The KAIST Herald interviewed KAIST international alumni about their experiences as students in KAIST and how these experiences have helped them in their current careers. This interview series was conducted in collaboration with International Scholar and Student Services (ISSS).
Please introduce yourself.
My name is Andy Dang. I’m currently a lead engineer and a co-founder at a startup called WhyLabs based in Seattle. I [studied] in KAIST between 2007 and 2011, so it's been a while. I was among the first batch of Vietnamese students there. I’m glad that we were among the first, but we were able to convince more people to join.
What is your favorite memory in KAIST?
I have two. One was the first time we arrived in Korea — that was February 2007 and that was my first time leaving Vietnam as well. It snowed — it wasn’t a lot of snow, but it snowed on a Saturday night for the first time. And we Vietnamese students went crazy because we'd never seen snow before. Some grad students texted us, “Hey, it’s snowing outside your dorm”. We were running out of the dorm and just [had] a snow fight. That was really fun.
The second-best memory was figuring out how to order chicken and pizza to the West dorm, [and] the delivery people were not allowed to go inside the campus. I don't know if that’s still the case, but back then they had to hand over the chicken over the fence. I remember figuring out how to do that. That was a big achievement and really made life a lot more fun there.
What were the challenges you faced while studying in KAIST?
We were the first batch of the international program, so there were definitely challenges in terms of the curriculum. A lot of classes were not available in English, and that was definitely challenging because you need to fulfill certain requirements to graduate. The opportunity to tick the boxes was more limited for international students if you don't speak Korean.
The second challenge was that when we first arrived, there was still a lot of discussion around whether it was the right thing to embrace English education or not. And there were a lot of political fights among student bodies and professors as well. There was definitely [a challenge in] being a newcomer seeing this heated debate — it took some time to adjust to. I got a lot of help from a lot of Korean students and professors, but at the same time it created a lot of challenges for the existing Korean students who joined before the program was founded. They struggled to adapt and adjust to the new curriculum. I think towards the end of my stay, things had improved a lot, and I don’t think that is such a big issue anymore.
How did you overcome these challenges?
ISSS was of tremendous help. They provided a lot of guidance with navigating the paperwork — things like health insurance and bank accounts. They really helped us in those aspects and in the little things in daily life. Also, we had Vietnamese graduate students who helped us navigate the curriculum. I [also] had an academic advisor who was really helpful. Also, because the year I joined, everyone had to pass the English requirements, the new students were very receptive to the changes. I didn't feel that the resistance within the student body and I didn’t have to feel those pressures [directly].
Did your view of KAIST change from when you were studying in KAIST compared to after you graduated? In what ways?
I think not in any significant way. I’m really grateful for the opportunity to study at KAIST. The education I got there definitely put me to where I’m today. In terms of changing the view, I think the university itself and the dynamic among the students has evolved in a positive way: being more inclusive to international students and [introducing] a lot more activities that take advantage of the diversity of both the undergraduate and graduate student bodies. It was really fun for me to learn about other cultures and Korean culture as well. I think the direction the university was trying to take was really positive. I knew that it was an easier transition for students, and at the same time, it felt like Korea as a country was also trying to go towards being more inclusive and internationalizing the whole economy.
Having gone through all that stress, I think it was the right bet. It was a risky bet, and it wasn’t an easy decision to make. And in a way, now having seen these difficulties from other countries that I have lived in, I came to appreciate those challenges from [Korea] more than before. My appreciation has gone up for the Korean professors and students who had to endure [the changes to the curriculum].
How did you first choose your career? How did KAIST help in your career choices?
Initially, I wanted to go down the research route, so I did a couple of internships at research institutes. I ended up doing my masters in Tokyo, simply because I wanted to really live in Tokyo, and it was a very different city. I realized that I enjoy research, but in KAIST, I also got a lot of experience with programming, so I really wanted to do something that is in between — more around software development, but in the frontier of technology rather than pure research. So I decided not to pursue a PhD and instead found a job. I was looking hard and just applying everywhere, and it just happened that back then, Amazon UK was open for a position, and I was lucky to pass the interview process. I spent six years there. It was definitely a journey, from where I started — when I didn't have a very good idea of the skills that are required [to be successful in] the workplace — to where I am today. I wouldn't call myself very successful, but I think I've grown a lot in terms of leadership, as well as technical skills.
But one thing to point out, as an acknowledgment to KAIST education, is that a lot of my strong foundations were built on the time I was in KAIST. I’m surprised by that myself, but there are random things I didn’t think would matter back then, [such as the] courses I took — I didn't think that they would be relevant to where I am 10 years later.
What classes or activities did you pursue in KAIST that helped you in your career?
I must say that [the KAIST computer science core curriculum] is one of the best I've seen in terms of the knowledge that we cover. I’ve interviewed graduate students from various universities in the UK, from Oxford, as well as in the US, from MIT and Stanford, and I can say that KAIST’s curriculum is really frontier in terms of the things we were doing, things that were really challenging in terms of both theory and application.
But on top of that, those courses in history of science, English literature, or, communication and social sciences, turned out to be extremely important in my later years in my career as I grew into a more senior role. Having taken those courses really helped me navigate the world in different ways. I think they gave me a different perspective around how I approach problems, both in terms of interpersonal communication, as well as trying to solve problems from a different way of thinking rather than being very technically driven. In computer science and software engineering, you get a lot of people who are very driven by algorithms and technical problems. I think I take the middle path where a lot of my thinking and a lot of my decisions are driven by both the social sciences aspect, as well as the technical decision. I didn’t think about the reason I took those courses, because again, I didn't have many options, but they turned out to be really fun and the professors were amazing.
I wish I had somebody to tell me that those courses matter, that humanities and social sciences matter in the real world, especially because when you are trying to solve a problem nowadays, it only matters if you’re trying to solve a problem from the human-centric perspective. And that's what these courses bring about. They give you the tools so that you can further navigate the world and figure out what matters to you most.
What is your current position and what are your roles and responsibilities?
Before jumping to my current position, I can talk a bit about my previous position at Amazon, which was way more well-defined.
I spent six years at Amazon — the majority of my career. I started as a junior software engineer. They have different kinds of career progression, and as you go more into the senior roles, one of the things that people outside of Amazon don’t realize is that the technical bar only raises slightly (like maybe 10%), but in terms of the leadership skills it’s a tremendous jump. I got to the senior role after five years, and it was definitely [challenging] to grow in terms of communication and leadership, because you have to make difficult decisions and then also navigate corporate politics. [In Amazon], I was doing a lot of taking the business requirements, translating that into technical decisions, and then trying to justify and balance that with all the other constraints that other stakeholders put on the table. Most of the time it’s a lot of talking — not only being able to put up a diagram and solve the problem technically, but also being able to communicate those ideas.
That was where I was before I founded this company with my two other co-founders. I was the only engineer originally, [but] the role I play now is slightly different, because we've grown from three people to a 13-people company now. I started with being very technically focused, and over time, once we identified the direction [we wanted to take], I took on the role of an architect — to help other people to navigate and basically be the bridge between multiple parts of the system. And as we add more components to our system, I would be the one there to [oversee them]. Then as we onboard customers, [I had to become] a sales engineer — this is something I had to grow into — being the face of the company, talking to customers, and figuring out their needs and figuring out how to map those needs into what we can and cannot do. So those are [the roles] that I wear. Being in a startup, you also do a lot of things like being the security guy, being the guy who writes blog posts, and going to conferences to promote the company. Being in a startup forces you to grow in ways you don’t necessarily anticipate — you can’t really foresee the future in a startup; otherwise, there’s no point of being in a startup.
Why did you choose to build a startup?
Being a senior guy in Amazon, there’s a lot of job safety, and you definitely get paid a lot more than in a startup. There’s a lot of risks [with being the] co-founder of a startup — I was technically unemployed for a few months during the transition from Amazon. There is also the risk of fundraising — you need to raise enough money for your idea and convince investors. There are two arguments; I’m in my thirties, so it’s a slightly different picture from if I had done a startup [right after graduating]. And I know some people who even drop out of school to do the startup. But I don’t recommend that path unless you really have good connections, because the startup world is all about connections.
For me, the motivation was this: being in a corporation, you build things based on predefined formulas by other people, so you don’t necessarily have the same level of creativity because you are constrained a lot by existing processes and infrastructure. While the impact might look good from the outside, internally, it’s a lot harder to move the needle compared to being in a startup, where every little decision you make has a really big impact on the company. I cannot say that I haven’t made any mistakes, because that’s part of the startup growth, but at the same time it’s also a lot easier to undo your mistakes when things are not set in stone. We use the term one-way door decisions — there are not that many one-way door decisions [in a startup], but in a company like Amazon, it’s extremely hard to [undo decisions] because [it is] going to involve at least 10 other people. Finally, I’m passionate about an aspect of product design called user experience. And in [companies] like Amazon, unfortunately, or even Google, their focus on the user experience part is very different, and it doesn’t resonate with me. I didn’t feel like I could make an impact in those areas, and that’s part of why I want to try figuring those things out myself. I acknowledge that failure is a part of the equation — very few startups are successful, so that’s the risk you have to acknowledge. And you should also understand what we call the exit strategy. The best way [for a startup] would be to become a public IPO company, but there are so many other ways that a startup would exit and you understand those challenges.
What advice can you give to current KAIST international students?
I would say first of all, learn Korean. It’s a basic requirement, but if you can learn to an intermediate level, it really makes your life a lot more enjoyable. Being able to experience a country [when you can] communicate directly with the people there without an interpreter is a much more enjoyable experience. So that’s the first advice: enjoy your time there, make the most out of Korea because every country is different, and while you’re there, you get to enjoy the aspects of Korea that a regular tourist would never get to experience.
The second thing I would say is to learn to embrace the diversity, the differences among different cultures at KAIST, and take it as a challenge to grow in terms of communication, leadership, and interpersonal skills. I know that there’s a tendency for people in the same country to cluster together, and I was like that to a certain extent, but [as I was] doing these humanity classes, I was put in teams with people of different backgrounds. In the real world, you don’t get to choose who your teammates will be, and especially if you’re going to work for an international company, the ability to navigate cultures and people is really important. It’s really [about] the [individual] people, and not the cultures that define them — having that awareness and being able to navigate that will take you really far in the workplace. Simply being able to tell [my] coworker, “Hey, you're doing something wrong” in a way that is non-confrontational took me years to [master]. Being in a university, you are in a safe place to learn those skills and make time to do that.
Finally, you should take the opportunity to explore the humanities classes as well. Those courses fundamentally changed who I am and made me a more effective communicator, at least in the workplace. [They help in] understanding the human aspects of your job, and I think the future needs more people [with that understanding].