Daniel Liem, a product manager on mobile, shares his love for writing, travel and what Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month means to him
May is Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) heritage month, a time to celebrate the culture, traditions, and history of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the United States. Our employee resource group Asians@ leads our month-long celebrations around the theme: “I AM _____.“ The core message is to showcase the vibrant diversity and unique experiences both within Asia and involving those at Dropbox who identify as AAPI. The aim is to counter the stereotypes of the model minority myth and simultaneously celebrate bold and multi-faceted AAPI individuals and the experiences that have shaped them. In celebration of AAPI month, we’ll be featuring Dropboxers and sharing their thoughts, experiences, and how they fill in the blank.
Q: What is your name, what office do you work out of, and how long have you been at Dropbox?
A: My name is Daniel Liem. I work at San Francisco HQ, and I’ve been here since January 2018!
Q: What is your current role at Dropbox?
A: I’m a Product manager on mobile. I focus on our mobile platform tech stack where we support mobile developers (our customers) to ensure they do the best work possible in the most productive and efficient way possible. We enable them to do more and worry less.
Q: Anything that you have done/accomplished at Dropbox that you’re proud of?
A: I’ve already helped rally my team to build a Narrative, which is a team charter that involves defining a mission statement, identifying our customers, understanding why their problems are important, and creating a strategy and a north star vision for 2018 and beyond. We did this during our offsite early in the year, and the impact was true alignment and inspiration within our team along with a morale boost (we got sweet team Patagonia vests and had an archery tagging bonding event).
Q: Why did you decide to join Dropbox?
A: I joined because of the people and the opportunity. I knew a couple of people already, including one of the engineers on my team. Because of these relationships as well as other factors like great culture, the opportunity to lead a similar team in tech (where I’m passionate), it was too hard to say “no.”
Q: What does creative energy mean to you?
A: It means focusing on your HLA (your“highest leverage activity”), which is what you’re good at. For example, if you’re an engineer, focus on coding. If you’re a product manager, focus on building against a vision for customers. If you’re a designer, focus on creating high-quality experiences.
Q: How do you unleash your creative energy in your day?
A: By automating as much non-HLA work as I can. Most of that comes in the form of manual, human intervention tasks. For example, checking each Slack message one by one. This can be fixed by setting up the “all unreads” or “all threads” buttons to summarize pertinent threads, or by optimizing Slackbot to give you relevant information from teams that matter. In Dropbox fashion, Paper is helping me unleash creative energy by worrying less about the formatting of docs and caring more about content!
Q: What are your hobbies? Or what can we find you doing outside of work?
Surfing and writing for my blog at danielcliem.com. Around this time of year, I usually get more active with surfing on the weekends. When I have less time for active sports, I end up writing a ton. I love writing about 1) tactical product management tips, 2) product insights and markets, and 3) general “valley” banter and/or venture capital. I started writing because I love stretching myself into areas I would otherwise never learn about, and the best way to do so is blogging publicly where your credibility is on the line.
Q: Any accomplishments you’re proud of outside of work?
A: I studied abroad in Japan for six months while at Stanford. I took over 1,000 photos and captured my adventures in my old blog. I loved having a breadth of cultural and worldly experiences, especially in a place I would probably never have the time to learn about or live in long-term. Japan was my #1 pick, simply because of its unique culture and fascinating cities. (Tokyo is the largest megalopolis the world, with 33 million people.)
Q: What does AAPI month mean to you?
A: AAPI to me celebrates the good (and bad, the struggles) of the ethnic group. It is to build awareness that we, too, are normal, equitable people who live under one nation: the U.S.
Q: Are there any present-day inspirational Asian or Pacific Islanders in your life?
A: Aung San Suu Kyi. She fought against the tyranny in Myanmar.
Q: This year, Asians@ chose the theme “I am ______“. What word or phrase do you fill in the blank with?
A: I am mighty. The tone of that word stemmed from my belief that no Asian American should feel suppressed or limited by the stereotypes that society burdens us with today. In particular, the bamboo ceiling is a common phenomenon that AAPIs believe — that no matter how hard we work in any working industry, we will not be able to surpass our peers. This psychologically burdens us from doing more, and we should not feel discouraged. We should always feel empowered to do the best we can do, regardless of any true or false limiting factors.
Q: Can you tell us about your background (upbringing, ethnicity, etc.)?
A: Nationally, I am American. I grew up in LA. Ethnically, I am Chinese-Indonesian. That means my parents grew up in Indonesia (along with 60 other direct cousins), but my grandparents originated in China. You can think of it as I am culturally Indonesian, racially Chinese.
Another fun fact: My grandparents fled the country due to the Japanese invasion pre-WWII. When they arrived in Indonesia, however, the were welcomed by racism, since Native Indonesian opposed immigrants in general. Thus, my grandparents had to assimilate to Indonesian culture to evade racism. One way they did was by changing our last name from “Lin” to “Liem” (the “e” is a silent vowel derived by the Dutch, since the Netherlands influenced the Indonesian national language when they were controlled for 300 years).
Q: Can you tell us about a time when you were faced with a stereotype and how you experienced it?
A: It’s often the case that I am excluded in conversations because of the color of my skin, whether subtly (things like not reciprocating “how was your day” after I initiate) or explicitly (not invited to a non-Asian-dominated event or friend circle). Conversations always change, however, once I talk about my interests, passions, ideas, and where I come from. My friend said it perfectly: I sound “American-enough” once folks get to know me. Our society is built on the notion of “judging a book by its cover,” and that’s not healthy or fair to those who don’t look “American” to begin with.
Q: Anything else you’d like to share about who you are, what you do, personal life, or your time at Dropbox or AAPI month, that you haven’t shared already?
A: I love tech, product, venture, and everything in between. I write (weekly, for the most part) on anything related to product management tips, product insight/thoughts, or other valley/VC banter. Check it out danielcliem.com (@dcliem).
Check back soon to meet more Dropboxers. In the meantime visit us at dropbox.com/jobs. Dropbox is growing, grow with us!
