
00:00:09 A：Ran currently is a CTO at a company called Pure Global. It's an AI and data power life science service provider. And previously you took a career break of two years and Photosynthesis being a stay at home dad.
00:00:21 B：Yes.
00:00:22 A：And before that you were director of engineering, health machine learning are 2B and. And then you also work at a lot of different companies like Trulia, et cetera.
00:00:30 B：Yes.
00:00:30 A：So the first question I have is what is your path into engineer leadership?
00:00:36 B：Yeah, I think that's a very, very good question. Where especially nowadays when we talk about AI, I saw a lot of new graduates. Right. So I think this is a very hard time for everyone to find a job for new graduates. Then a lot of changes in the careers. So I graduated from Carnegie Mellon in 2014. I think that at that time it was a golden age for people who work in the tech.
00:01:00 A：11 years.
00:01:01 B：Yeah. So every company is hiring. So for most people you have to make choices where you want to go to big companies like Amazon, Google, Apple, Amata, or you go to middle or smaller startups. And then at that time I don't think the smaller startups are as sexy as like nowadays when you talk about. So you need to have a lot of thoughts about why you want to go to startups. So for me I've been always being a startup guy. I like building things from scratch. So first company I work at Trudia, which is a public company, but it's middle and smaller size.
00:01:39 A：Okay.
00:01:40 B：So I didn't went to larger companies like Apple for example. I do have offers for them. But the reason I went there is because I want to be a smaller company. I learn things and then I want to go to another startup. So that's how I choose to go to Trulia. Right. So then after I work in Trulia for a few years, I went to a startup called qbtv.
00:02:00 A：Yeah.
00:02:01 B：So back to the question the leadership things. I think the easiest way when you want to promote fast is just to go to a company that will grow fast. So if your company have a lot of people x 100 x in a very short period of time, of course the people there get promoted fast. And of course you need to have some skills like you want. You care about the business, you care about the team, you contribute a lot to the team, you have strong technical. But of course the things I think people don't realize is how fast the company grows, actually.
00:02:33 A：Yeah, that's true.
00:02:34 B：Yeah.
00:02:35 A：So to summarize, I think you started as like a data scientist role. Right. Sort of engineer.
00:02:40 B：Yeah. Like I think at that time nobody really knows what, what's the data scientist. So for me, even though my title was a data scient at Trulia, but the real role is more like applied machine learning scientists. If we talk about how we talk about today, then when I went to 2B, my initial title was even like data engineer or something. But my work is essentially the same. It's like machine learning, apply machine learning. Right. So on the machine learning algorithm, like recommendation algorithm. So this has been what I've done, what I've been doing for last 10 to 12 years. Just like title changes.
00:03:18 A：Yeah. But the core remains very similar.
00:03:21 B：Yeah. To be honest, that's always the thing I want to work on is how do I apply machine learning in different industry.
00:03:28 A：Yeah.
00:03:29 B：So that's the thing. Yeah. The real estate. Yeah. TV entertainment now is like help the medical device, med tech, life science, regulation stuff. But the essential, the core thing is always like how can I apply machine learning to solve the real world problem?
00:03:45 A：Yeah.
00:03:46 B：And now people don't talk about machine learning, people talk about AI.
00:03:49 A：Yeah, yeah, that's right.
00:03:50 B：Essentially. Yeah. We're talking about the same thing.
00:03:51 A：Yeah, very similar.
00:03:52 B：Yeah.
00:03:53 A：So basically your path into engineer leadership is like jump on a rocket ship, right?
00:03:57 B：Exactly. Yeah.
00:03:58 A：When the company is at a hyper growth phase, the headcount grows at 10x. The tide lifts the boat. Right. So that lifts your career. It could be the title, it could be your domain.
00:04:07 B：Yes.
00:04:08 A：Versus as you said, at a bigger company, even though you had the choice, you decided to want to try out those smaller, smaller companies to just get more diverse experience. I would say instead of being kind of in one area.
00:04:22 B：Yeah. I mean I always love building, I always love being hands on. So that's why I really love startup. Because I always have the path or the option to own things end to end, to build the things the way I want. So that's how I get most of my enjoyment. Like building things.
00:04:38 A：I love that. That's my hat said, building things.
00:04:40 B：Yeah, I'm building things. Yeah.
00:04:42 A：Kind of looking back of your time in these different startups, what is a great example of having a good PME partnership? Because I feel like we're kind of like left hand and right hand. Right. You have to work with both hands really well. You cannot be like one side is dominant and the other side just listen. It doesn't work like that.
00:05:01 B：Right, yeah, that's a very good point. I think you come from a PM background, right? So I always work with a lot of great PMs in my career. But one thing I want to mention is I think in the machine learning side especially I work a lot on the Recommendation algorithm side, PM's role is kind of different compared to let's say like front and back end.
00:05:24 A：True. Because I'm a consumer pm. Right. I'm more of a, as you said, like front end facing.
00:05:28 B：Yeah, yeah. Because for example, I know when I think about product manager. Right. Or project manager or whatever, this kind of role.
00:05:38 A：Product manager.
00:05:39 B：Product manager, yeah. It's different. So one of the most important thing is to find out the user story, what does really user want and then work with engineering leadership to translate that into something that people can implement. So that's the most important role. And then like in the machine learning side, especially for example recommendation algorithm, like ranking algorithm, it's hard.
00:06:05 A：Yeah. You don't talk, it's like what do you want to recommend it to? That's true.
00:06:08 B：Yeah. Right. So like there are a few things that's hard. First of all is like what's the real user story here? Like if you look at the home screen of the, let's say Tubi or Netflix or all these recommendation based like streaming service, nothing changed, it's same ranking kind of thing. Right. So it's really hard to say what's the real user stories here. And then that's the first thing. The second thing is, for example, there's like new user experience, there's returning user experience, there's diversity, there's discovery, there's still a lot of things, but it's not as explicit as a simple user journey, but very data driven way of describing things.
00:06:53 A：Yeah.
00:06:53 B：So a lot of very good product people I work with, they are more native to using data to describe the user behavior, describe what they really want instead of just saying for example, we want diversity.
00:07:09 A：Yeah, yeah, yeah. You have to be a little more detailed.
00:07:12 B：So what defines diversity? Right. Why does that matter? Like why do you say this one have good diversity that one doesn't and why, for example, diversity of the algorithm, diversity of the recognition will truly contribute to our core business. All these things need to be answered by data, otherwise. And then even with that defined, how can we measure the improvement? How can we improve the algorithm? To make that happen is also very hard to be honest. So I think that's kind of the thing observing my day to day work with The PM where I love working with PMs but then if the PM doesn't truly come from data kind of
00:07:53 A：background, be more technical.
00:07:54 B：Yeah, yeah, it's hard. It's hard even for the pm. It's hard because when PM comes in, it's hard for him or her to describe what they really want. So that's why I think in the machine learning side we need PMs where are more technical, more data driven. Also have some sense of how does the machine learning works as well.
00:08:14 A：I see, I see.
00:08:16 B：So it's not like front end, back end, you know, you are going to implement that and then they're going to be implemented.
00:08:22 A：Yeah, it's a lot more uncertain kind of things. So basically as you said, the partnership does require a very deep technical knowledge from the product side.
00:08:33 B：Right.
00:08:33 A：You cannot just say, oh, I want to achieve this, this is how it should look like what people want because you have to speak the same technical language that the engineering partner says. So that does have the nuance into it.
00:08:44 B：And also I think this comes to two sides as well. Where from my team, like why manage the machine learning team? Most of our engineers care more about products user experience as well. So in this relationship with pm, we both of us need to speak others language to build a deeper relationship. Right. Like for example at Tubi most of our engineering team do a lot of user journey analysis, A B test results analysis because they want to have a deeper understanding of what does the user really do. For example, if we releasing a new recommendation algorithm change. So how does user behavior really changes? Right. So this should not be just be answered by the PMs but also need to be understand by the engineers. So I think this kind of more overlap in a way from the machine learning point of view for PM and engineer side compared to just, you know, one sided.
00:09:40 A：Right. You have to speak each other's languages.
00:09:42 B：Exactly. So that's why I see like in our team, all the teams I work on, the relationship between engineers and PMs are much more deeper because we have to talk a lot on daily basis. And you know, in some engineering team, right. So the PMs can write tickets, then they know things gonna be implemented in this way because there are gonna be designers helping them to draw things and then they know this is gonna happen in this way. But in the machine learning side, in the recommendation side, it's hard.
00:10:12 A：Yeah.
00:10:13 B：So it's a lot of kind of discussion to make sure we're truly aligned. There's no such a UX thing. There Right.
00:10:20 A：There's no ux. You can't like visualize.
00:10:23 B：Yeah, exactly. Yeah. That's kind of my feeling. Yeah.
00:10:27 A：Yeah, I think that makes sense. It basically it does require each other to speak to the other side of the language that to have a good and strong partnership. You basically have the same language. Right. You cannot talk over each other at different languages. My next question is, what made you decide you want to transition to be a stay at home dad for two years? I mean you were director of engineering, like good career path and stuff.
00:10:52 B：Yeah, that's a very good point. So to give everyone more background, this year is 2025. Right? 2023.
00:11:00 A：After Covid.
00:11:00 B：Yeah, after Covid. So the multiple factors, first of all is of course I went to Tubi 2017. Yeah. I was the first ML engineer there. I built a whole machine learning team from scratch. Algorithms, data, data science, a lot of things there from scratch. Right. So and then Tubi was acquired by Fox Cor. So it has been a long time for me to work in that company. So I do want to take a break.
00:11:27 A：Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:11:27 B：That's the first thing. And also I have two babies. Right. So one is a girl and a boy. I do want to spend more time with them as well. And also we decide to take care of the babies just by ourselves.
00:11:40 A：No family support.
00:11:41 B：No family support. No nanny. Yeah. Just by ourselves. Yeah. We do want to spend more time with them until they can go to like daycare for example. So. And then another very important factor is I think being full time daddy is full and that's not something people talk a lot. But still I think that's very important. I really want to support my wife's career as well. So my wife, she's a CPA in the big four accounting firm. So if you know this industry, you know there's going to be. Their jobs are generally crazily busy.
00:12:13 A：Yeah.
00:12:14 B：Especially crazy hours, busy seasons. And also she have a very big dream. So she also taking a part time job.
00:12:20 A：She's doing a part time job jd.
00:12:22 B：Yeah. So she want to pass the bar doctor.
00:12:24 A：The law school.
00:12:25 B：Yeah. Oh my goodness. Want to pass the California bar. Yeah. So if you don't know, California bar is one of the most difficult bar to pass. And also she is a Chinese as me. So English is not her native language. Okay. Taking part time JD is also extremely challenging because also she's also doing the school and stuff. Yeah.
00:12:44 A：While working at the beautiful.
00:12:45 B：Oh my gosh. And then prepare for the final exam very hard. So for me, I really want to support her dream as well. For me, I feel I'm lucky enough to join a startup. I feel like I've done a lot to get my dream come true in a way. So I do want to support her a lot. So I think this kind of thing the reasons. So I stay home for around two years so that two of the babies can. The younger ones can go to a daycare as well.
00:13:13 A：Yeah, yeah.
00:13:14 B：So then yeah, I think it's a good time for. Yeah for us.
00:13:17 A：I love that because usually like the norm is that okay, the wife supports the husband dream. And I love that you have equality here that you want to support what your wife aspires to do. Right. And then it's like you don't mind this planned career break because you are in charge of spending more time with your kids. So that feels a good bonding time. It's not like wasted or anything. Right.
00:13:41 B：So yeah, I like the way how you describe it because. Because whenever I think about, I think it's funny because like for example, if a woman. Right. Take a career break, people won't say you take a career break. And then what about your future career? Like people take that for granted for somehow. Right. So but essentially like we're all equal. Right. So for me I don't think that's a issue like that. It's like happened just to one of us. So then I think I'm pretty lucky in my career then why not? That cannot be me. Right. So that's basically how I think about it. I think definitely want to talk about this story because I want encourage more people to. More men to think about like being a full time dad as well. Right. So it's, it's about like just the family and we all have the choice to do the things.
00:14:28 A：Yeah, yeah. I love that. If you want to take care of the kids yourself, it's one of you guys, right?
00:14:32 B：Yes.
00:14:33 A：It has to be one of you guys.
00:14:34 B：Yes.
00:14:35 A：So it could be the husband, could be the wife. It just between the couples or whatever you guys works out. Okay, that makes sense. Yes. The next question is I want to hear more about your journey from a stay at home dad back to AI tech, medical device tech. And this is a new domain and you also have a bump in title. You are the CTO now. Chief Technology Officer. So how was that transition?
00:14:57 B：So first of all, what we do at Pure Global, we are like a AI based consulting firm. So we help the medical device companies or health tech companies who already get their registration done in their local countries. For example, if you have like an Apple Watch, you already registered in the United States, you are doing pretty well in your business. But then you want to go to Brazil, you want to go to South Korea, you want to go to Asia, uae. Right. You have to find a local company to help you go through all this registration process.
00:15:33 A：Local partnership.
00:15:34 B：Yeah. And then you have to have a local company to hold your registration.
00:15:39 A：Yeah, yeah, right.
00:15:40 B：So that's kind of the regulations here. So you have to work with. Most of the companies need to work with a consulting firm instead of doing by their own. Unless you are super rich, you can have like 20 different offices all around the world, then you can do this. Right. So in last a few years, we already opened our own company, our own local base in around like 20 different places. Places. So we can help the customers to hold their license to do the registration. We have a lot of companies from China, from Europe, usa because these are like major manufacturer companies for medical device. And then my role as a CTO is really to develop the AI native solutions. So this goes back to what I really want to do. I really want to make AI applied machine learning, basically. So apply AI into different domains. I think this is a very good domain, essentially. So this comes two parts. One is what we deliver to the clients. How can we make more efficiency with the AI tools? Second is within the company itself. How can we transform from a traditional consulting company just like every consulting company, Accenture. Yeah. Because consulting company, this kind of format has been running for like hundreds of years. Right. So there's always ways of doing consulting company and then there's always issues running consulting company, for example, it's hard to scale the business. Right. How can we transform this kind of company into a more AI native company where automation phase. Yeah. We can make the company and the business more scalable without by building all these AI tools and also changing the company structures. We were talking about how to do sales, how to do a lot of things here. So I'm leading all these efforts to help the clients and help the company as well as a cto. So I think this kind of aligns what I always want to do and all the skills I have. And then since I've been joining this company, we already see a lot of changes in the company. Yeah. So why you joined? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So a lot of changes. A lot of changes. So we are kind of a pioneer here in both like helping the clients, also making a company transforming as well.
00:17:52 A：Yeah, yeah. So now here comes the follow up question because usually when A person takes like a two year plan break.
00:18:00 B：Yeah.
00:18:01 A：People say, oh, I'm taking a step back in my career. But in your case you're taking a step forward. Right. Went from like director, I think middle to high level management to a C level to an executive level. How did you make that happen? Because it sounds like in the two years that you were having time off and bounding with your kids, you were still doing little stuff. Right. You still keep up with latest technology.
00:18:23 B：Yeah, that's a very good point. So for me, why was. I think spending time with baby costs a lot of energy. But still you still have a lot
00:18:33 A：of time after they go to bed, eight o'. Clock. Yeah.
00:18:36 B：So you have a lot of smaller time here and there. Yeah. But you don't have a huge amount of time. Like two hours, three hours. No. You probably have like 10 minutes, 20 minutes. You can do some, all your things. So I've tried to do a lot of very random things during this period. So I learn a lot. For example, because of AI. Right. So I can, I do a lot of side hustles. I try to get a lot of professional license, a very different business.
00:19:03 A：Well, like what are license?
00:19:04 B：Yeah. So I, to be honest, I try a lot like I try to search to get license. I probably search like more than 50 different side hustles.
00:19:13 A：Oh, okay. Okay.
00:19:14 B：And then I end up spend more time on like personal finance domain. So I get my tax professional license license, insurance agent license, security license, financial advisor license. So I can do, provide the whole financial planning, end to end for individuals.
00:19:33 A：Yeah.
00:19:35 B：That solves a lot of my own questions. And also I do see a lot of clients as well in this domain.
00:19:40 A：Yeah.
00:19:41 B：So that's kind of a major thing. And then one nice thing about this domain is I get a lot of professional training on how to do the sales because I come from a technical side. Right. So the whole sales training really bring me to the next level of smart career.
00:19:59 A：You still kind of improve your skill sets.
00:20:01 B：Exactly.
00:20:02 A：Even though you have just fragmented time. Yeah. You still were able, I don't know, are these trainings online or something? You're able to watch this or some of them in person?
00:20:10 B：Yeah, yeah, in person, online. But the most important thing is it's. It's really outside my comfortable zone.
00:20:16 A：Yeah.
00:20:16 B：I learned a lot being a salesperson. I get a lot of training. So even now I join the new company, I am very confident to do the sales by myself as well, to talk to clients, which was something I didn't understand. I didn't know how to do that in my previous company. Okay. But now I can do that. So I think that's very important. And I see now that with the help of AI, a lot of things are changing, especially the technical sides, the cursor. All these AI tools can do so much things and that means each individual of us need to push the boundary, do much more outside of our comfort as well. I think that's very important.
00:20:55 A：Okay. Okay. So I think sounds like you were able to make the transition not by luck, of course. Right. Because during your two years of stay at home that period, you're able to get more training, get more license and then basically you have more cross functional exposure into sales. Combined with your machine learning background, that makes you a really good candidate to be a C level that you have. You basically don't just focus on one thing, not just like machine learning, the outdoor side, but you're able to kind of play a GM role.
00:21:29 B：Right.
00:21:30 A：You're able to see different functions.
00:21:31 B：Business owner role. Business owner, I would call it business owner. Yeah. That's also something I didn't quite understand when I worked just as an employee. I didn't quite understand what does it mean by truly the business, the feeling of business owner. And how do you provide service to other people? How do you make money from other people?
00:21:52 A：Yeah, right.
00:21:53 B：That's very important. That's very hard actually.
00:21:55 A：How do people pay you?
00:21:56 B：Yeah, right. So because like if you never do this role, you will feel bad asking people to pay you to do something. Like you feel like that's a bargain, that's a negotiation. But then if you do a lot of sales, you realize that's the process of adding value. Right. So you will figure out what's the value of providing. How do you figure out the best spot for value adding? Right. So your whole mindset shifts and then you know, you are helping, you're not selling, you're helping them. And so with all these mindset shifts, kind of helps me to move to the next role as well. Where to be honest, like you're providing
00:22:33 A：value as a cto, right?
00:22:34 B：Yeah, yeah, exactly. And also to be honest, when I talk to different companies, they are the most thing they're most impressive is like, yes, they are looking for a technical leader, but then they doesn't like the technical leader who only care about technical.
00:22:50 A：Right, right, right. You have to be well rounded.
00:22:52 B：Yeah.
00:22:52 A：You have to at that level, you
00:22:55 B：have to have strong business sense. You know, how does the business work? You know how you, you can contribute to the business side as well, not just the technical side. So that's kind of the requirement for a higher, higher role. Yeah. So that's kind of thing I, I observed and I started to realize which I didn't quite understand when I was in my previous company.
00:23:18 A：Okay. Yeah. I love that. It's a mindset shift. Right. Basically, as you said, you're the business owner. Right. If the company ride or die, it's kind of on the vision that you set. You had to do the sales. You have to make sure it's running, the ship does not sink and stuff.
00:23:34 B：Yeah. And then that gives you the proactive way of thinking how to solve the problem. Right. The growth mindset comes with together as well. Because you have a business owner now.
00:23:45 A：Yeah.
00:23:46 B：And if you just Employee. Right. So the, the employee mindset is really hard because another day. Yeah. Like my manager tell me to do this, tell me to do that. Right. So you put your position is like the opposite of the business or opposite of the employee where you see them like doing something bad to you and then you just want to get paid because that's a compensation for you because you get hurts in your. They do their work. I mean. Yeah. And I think of the day that hurts your long term career as well, to be honest. Right. So I think this whole business owner mindset is very important for anyone who want to make their career move forward.
00:24:24 A：That is really cool.
00:24:25 B：And also I think for me now as a company leader as well, where I want to build more ways to that the people in the company feel like they are the owner of the
00:24:35 A：business, they are part of it.
00:24:37 B：Then it comes back to the organization. It comes back to the compensation incentive something structures. Right. How can we make people truly the owner of the business? These are very important.
00:24:52 A：That's a big culture shift.
00:24:53 B：That's a big culture shift. And why that's more important today is because of AI The AI.
转写来源：youtube / video；引擎：assemblyai