Question 1

How did FT Tan move from software engineering into product management?

Accepted Answer

FT Tan spent five years at GovTech Singapore as a software engineer, gradually taking on requirement discovery, stakeholder alignment, and delivery ownership alongside the engineering work. She led the first pilot feature team for Singapore's WorkPass system and built delivery frameworks that were adopted by 5+ other teams. The shift into product management was a continuation of work she was already doing.

Question 2

What did FT Tan work on at GovTech Singapore?

Accepted Answer

Across five years at GovTech, FT Tan worked on three national platforms. WorkPass: Singapore's pass holder system used by 1.6M+ people daily. AccessCode: a COVID-19 dormitory dashboard for 300,000+ foreign workers, delivered in four months. GovWallet: a pilot launched in four weeks with about 60% redemption rate. Teams she was part of received the Service Design Award 2024, GovTech Impact Award 2020, and One Public Service Award 2025.

Question 3

What is FT Tan currently working on?

Accepted Answer

FT Tan is the first product hire at an early-stage AI startup. She set up the product function from scratch and led an AI building intelligence platform from pitch deck to production in five months, including document ingestion, RAG-powered Q&A with citations, and generative reporting. Product traction contributed to SGD 5M in strategic investment, and the team is a finalist for the DAITA Awards 2026.

Question 4

What technologies does FT Tan work with?

Accepted Answer

On the product side: PRDs, roadmapping, RAG systems, LLM APIs, vector databases, Figma, Notion. On the technical side: React, Next.js, Vue.js, Angular, TypeScript, Node.js, NestJS, PostgreSQL, GraphQL, AWS, GCP, Terraform, and Docker.

Question 5

What drives FT Tan's product approach?

Accepted Answer

Four principles: if the product doesn't work nothing else matters; technical depth makes for better product calls; most hard problems are unclear problems before they are difficult ones; you can't work closely with people whose world you don't understand. Her technical background shortens the feedback loop between product decisions and what ships.

Hi, I'm FT.

How I Work

If the product doesn't work, nothing else matters

Technical depth makes for better product calls

Most hard problems are unclear problems

You can't work closely with people whose world you don't understand

Background

Beyond Code

Photography

Music

My Bookshelf

Languages

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