PTSC Staff Spotlight: Punk Chien
This is the fourth instalment as we follow the stories of Pershingers who are making their 2nd round with the company and finding a new career with PTSC. As with the previous piece, Punk Chien also spent one year away from PTSC with a gaming company before returning to his “family” with PTSC.
“Cyberpunk is filled with a bizarre subculture populated by outlaws who penetrate even the most sensitive computer networks and wreak havoc on the information they find. The author shows what motivates these young hackers, how to access systems, how they learn to break in, and how little can be done to stop them.” — Amazon Review of Katie Hafner’s novel, Cyberpunk.
When I asked Punk why he chose his unusual English nickname, he mentioned being a huge fan of Katie Hafner’s novel, Cyberpunk.
“I am very fascinated by cyber hackers,” he told me over a Microsoft Teams conversation, PTSC’s chosen app for online meetings and conferencing.
Despite Punk’s fascination with cyber hackers, he does not strike me as someone who desires to “wreak havoc,” in both the real and virtual world. With steel-clear eyes, and an Anderson Cooper-like handsome sprinkling of grey in his hair, Punk could pass for an evening news anchor. A trustworthy face, gentle demeanour, and soft-tone of voice, Punk is easy to talk with. As a listener, I feel he speaks from his heart and can tell that he’s someone with a soul dedicated to improvement.
Punk has known PTSC and many of the colleagues within the company for more than 15 years. I recently sat down for a lunch with him nearby our office in Neihu District to learn about how his role has changed, and what brought him back to our PTSC family. During my conversation, I learned about him, his family, and why his connection to PTSC runs so deep.
“When I worked with PTSC before, I had two main roles during that time. I was working with our Managment Information Systems (MIS) as a leader with a focus on technical support and Microsoft solutions and cloud business. During that time, the people I was managing were junior engineers, and so I used a lot of time training them.”
As with his colleague, Wind Huang, Punk also went to work at Gamania for a year. During this time at Gamania, Punk’s role was also in technical support, covering many products such as public cloud service, vmware, storage, cyber security products, etc. Even though he was able to learn a lot during his time with Gamania, he didn’t like the direction the company was going in.
“Gamania’s business started to lean more towards gaming, gambling, and Over-the-top (OTT) media services such as streaming. These weren’t areas that I was interested in, and I wasn’t particularly comfortable with the direction the company was going in relation to its products and services.”
It was during this time where he once again began to think back to his PTSC “family.” The family theme is a pattern that I have found consistent with the the other three members of what I like to refer to as the 四條龍 （the four returning dragons — Sunny Lin, Alex Huang, and Wind Huang). PTSC has been around for nearly 40 years. While other companies may have a fast-pace and high level of energy, PTSC’s arms always stay open and embrace returning family members after they have explored their options. Besides the feeling of family comfort found at PTSC, there’s also a level of trust and support from the high level executives that is maintained even after employees take a leave of absence.
“Everyone is friendly at PTSC. I also believe in and trust the top-tier leaders. I know them, and they know me. We have a relationship that goes back many years, and there’s something strong about the bond that remains with PTSC.”
After returning to PTSC, his job is more focused on cloud services support and support for IBM products for customers. While Punk did have some interaction with customers on his first round with PTSC, for his 2nd journey there will be more involvement directly with customers. One of the things that excites him and keeps him on his toes is the fact that he’ll be a manager to a more experienced team in the future. This challenge will cause Punk to stay in tune with the latest trends and technologies in the field.
After “shop-talk” Punk shared some videos and information about his family. Besides a wife, he has one son and daughter. His son is somewhat of a piano virtuoso, and his daughter is interested in drawing. He shared a video of his son playing a classical piano concert, dressed in a suit and tie, his performance was picture perfect. Perhaps taking after their father, it seems his children have a budding interest in coding, and they use the coding app for kids called Scratch.
When asked about opportunities in PTSC for career development, he noted that this was a topic that “can be talked about with employees and their managers. There’s lots of opportunities here, and there are chances to make switches.”
The more I listened to Punk, the more I thought about the characters in Katie Hafner’s groundbreaking novel. Perhaps there is an open road for everyone at PTSC and a chance to develop into something that they aspire to be. And when Pershingers know what it is they want to do in order to develop their career, “little can be done to stop them.”
