Li Hongyi: Google PM to GovTech Leader, Scaling Digital Infrastructure & Fighting Scams with Systems - E559

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Jeremy Au sits down with Li Hongyi, director of Open Government Products, to explore his journey from aspiring physicist to building digital tools for public service. They discuss agency, leadership, and the realities of driving change in government—from the impact of a Google internship to lessons in management and building systems that protect against fraud.

1. Dreaming in equations: As a kid, Hongyi wanted to be a physicist—he loved thinking in systems and solving puzzles like the resistor cube challenge in secondary school.

2. Systems over subjects: He saw physics, economics, and computer science as different languages for modeling how things work and how people behave.

3. Google made it real: His internship showed him that his work could help real users, shifting his focus from theory to practical impact and leading him to computer science.

4. Agency isn't given—it's taken: He realized in university that waiting for the “next step” wasn’t enough. A friend pushed him to apply to Google, which changed his mindset.

5. Becoming a manager meant unlearning: Early on, he micromanaged engineers. Over time, he learned that great managers remove roadblocks instead of redoing others' work.

6. Empowerment beats control: Inspired by his Google boss, he now sees leadership as creating the right conditions for others to thrive—not just setting direction.

7. Parking.sg was the easy part: Coding the app took 3 months, but aligning agencies, digitizing data, and syncing with enforcement took 8–9 months.