Jessica Ma and her father Martin Ma compare and contrast their childhoods and career aspirations

00:01 Hi, my name is Jessica Ma. I'm 17 years old, and today I'm interviewing my dad, Martin ma. It's currently November 25, 2023, two days past Thanksgiving Day, and we're interviewing in our living room in Birmingham, Alabama. So first question is, how are you today and how was your Thanksgiving?

00:22 I'm doing good, thank you. I've joined the Thanksgiving holiday also. It's my birthday, November 26th, so I joined the Thanksgiving holiday, my birthday. So I like to play tennis. So I take time play tennis. That's good. Relax, meet the tennis friends.

00:49 That's all that's great. And I'm excited to celebrate your birthday. So my second question was just from some background knowledge, I know your upbringing was very different from those who grew up in the US So I was wondering, what was it like transitioning from living in China to living in America?

01:09 That's a very good question. You know, I come to this country, I started graduate school. So typically the two environment helped me transition the culture from China to here school. I meet a lot of teachers, friends, helping me understand what is the culture here. Like the football play, very beginning. I don't know what that means. You know, a lot of people call it there and also have an airplane, fly sky, you know, I said, what's that somebody. Oh, today's big day. That is football. Okay, I understand. So also long term period, that's my work period. Through my coworker, they helped me same way, understanding more culture here. I gradually transition culture from China to here. Adaptive graduate adapted culture here. So right now I live the better I feel better understanding more the culture here. Thank you.

02:19 Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, I can see the similarities and differences with everything going on in the household. So, yeah, I was wondering, do you still keep the Chinese culture alive within your household? And if so, how.

02:33 Yeah, I never forgot anything about the channel culture because I live over there. 30 years old. Yeah. Oh, sorry. For 30 years. Yes, 30 years. I move this country my 30 years old. So every year we have the Chinese New Year Day. We celebrate that day. We cook a special food and call my friends, my college friends, high school, my friends wish everybody doing good. The family and my kids. Whole family join the Chinese food. Thank you.

03:15 Yeah, I love your cooking. So now regarding finance. So currently I'm taking macroeconomics at school and I was wondering if you have any advice to younger generations on how to handle money.

03:32 Oh, yeah, that's a real award. Because of the world changing quickly. No matter anything change, including economic like current right now we have inflation. You need to understand what's that. You know, that is the one factor affect your money management. Also economy easily should be address that, you know. So I like the younger generation take macroeconomic course understand what is real world is so learning more understand the real world the better handle the future economic situation.

04:23 Yeah, yeah, I agree completely. Like that's part of why I chose to take AP macroeconomics. It's because I feel like handling money is very a very significant part of our life. And we need to know how to do that early on. So we're better off in the future. So yeah branching off of that. Have you ever taken any finance courses in your lifetime?

04:43 Yeah, to be honest, I'm not taking any finance courses from my college purely. But I just started working I invest My retirement account is called a 401k. So I just get the advice from a company. For one came many people. He gave me some advice. For example, everybody knew say this word. Don't put all your egg on the one basket. You know, you need a diversity invest your money. So also you need to understand the short term and long term return. I think for mostly we need to look at a long term return.

05:29 That's all that seems very important. And again if you have any. If you could have any financial advice for your younger self, past self, what would it be? Would you start anything over if you had the chance? Do you have any regrets? Maybe change any decisions you've made?

05:48 I think one important thing is is if I have take one more chance. I need to invest as early as possible because earning for long term period return is more. So I tell my kids everybody if you can just invest as early as possible.

06:17 Yeah, that's great advice. So what is your current career field and what exactly do you do?

06:26 My current field is I'm a software engineer. I work at Alabama Power Environment Affairs. We just based on the EPA regulation and so we collect environmental data and reporting data to EPA or the ad. So I just write a software and collect environment data and they write reporting and send it to the EPA each quarterly. Also reporting data to the Alabama Environment Department that especially for water pollution data as well.

07:09 So based off of what you said, I was wondering what exactly is EPA regulation? Like what does that stand for?

07:16 Epa. That stand for the stand for Environment Agency Protection Agency. Yeah, sorry. Yeah, thank you. That's a Environmental Protection Agency. So that's a manager whole country environmental issue.

07:36 Oh, okay. Okay. That makes more sense. And so do you have any advice for kids going into STEM careers based on the fact that you have a STEM career.

07:48 Yeah. How about two advice? You know, I think the steam. That's good word, the actual word, because there's a touch anywhere, any company, any field. So the skill changes quickly. So first, I advise this kind of kids or students should be creative. You know, that's the first one. Second, the world, a lot of difficult things. The kids need to face a challenge, you know, need to change, not to change the world. You know, you need to definitely overcome something. You need to create something and solve some problem. So that's the steam field people to do.

08:38 Yeah, yeah, I can relate to that because me personally, I'm seeking to pursue a career in medicine and a lot of that involves having to do research for part of your undergrad degree. And yeah, I agree, sometimes you need to think outside of the box and put on sort of that creativity helmet because sometimes if you maybe approach a research question with a new perspective, we come up with things like new vaccines, new ways to handle pandemics, et cetera. So oftentimes I feel like it's good to take risks and to have that creative mindset. So also, would you say that your job involves a lot of teamwork?

09:22 Oh, yes, my team, not a big team, but we still have a lot of teamwork. I always say that one plus one greater than two, that means teamwork, have a more productive, more efficient, solve more issue. So I always say, tim, okay is better, you know.

09:46 Yeah, I can see that. And also, I also agree because a lot of my courses at school also involve doing a lot of teamwork. And I actually took AP computer science principles back when I was in 10th grade, which is similar to your computer programming today. And I remember having to build apps and other applications and setting up work that required a lot of teamwork, sort of skills. Like I had to get a group together and we built an app based on like how to choose what color is best fit for your preferences, et cetera, in terms of clothing and things like that. And I feel like teamwork is a big part of our social world. So lastly, what's your favorite thing about your job?

10:40 I joined my job because my team work with great people, the great place to work, we respect each other. I join my work because my job is to create the application and service that when finally user, user my application, say, hey, you do good job. Where I use your application, make my work easy, you know, then save a lot of time. Typing your software is like the automation. So in the current, today, in the future, we need more automate automation. That means we reduce the labor work make the work easily easy for everybody. So that's part of my job is joining that especially I give you one example for Horizon Power water in pollution data. Before I created one application we just put each plant have a water pollution data on the Excel sheets. We send this excel sheet hard copied to the Alabama Environmental Agency. Some people get this data sheet that just manually type to their computer system. So this take a lot of work. Sometime you have a typo error. So somebody said hey Martin, can you create some application we can make it work easily and increase job efficiency. So I just created an application called the NPE DES I.e. national pollution reduced national water approaching enumeration system. So I created software we can automatically generate reports based on the report requirement. For example in the reporting like a ph and querying and some like a metal something like that. I just created application automatic JM supports. So save a lot of work. When Alabama kit measure portal then this data is XML format data that automatically dumped to their database. So easy to transition data from our system to their system save a lot of work. And this call auto process automation. So we need to do more automation work in the future no matter which field. So I think that's good.

13:49 Okay.

13:49 Wow.

13:49 Yeah, that sounds really complex and it seems like it could very really change our future. And my very, very last question was I was wondering what's your work life balance like? And how do you spend your time, I guess outside of work?

14:04 Yeah, that's a good question. I think in the very beginning when I started working, I just focused on my work, you know, I don't that time I don't imagine my work life bad, good. You know, sometimes my kids, for example, one day my kids say hey, today is trick or treat day. What's that called? I forgot, you know, so that I still have work to do, you know. So now I remember that I feel sorry to my kids. I need to take my kids to go to trick or treat. That's the kids that have fun, you know. So after that I think I better manage my work and life balance. So I think somebody said if you manage good, your work is more productive. You know, sometimes you take your family, your kids, you know. So when I work I work hard, you know, when working day I just take a chance, do some help kids. Sometime I join my garden work. I cut grass, I have vegetable garden. I like something as organic food, somebody like it. So also join play the tennis, you know, like hiking, you know. So sometimes I think I join also talking to my kids, you know, I like to talk to kids, understand something, you know? So I think life or we should be balanced. Making everything good.

15:42 Yeah. Yeah, I agree. Like, working hard is very important, especially to make your family stable, I guess. But, yeah, at the same time, I feel like family is also an extremely important part of our lives, and we shouldn't take that for granted. Okay. Thank you so much for talking to me today. And thank you to anyone who's listening to this right now for tuning in on this interview. And, yeah, I hope everyone had an amazing Thanksgiving. And I'll see you next time. Thank you.