Autobiographical

My name is Allen Cheung, and you’ve stumbled onto my personal site and blog! With my wife and two kids, we’ve settled here in the San Francisco Bay Area for over two decades.

Professional

I have spent my professional career within the software industry here in Silicon Valley, some 20 years and counting. I hold a Bachelor of Arts degree from Cal in Computer Science, and have spent a good chunk of my career in FinTech and EdTech startups, through early-stage, formative phases. I started my career as a software engineer, but transitioned into engineering management a decade ago and have focused on the latter discipline since.

Currently, my role is the VP of Engineering at Kiddom, building technology to help learners reach their potential. Previously, I ran Product, Design & Engineering teams at Mystery.org; worked as a Senior Director of Software Engineering to improve financial products and systems for Affirm; enjoyed a stint within HealthTech at Counsyl; and built merchant dashboards at Square.

As I’ve progressed in my career, I’ve grown an appreciation for coaching and mentorship, both having received this from more senior colleagues and in helping others myself. To that end, I volunteer as a mentor for engineering leads and managers on the Plato platform. Much of the professional content I write about here revolve around these topics.

Personal

Outside of work, I’m a parent to two adorable kids and a husband to a loving wife, who continues to tolerate my idiosyncrasies. We’re discovering—every day, it feels at times—the evolving role of parents as the kids grow up way too fast, while as a family we’re learning to appreciate our small town community all over again.

I have a terrible habit of picking up new hobbies, and blog about them once I get deep enough to learn something interesting. Video games and reading are mainstay leisure activities, along with: mechanical watches, photography, e-ink displays, mechanical keyboards, and recently, jigsaw puzzles. I’m a technologist at heart, and spend way too much time and money on the latest gadgetry.

Archeological

I started allenc.com in 2011, initially to complement to establish an online complement to my resume at the time, but has since evolved into a weekly repository of reactions and musings. The name in|retrospect reflects this theme.

This version of the site was updated in 2024. It runs on WordPress, using the Caards theme that I’ve extensively tweaked and customized; previously, I’ve also built on top of the Alia and Typology themes. The site is hosted on Cloudways. I write and edit my posts with Typora on macOS, and images are either from my photo library or via DALL·E and Stable Diffusion.