"Interviews are fine, but first let me interview you for an hour," I still remember the nervousness I felt the night before when I carefully sent out the interview purpose, self-introduction, and main topics. I had thought the engineering field was beyond my expertise. So when I received the reply, it was both a relief and the first time I'd encountered an interviewee who wanted to hear the interviewer's story first…
This unique message came from Polley Wong, who moved to the US to work, transitioning from engineer to female entrepreneur, injecting technology into the architecture industry. Whether through her open-minded attitude or life experiences, one can clearly see that Polley is definitely a female entrepreneur with thoughtful views about the world. In October this year, she returned to Taiwan to participate in Asia-Pacific's first open-source project exchange conference initiated by a women's community, focusing on discovering promising tech teams and cultivating Taiwan's next generation of tech talent.
"Hello!" Hearing Polley's warm and straightforward voice coming through the phone felt comforting. She generously shared her experiences with work and entrepreneurship in the US, the social and cultural impacts she witnessed, and analyzed the anxiety and unease that today's young Taiwanese people, especially women, feel under societal values.
"I discovered that in Western society, age isn't a problem, but Asian women face many strange barriers and too many 'shoulds'," Polley herself is an active advocate for workplace gender equality. She shared, "Asian women at 30 often face unnecessary pressure and expectations from society. It seems they must meet external social expectations to be considered professional women, especially in technology and engineering."
From a typical Asian perspective, female workers or entrepreneurs must balance work and family, or sacrifice for family and children, or serve as primary caregivers. Achieving success in their careers seems nearly impossible. Although society's views are gradually becoming more open, men are relatively viewed as needing only to "succeed in business" to move forward smoothly.
But in Western society, it's common for women in their 40s and 50s to return to university for further studies or degree programs. If we shift the scene back to Taiwan, we often label such "older" women as "bravely pursuing their dreams." In reality, pursuing dreams and seeking your ideal self never requires intentional "bravery," nor does it need external validation.
(Image: Polley's company partner Briana Y. Earl speaking for gender equality on New York streets)
About Life: Understanding Your Own "Learning Language" Creates a Multiplier Effect
"Everyone has their own 'learning language' that suits them," she explained. Language isn't just the words we speak—it also includes written text, body movements, and tone of voice. "For example, my listening skills are better than my memory," Polley learned English grammar, pronunciation, and vocabulary by listening to foreign TV series, audiobooks, and podcasts day and night. It's hard for outsiders to imagine that she only went to the US at 24 to study and start her career. "I believe everyone has their own learning style, so don't limit yourself based on external opinions and methods."
Polley gave two examples. First, in her childhood, because her father was a musician and wanted her to learn piano, classical music has fixed playing methods and emotions that must meet public expectations. So for 12 straight years, the sheet music sat in front of her, but she couldn't play it. This disappointed her teacher and family. But when she later encountered improvisation and "jazz music," she discovered that with just a melody, she could fill in the blanks and create her own rhythm. Her progress skyrocketed, and her attitude toward music shifted from passive to active—she played piano very well.
The other example was when her father wanted to learn roller skating, but because he was just starting, his body was stiff and very tense. Polley considered that her father might also be an auditory learner and could learn roller skating using his most familiar learning style. So she told him, "Use your ears, listen to the sounds beneath your feet, and feel the rhythm." Right then, her father, who treated sound as his "first language," quickly shifted his focus, placing it on the sounds under his feet. His mood gradually relaxed, his body naturally swayed with the rhythm, and by changing his "learning language," he mastered roller skating.
Polley wanted to express that "whether in entrepreneurship, learning, or any stage of life, you must first understand yourself, find your passion, and find your own 'language' so you can persist on a path others can't understand and create achievements different from others."
(Image: Co-hosting a Graph Database Workshop with Open UP Summit, with 50/50 male-female engineer participation)
Entrepreneurship: If You Follow Convention, You Won't Find New Solutions
Currently, Polley has founded her second company in New York. Reflecting on her first startup, it came after she ended two years of work as an engineer and reconsidered what else she could study. She recalled her life journey—born in America, raised in Taiwan, and returning to America to work, constantly switching between living in both places and different social circles. The word "belonging" always felt like an unfilled emptiness to her. Even after learning how to get along with friends, she still felt empty inside.
Polley wanted to have a stable place of her own and hoped to have the ability and opportunity to share this ideal with others. So she returned to school to study interior design, hoping to master the art and science of "belonging" and help the public create their own homes. But Polley, with a background in computer science, immediately felt something was wrong. "The technology in interior design and architecture is really lacking, with huge room for improvement."
When engaging with interior design, Polley discovered: clients couldn't control the process and budget for materials, facilities, and space design; architects couldn't track clients' detailed needs; construction workers couldn't promptly and accurately report on-site changes, making project management difficult. Communication was both poor in "quality" and "frequency," and the "mode" was one-directional and non-transparent, leading to waste of resources, money, and effort, with results often not matching the client's original intent.
"If you follow current societal approaches to do anything, you won't find new solutions." Then, Polley spotted an opportunity and decisively decided to first establish an interior design company, We Create Group, to immerse herself in the architectural design industry, experience communication pain points, and simultaneously research new technologies to find ways to save costs and increase efficiency.
"I kept thinking—could our communication problem be that architecture is a 3D object, yet we keep communicating in 2D ways?" But to research communication errors, they had to convert analog communication materials into digital files. So they digitized communication content, conducted text analysis after recording, and worked to develop JITA software, allowing data to be visualized.
JITA is Polley's second startup project. She has independently researched the product for a year and a half. Her vision for JITA is to use graphical data to deconstruct dialogue information between people, saving designers and employers in the architecture industry time and effort in communication.
Open-Source Co-Creation: Transcending Social Standards to Create Unique Products
Since moving to the US, Polley has returned to Taiwan every two or three years. This year, she returned to Taiwan for the first time as a speaker at the Open Source Product Summit (Open UP Summit), an event that marks Asia-Pacific's first collaboration between international serial entrepreneurs and local Taiwan teams. The goal is to help future founders start by contributing to international open-source projects, building international product vision, community connections, and resource integration perspectives.
For this open-source community conference, Polley stayed in Taiwan for a month and personally prepared an 8-day free workshop to co-create JITA with participants. Through talent development, she sought out like-minded partners. Polley led 15 people—including university professors, front-end and back-end engineers, career changers, and those interested in the field—to experience the spirit of co-creation.
Open-source product workshops not only manage products but also manage people and culture, allowing the product, once created, to be managed on multiple levels and build a self-sustaining ecosystem. Benefits accrue across social, business, and commercial levels, as well as in personal technical improvement.
"Open design is beautiful because society has many conventions and barriers that set obstacles for us." For instance, education—in this era, it seems without a university degree, companies can't trust the value you can produce. Or job hunting—industries want job seekers to already have relevant experience to get a foot in the door. But these barriers don't exist at Open UP Summit. The spirit of open-source is completely creative and free. In everyone's collaboration, without minding external opinions, throwing off social standards, you can create products different from what exists now. Open-source conferences sound like pure engineering territory, something unreachable to non-professionals. But when you dig into the core philosophy, it's actually full of romance and idealism.
Future of Work: Taiwan's Internal Foundation and Entrepreneurial Mindset for International Breakthrough
Observing young people's work state in Taiwan, Polley believes you must first understand yourself, honestly know your strengths and weaknesses, and not be afraid, because fear creates blind spots—you can't acknowledge reality. You must transcend shame and fear to know your own value and accept your imperfections.
Regarding relationships with external collaboration, Polley advises young people to hold onto their core values. Confidence is unrelated to work ability but related to self-acceptance. "When others join your story, it's a bonus. If they don't add value, there's no need to put in effort to depend on them." But if you focus on whether you add value to someone else's story, your thoughts become held hostage by others, seeking their approval to find yourself. Even though you know such dependent relationships are negative, the entire society excessively exploits this unhealthy entanglement.
Polley mentioned: "You don't have to be an entrepreneur, but you need 'entrepreneurial thinking.' When facing problems, know how to leverage resources and solve them yourself. If you want something, no one should have to give it to you—learn to ask for it yourself, create pathways to obtain it. In contrast, 'employee thinking' lacks initiative—one command, one action. Do something and expect a guaranteed return. Little do they know this 'consumer mentality in business' places you at the end of the economic industry chain, where your position and salary are defined by others.
Actually, Taiwanese talent is excellent, technically skilled, has good attitude, willing to learn and work hard—no worse than Western talent. But Taiwanese people need to strengthen communication, not over-worry about others' opinions, deal with matters objectively, speak plainly, cultivate entrepreneurial thinking, and eliminate biases and noise. Only then can you create value for your own career.
Open UP Summit
Event Date: 2019/11/30-12/1
Venue: Sanatsai Incubation Park, Star Rocket
(Simultaneous bilingual—Chinese and English) Asia-Pacific's first conference focused on open-source products, bringing together communities and experts for exchange. With over 25 diverse cross-disciplinary talks, workshops, and open-source project exhibitions, over 30 domestic and international speakers, and 4 tracks—Data/Design/Vision/Future of Work—attendees gain new open-source knowledge and understand industry trends!
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