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Episode 5: Why aren't you a big shot
128 Plays12 days ago
Steve is not some big shot. He is not the vice president of Google Cheese, a totally made-up division that probably needs a VP. In this episode, Sam and Steve talk about what success means and how they've defined it on their own terms.
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Transcript
Introduction to Off the Path
00:00:14
Speaker
Welcome to Off the Path, a show where we talk about research careers, especially our own. I'm Sam Ladner. And I'm Steve Portigal. Sam and I have been having a bunch of conversations about research careers, and with Off the Path, we're going to share those conversations with you.
Steve's Career Independence
00:00:30
Speaker
all right. So was there ever a time where you considered becoming a very senior manager and say, a tech company? For context, I don't work at any company and I haven't worked at any company basically my entire career. There's sort of two stages for that. For me, I guess it would be one, be employed at a tech company. Stage one. And then whatever, rise to the ranks or achieve some kind of role.
00:00:59
Speaker
The question seems like it's more about the second one, like what kind of role would you have or what goals and objectives or where do you see yourself in that thing? But that first question is also a good question. I guess the question would be, why have you been independent for the majority of your career?
00:01:15
Speaker
And then let's imagine that you had the opportunity to become some big shot executive. Yeah. Why haven't you pursued that? Yeah, I think whatever road is not taken, we sometimes never think about it or we sometimes just take it off the shelf once in a while and kind of look at it. So being independent, which professionally, which I don't know, seems increasingly rare over the trajectory of my career. I think when I started, anyone doing this work was either an agency or a boutique or consultancy or something. Yeah, me too. If you look at the history, right, that's where we all were. That's right. So that's some context. I didn't go to be independent. I just have always been outside the corporation. Because that's what it was.
00:02:01
Speaker
That's what it was. i agree with you because I was in agencies too. But then I had that opportunity to go in-house some years later, of course. Did you ever have that opportunity? Did you even consider it?
00:02:13
Speaker
I've never had that opportunity. i don't know that I've made myself available for it. I have not been sending in resumes to paying companies or whoever. Right. I was at an agency that kind of went down during the first dot-com crash.
00:02:29
Speaker
And it was kind of a, whatever, an inflection point. I had went had some interviews. I kicked some tires or whatever. 2001 was ah economically terrible. So it's not like there were... To begin with, regardless. yeah Yes. It wasn't like I could have just gone and got a job. That wasn't really in the offing.
00:02:48
Speaker
Right. But, you know, it hasn't come for me and I haven't kind of come after it. I don't get calls from recruiters saying, hey, do you want to come work at such and such? Pick your company. I don't think I look like who they're looking for. I'm not complaining or blaming. I'm just here's how it sort of all unfolds. Right. So it didn't arrive unbidden.
00:03:10
Speaker
Right, because you're asking the really good question about the choices we make about the paths we follow. Right. And I think part of me holds up the well of something landed in my lap as if that happens. I mean, people always tell those stories, right?
00:03:23
Speaker
Yeah, sure. came up to me in a coffee shop and said, I see you're doing this. Would you like to be, you know, my partner in this and that? And the rest is history. i'm I'm at Schwab standing out front and they drive by and put me in the movies. Like, whatever...
00:03:37
Speaker
Thing is, there's something about, yes, the rest of the history. Yeah. Yeah. I haven't been sort of solicited or or discovered. And so I've stayed in my course. Well, that says to me that there wasn't anything missing for you.
Challenges of Independent Careers
00:03:50
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:03:51
Speaker
No, no, I don't know. I mean, I think that there's there's a certain amount of grass is greener that you look at other people's careers or just even sort of their professional lifestyles, which I think is that's more about day to day as opposed to careers and think, wow, would life would be different if I was on a team during the pandemic and we had right hat day or life would be different if I had a manager that I met with once a week to talk about.
00:04:18
Speaker
Mm hmm. what I did, what I'm going to do, what my long-term goals are and how they can help me accomplish that. Absolutely. The way you're describing that says to me it isn't because, you know, I kind of started the question like, oh, how come you're not in-house? But now I think the question really is, how are you grappling with not being like easily, effortlessly connected to co-workers? How do you deal with that? It didn't make you crazy enough to start up applying for jobs in 2001, and it didn't make you crazy enough in 2010. I mean, I think there is a a loneliness. Oh, yeah. This was a word that someone used on LinkedIn the other day to describe their feeling of running an agency. And I commented and affirmed that emotion that I had that experience periodically and more so when things are challenging and less so when things are busy and productive and successful and but And the word was loneliness? Yeah.
00:05:13
Speaker
And yeah they wrote me and said, well, we should have a call, which is very kind, thoughtful, action-oriented
Social Connections in Isolation
00:05:20
Speaker
of them. Like, I'm lonely. I know what it's like to be lonely. Well, do you want to talk? and Let's get together. talked about it, but we also just talked and caught up. I hadn't talked to this person before. for a while. And it was just nice to reconnect. And I bet this is true to a certain extent with people that are parts of teams, too, is that if you're at home, you don't have that co-located collegiality, which is a that's a terrible phrase. But no, even if you are part of a team and during the pandemic, because I was part of a team during the pandemic, And it was very sudden, all of us having to ship home and be in our little, you know, sealed up boxes. And I don't think we actually had Funny Hat Day, for the record. In fact, we had, all well, this would have been six months after the fact, Halloween 2020.
00:06:05
Speaker
twenty twenty I was the only person who dressed up, quote unquote, dressed up on Zoom. And I felt like I was like, because I normally wouldn't, right? I normally don't dress up for going into the office on a Halloween. But I felt like, oh, you know, let's all like be convivial. And so I dressed up and nobody else did. And people even asked me, like, why are you wearing that cat makeup? And why are have you got little catty hairs on?
00:06:28
Speaker
I said, it's Halloween. They didn't even know. I thought that was kind of funny. Talk about grass is greener. Why did you decide to do that? That is a good question. i think I had deeply internalized the loneliness that you describe about being an independent person. I could feel that loneliness exuding from members of my team. Like I could feel people feeling separated and not part of something and kind of like set adrift. And I thought, oh, well, you know, we can't get together because we still can't get together.
00:06:59
Speaker
We still weren't in the office. I had like an emergency meeting in the office the month prior to that, but it was a big deal. i had to get access. I had to tell people I was going, you know, all this stuff. So nobody could go into the office. Nobody could get together. Nobody knew how to connect. And so I thought, oh, you know, I'll just do this In retrospect, maybe I could have advertised it and said, hey, we're all going to dress up. which would have been a lie. It would have been me dressing up. But I didn't even do that. I just dressed up.
00:07:25
Speaker
I guess I just kind of counted on other people having the same idea. And I wanted to affirm it. Hey, it's Halloween. You know, that was the thing about the pandemic is just like all the color drained out of the calendar. All the ritualistic marking of time just disappeared. And it was just this big blah. So I thought, oh, well, this is great. I'll do that. Right. and I'll do that.
00:07:46
Speaker
And I wanted people to have fun and think it was yeah amusing. and And people did. Some people did. But some people also said, like, why are you dressed up? And I was like, do you not even know what day it is? It's Halloween. So I was doing it to help other people, I think, for people to get connected. But I didn't go all the way by being a full social convener. Yeah, there's interesting facets to the choices we make in that you, because I think that sort of enforced disconnection and and the lack of conviviality, like it messes with us in weird ways. So you chose in this story, like to do a thing yourself. Here's your locus of control.
00:08:22
Speaker
Here's your little box in the, you know the Brady Bunch of of the Zoom call. yeah And you're like, I'm going to remap that. I'm just echoing what you're saying. Like, as opposed to, hey, everybody, here's a thing. i want you to do this. I invite you to do that.
00:08:36
Speaker
You chose act locally, right? Extremely locally. Extremely locally. To the point of not even telling anyone. and like In hindsight, you're telling the story that with the implication in hindsight that says you would have had a different outcome if you had acted differently. But also, you put your energy into a thing that felt right for you and felt right for the group. Yeah. I don't want the hindsight to like color the story in the wrong way. I think the reason I have the hindsight lens on it is because I realize that social connection is an investment. Like, I've been thinking about this quite a bit. And it's relating to what you were talking about, about being independent. It was kind of like, well, first of all, there wasn't really a choice. I mean, it was that or nothing. And then when there was a choice, you were like, well, it's not coming to me and I'm not really thinking anything's super missing. So I'm just going to kind of keep going, stay the course.
00:09:28
Speaker
And now we're looking at social connection as being way more precious, I think. Now we know how precious it is and how much investment it takes. And you kind of get it, not 100%, but you kind of get it for free when you join a company, kind of. I mean, give or take, right? Like, I'm sure we've all had jobs where certainly we were offered connection, but it wasn't a connection we wanted. Yeah.
00:09:52
Speaker
And it certainly wasn't productive and it was maybe even toxic. But when you get your job, you know, your first real job, you're part of something by default, part of something. And that's like, I think, a lot of reasons why people are so traumatized when they lose their jobs. This may be a selfish Steve exposing myself a bit. Again, I'm living in a certain camp with a certain kind of isolation and without that connection, I feel some resentment. might be too strong a word, but when there large-scale layoffs from a big employer, it defines what your LinkedIn looks like for a few days. I feel like it sucks, right? It sucks for everybody to lose their job. So and'm I'm not minimizing any of that. But when there is a community of laid off people, because they do form a community, they end up in an air table, they end up on an email list, they end up in a Google Doc, yeah as well as the bereaved people that are still there, managers that lost teams. There is a collective grieving that we all kind of bear witness to. That's right. kind of company by company or department by department or institution by institution. And this is good, but I do feel some jealousy of it.
00:11:02
Speaker
People support each other. Hey, you know, so-and-so quote post was on my team. They were fantastic. They're looking for a job. Hey, if you were affected by the this and this layoffs, please comment below, whatever. yes Yes. I'm opening up more free office hours to do portfolio reviews. Like, again, that's part of being a community. People step up to help. And the more high profile it is, and the more that are sort of obviously affected, the more people benefit from that. And as and UX research has just really gone through a terrible period of unemployment, right? We know people that have been looking forever. we do. Looking and been laid off again. and then
00:11:40
Speaker
In no way can I say that that's anything but terrible and stressful. People talk about their self-worth, their mental health, yeah on their relationships, their economic struggles. yeah People that work independently go through some form of this their entire careers.
00:11:54
Speaker
And... We are a minority in the community, and sometimes I feel some resentment for the default employment path is to work for a company.
00:12:09
Speaker
And so it feels like the way that we grieve and support each other or ask for help or whatever that is, is all kind of geared to the more common path. Which is being full-time employee.
00:12:20
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I don't think that's a crazy thing. I mean, and you're not coming off as resentful. You're just analyzing. It's like, well, if it's so traumatic for people to suddenly be severed from an a collective, certainly it's got to be difficult to be continually severed from a collective. And maybe we should all recognize that. I mean, I guess the resentment is that I want some of that sympathy and support.
00:12:46
Speaker
Yeah, of course. it's My way. You know, I don't want to begrudge anyone the support that they get. But there is a little kernel of me. yeah yeah Why are they getting support and encouragement and alumni networks and email lists and air tables when there's kind of less of that? And, you know, what I have that other people don't have is a lengthy career and that's an extensive network and material and platforms that if I'm someone that's just been freelancing on their own and loses that contract, that's even harder.
00:13:12
Speaker
How did you come to be that lifelong freelancer?
Corporate vs. Independent Career Paths
00:13:16
Speaker
You mentioned before, like, oh, well, it just was the only path. but But so I was in agencies and I then had my own agency before I went to Microsoft. And it did not just arrive. The Microsoft opportunity was posted, but I had to actively pursue it. And I had to apply and I had to, like, kill it in the interview. And, you know, getting a ah job at Microsoft in Redmond when you're Canadian living in Toronto with no big company equivalent experience. looks like kind of a big deal. So you have to apply, right? You also have to choose that that's what you want. That's right. Yeah. conscious It didn't come to you, but you chose to go after it. chose to go after it And that was hard. And it was hard. and But I was like, no, I think I'd like to do this.
00:13:57
Speaker
And yet you didn't do that. What's the difference between these two paths? I remember I worked at design consultancy for a number of years beforehand, back when they were the thing. Right. And then kind of went from there to my own practice.
00:14:11
Speaker
And I remember sort of a conversation that a bunch of us had where we were like, wow, we hadn't met anyone at any of these companies that we would ever want to work at. because when we got to work with, you know, some successful leaders, high powered, you know, people trying to, they were coming to our company because they wanted us to help them change their product, change their business in dramatic ways. So it was high profile stuff. But know, think someone, it wasn't me that said it, but it was me that nodded along. It's like, oh yeah, just working in those companies or living in those cities or just having that being what your life was about. And that's sort of an era, I guess, where you had like
00:14:45
Speaker
design studio culture and you had corporate culture, you know. right. That's right. And there well before foosball tables and dry cleaning and you name it. yeah and And sort of design as kind of a cultural force coming into the corporation and having different kinds of spaces and activities and and types of people and and all that. So was never taught to me as a thing to want, I think, because I kind of grew up i I would agree with you. I don't think I was taught to want it either. And I think I had a lot of trepidation about going to corporate culture. Like Microsoft is headquartered in Redmond, which east side Seattle.
00:15:26
Speaker
So if people know what the side of Seattle is like, it's the suburbs, you know, it's. Over the bridge, I remember waking up in my hotel room in Redmond Town Center just before I was to go to my interview. i was on East Coast time still, so I was up very early. It was like 5.30 in the morning or something. And I was awake, and so I looked out the window of my weird hotel room and in the little fake town center of Redmond, and there was a security guard on a Segway.
00:15:56
Speaker
you know, zipping around and there was weird music. Like, I think it was Kylie Minogue getting piped in to this like area. And I thought, oh, my God, what have I done? Like, what is this place? Like, this is not where I'm from. Like, I don't really get this. And so that to me represented exactly what you're talking about is like, that's not the designerly culture that is innovation and creativity and freedom and all these kinds of things that looked and felt corporate to me.
00:16:22
Speaker
I had an interview at Microsoft. So it was before 2001. I was still working at this agency, just struggling probably my whole tenure there. And somehow I got blown up to Seattle from San Francisco. And and it was, yeah, it was kind of otherworldly. Like I don't think it was... The same attributes that you're describing, but, you know, I stayed in a cabin sort of apartment building kind of thing. Like, there are like multi-dwelling units that are all like one or two story. And it was very um Pacific Northwest looking, like that National Park aesthetic that yes Salesforce has kind of co-opted as their branding. Like, that's what all the space looked like. Big trees everywhere. I was very piney and there was like free food already stocked in there. And it was kind of otherworldly to me to kind of go up there. They yeah gave me to like rent a car. I could rent a car, stay in their hotel, get a flight, and they reimbursed me for all that. That was just quite exciting and just kind of dramatic, like to go on a business trip that wasn't through my employer that was kind of on own. And you had to Somebody was
00:17:27
Speaker
in the interest of meeting me, yeah was going to do, you know, do all this stuff. And then I spent like a day at Microsoft and had one of those interviews. I don't think they asked me the- Golf question. Manhole cover. manhole cover. Oh, is that golf ball? This was- Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it was in that era of the manhole cover or whatever we call manhole. Oh, it's not to get the right answer. It's just to see how you think. Any of these things are like nanoethnographies, right? Just to... Right. That's a wonderful term, nanoethnography. I don't think I've ever heard that. That's a great idea. I just made that up. I'm like, I can't even call it a microethnography because it's barely that.
00:18:00
Speaker
I saw where all the usability rooms were because that was a period where Microsoft like, oh, what we're doing is testing everything. So we're going to just build all this stuff. And I met all these people who were kind of change agents of that era. And it was pretty cool. A pretty cool experience. But it it wasn't enough for you to go, i need to be here. I want to be here. yeah right.
00:18:23
Speaker
So I was working at this design consultancy at the time. And i don't know if I ever talked with anyone at Microsoft like about, and this may be on me as much as anything else, like, what is the job? What does it involve? It was more like the ethnography thing where you're just trying to like understand what is this about? I don't know if I interviewed for a job. It seems like I was inept as a prospect.
00:18:45
Speaker
And like, I think my recruiter person didn't even come in that day. It was a big mass. It was kind of fumbled. Oh, dear. I think the thing that I was going up there to interview with was something I would never have wanted to do. it was like, is there some video game called like the Curse of Monkey Island or something like that? I don't know. i don't know This just shows it's so I think the brand still exists. But i remember getting this phone call like in whatever we're like. ninety Yeah. Yeah. eight We want somebody to come in and be like the usability researcher on... The Monkey Island game. Whatever this game was whatever Right, right. Something.
00:19:16
Speaker
Anyone's hearing this, they're laughing at us because they're like, oh, don't you know what it is? but But that never even came up. There was no job actual discussion. Sounds like that turned you off. Like you weren't going, well, maybe this one won't work out, but I need to be here, like in this amazing, crazy place. Yeah, it was surreal. Like, what is going on here? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I, as much as I was struggling in the agency, really believed in, mean, you had all those keywords like innovation and growth and change and all that. Like that's, we were positioned on that. It was pretty clear that's what you're trying to do. And so why would you walk away from that?
00:19:53
Speaker
That begs the question. So, like, I can say that my concern or my trepidation about going to corporate, as it were, was well-founded. It was also creative. That's true. And there was innovation, obviously. And there were lots of really, really smart people. But the corporate nature of the everyday life was true.
00:20:16
Speaker
And I had discomfort with that. Like I was not 100% OK with that. and I'm still not 100% OK with it. I think it's like this when I imagine it's kind of like what it's like to be a freelance journalist or maybe maybe like a stringer who like works in Bangkok and he works for all the different news outlets. When there's a big news story breaking in Bangkok, they are the person that they call versus No, no, no. I work at the Wall Street Journal and that's what I do.
00:20:45
Speaker
Why have you not felt the need to say, you know, the equivalent? I work at the Wall Street Journal for you. Why have you not felt that? It's like, how do you disprove a negative? Like, ah why yeah, why haven't I felt something? Well, yeah, it's difficult Can I turn it back on you a little bit? i think in service of the thing that we're both exploring. Sure, of course. So, yeah, you had to choose to go after this Microsoft thing. Yeah. So yeah can you say it a little bit about where you were at and what you thought you might get or or be able to do differently if you followed this? That is a good question. And I think the answer is, so I was in Toronto at the time and I was doing well, like I was getting work and I had hired people and I was thinking i I wanted to do more technology specific stuff because at the time in Toronto, there weren't real tech companies. And so I was getting more like market researchy type stuff, which was kind of OK, but not really what I wanted. So I was already thinking about it, like, how do I change that? It didn't mean how do I get a full time job? It meant how do I get more tech development, development?
00:21:52
Speaker
design, tech product. How do I do that? And I was already looking at ways I might be able to try doing that. But then this opportunity came along and i thought, well, here it is. It's like ready made. It's a tech company and they've been developing software for decades.
00:22:07
Speaker
Was I uncomfortable with the corporate kind of invitation? Yes. But I also knew that I'd be able to do the thing that I'd said all along that I wanted to. So I was like, well, let's see how this goes. I was having a drive to the grocery store conversation today about setting intentions. Before you go to the grocery store? It was, it was unrelated. Yeah, that's good.
00:22:30
Speaker
I could see why the way I said that would make one say that. So you have shower thoughts and dog walk conversations and... Oh, was there nobody in the car with No, my partner was in the car with me. This is good. These are good clarification questions.
00:22:42
Speaker
Yes. I could just rewind and say like, here at home, we were having a setting intention conversation and... Not that that manifests things, but there's something about you saying to yourself, like, oh, I want to be doing
Setting Career Intentions
00:22:55
Speaker
this kind of work. Right. And then something appears. And of course, you see it and you know how to respond to it because you set that intention. Right. You recognize the contours yeah of it when it emerges. That's so much smarter than what i was going to say, as always.
00:23:09
Speaker
So we could come up with other paths. Like I'm sort of talking about it never landed for me. And you didn't say to yourself, like, I'm going to just go send resumes everywhere. you You identified a category of work, industry, experience.
00:23:22
Speaker
Then you saw something come up that right seemed like it might fit that. The idea of intentions is really, i think, sometimes too literal for people because they will say things like, I'm going to send out five resumes, which is fine. Like, go ahead and do that. But really, why are you doing it? What's the underlying issue that you're trying to solve? I remember having this conversation with coworker of mine. A few years ago, and they were really not happy with the kinds of projects that were coming their way.
00:23:51
Speaker
And they were saying how they were like, I want to get a different role inside the company. Can you help me work on this? I was like, sure, let's talk. And so we talked and they were like, well, there's this team and they do X and there's that team and they do y I don't know if I like X or Y, which which one do I like better? And I was like, I think you're starting from the wrong perspective. You're like, oh, this is the ready-made job that they have available. Does that fit me? I'm like, why don't you talk about the kinds of activities? Back to your point, like, what is the actual job? Like, what do you do at the Monkey Island studio? Are you spending all your time animating? Or like, what are you doing exactly? And do you love animating? So I was like, well, why don't you just think about the kinds of things you currently do that you really, really enjoy and kind of doing like a pie chart of like how much of the share of your time now do you get to do that? And how much of that share would increase if you were to do that other role? Or maybe you can just create a role. And it was a completely different conversation thereafter. It wasn't like I have to go talk to the manager of that team or the manager of this team and I have to like tell them I'm looking or whatever. no, no. no It was like, wait, no, maybe I got to stop and say, what do I want?
00:25:01
Speaker
before I do that. I just want to echo that. It's obvious in retrospect, like maybe everything we're going to talk about, but it's not obvious when we're faced with not knowing what path to follow or how to get out of something. and I had someone a long, long time ago, and maybe there's even a name for this kind of exercise, but they had me draw a pie chart of how did my time break down now? And then discontinuous future, dream state, what would that be? And I think that discontinuous part of the prompt is super important. Why? Why was that important? Because I because it gave me permission to say audacious things. Oh. And mean, this was a very long time ago, so my goals wouldn't be the same. But I think maybe things like travel and writing were in there that had a component of what my work life was like like when I was doing this exercise. And the person that was helping me with this asked me in in in a way where I don't remember what I put down. But if I'd said I wanted to travel for 50 percent. Mm hmm.
00:25:55
Speaker
That was a fine outcome. But you have to give yourself permission to think about a future in the way that you help that person. You're asking about the fundamental. and What are these fundamental ways you want to spend time? And if you're trying to map that to what team A or team B is doing, then you're going to remake yourself in what you think that that team wants. Yeah. yeah As opposed to what do you want? Not what do you want from your next job, but like in the ideal situation, how would you see your time unfold? That discontinuous piece of creative direction is something we can all give ourselves on a regular basis, but there's a good chance that you're not giving it to yourself on a regular basis. There's a really good chance that you're hearing yourself say things like, well, I have to be realistic. Or, you know, let's not make this just navel gazing or let's be practical, that sort of thing. And I wonder how many people get stuck on the path that they're on because they don't give themselves that creative permission to envision where they really want to be.
00:26:55
Speaker
We started off by you asking me, like, why did I not go become like a VP at some company? Why are you not a big shot? And I think that could be the answer, though. I think I'm probably guilty of short-termism or incremental thinking about it and not and not having the vision or courage to take big swings or really like evaluate everything from... I mean, I say all this and there's no part in me that's wistful that like, oh, geez, I wish I was running a team of 80 people at Google's cheese division. oh yeah that does not no no vp ux research google cheese it seems utterly foreign to me and i mean i can say i never sort of had the exercise of like well let's just start over again and like if today is day zero like where do we go right right i mean i haven't done that because i think there's just a cautiousness to my life choices like you got to go with what you've got and i have momentum in a brand and so on and and Right. Of course you do. I mean, geez, every time I would even think about it over the years, again, I didn't go in an interview, but occasionally there'd be not even nibbles, but just you take it and look at it a little bit. And I would immediately start to like pre-grieve what I would have to give up.
00:28:10
Speaker
Pre-grieving. What is pre-grieving? Well, it hasn't happened yet. I haven't lost out on it, but I've been sort of... You haven't lost anything. You haven't even started anything. and Because over the years, I've had gigs like... I was a columnist, a blogger at Core 77 at one point. I had a column for a couple of years in an interactions magazine. You know, I would do this talk or that talk or go to this conference or that conference. And that was a part of the mix of how I was with my community. Sometimes there was, it was certainly brand building and learning for me learning.
00:28:42
Speaker
Yeah. And travel. Yes. It goes to the travel and, you know, and community connections, like all all the things are in there. All the things you want. Yeah. And so to even just can conceive without an offer from Monkey Island or Google Cheese or anything kind of being there to think, well, how would that work? Because I have a lot of things that I am passionate about that. And I like you doing. Yeah. How would i cut all that off? And because if you go become a VP at Google Cheese, i don't know, and now we're stuck with that. perfect. I love it. Google Cheese. then that might be 18 months or that might be three years. That might be seven years. but Yeah, that's true. if I stop doing things that keep Portagal Consulting viable, then can you come back from that? Or have you sort of lost your... momentum yeah forever. Yeah. Well, I'm going to push you on this because I don't think you ever wanted to be VP of Google Cheese. Like, I don't think you wanted that.
00:29:36
Speaker
If you really wanted that, you would have done it, I think. No, you don't have to push me. Like, i I agree. There's no wistfulness. Yeah, yeah. that's that But anyway, but push. Well, yeah it's funny. I was actually having a conversation just yesterday with a friend of mine who is a VP equivalent to VP of Google Cheese.
00:29:54
Speaker
And they were telling me about their next steps. And the reason I think I'm even asking this question, like, why aren't you a big shot, Steve? Why did you decide not to go that path is partly because of this conversation. So this person basically did that path and got a lot of value out of it. But I think that the steam, they're losing their energy to do that. And they are thinking, what's next? And there is no what's next. that's it. This person is not going to become a CEO.
00:30:24
Speaker
That's not next. So what are they going to do? Well, they have to come up with the next thing. And it's either, well, I'm the VP of Google Cheese. Maybe I can become the VP of Meta Whipped Cream next.
00:30:35
Speaker
and And that's basically the same job, more or less. So they have to think, what do I want to do next? They did the thing that I think everybody thinks is the end game for most of us, right? Most of us think, oh, if only I could be a VP of of whatever. And they they've done it.
00:30:52
Speaker
Congratulations. Well, the end. That's the story. So if I were to pursue like VP Google Cheese, right? And I have had moments where i'm like, why don't I do this? I'm actually kind of perplexed for myself. And I think it does come down to that thing that you were talking about, about the corporate.
00:31:07
Speaker
I'm not that kind of person. I don't sing corporate praises. I'm very uncomfortable with that. And I think you do kind of have to do that to be that person. I know myself well enough to know that the more senior I got inside organizations, even as a senior IC, like a super senior IC, I'm still, I'm quite senior. And I don't have anybody reporting to me, but, you know, I have to kind of still toe a bit of a line. And it was always extremely uncomfortable for me. I was never very okay with it.
00:31:39
Speaker
Is there
Ethics in Corporate Research
00:31:40
Speaker
overlap or correlation between the type of work that you do and that feeling about the corporate truth, the corporate line?
00:31:50
Speaker
The actual activities? Researcher. Yeah. As a researcher, we are truth tellers. We speak truth to power. we That's our job. We uncover things that go against what the current belief is and we try to help people understand and and engage with those. I don't know, like...
00:32:08
Speaker
You talk about being the stringer versus the like the on staff at the Wall Street Journal. Right. There is something about being together but apart or. You know, I mean, think it's what I like about being the consultant is like I can join on a team. I'm also going to leave after and don't care about the corporate things. But because the work involves having these kinds of conversations and finding this information and like shaking things up to a certain extent, even it's about sort of an everyday thing, we're trying to challenge existing knowledge.
00:32:40
Speaker
I don't know. Again, I haven't worked in these environments, but I've met a million people who have. It seems like the idea of where we can position ourselves as researchers can be perhaps less compatible with a corporate mindset. Compared to somebody else, a different type of job That's like a myth of exceptionalism, right? Oh, but if you're a coder, you don't care because you're just working on a code base and you're kind of in there and you're not, you know. yeah it's it Whereas researchers want to be outsiders because we connect we're bringing the outside in. I don't know. I don't think you're wrong, actually. i think you're correct. I think about Simmel's notion of the the stranger and the role of the stranger in society is very important because they are untethered from strong structures. But we all need strangers to do certain things that, quote unquote, internal people can't do. So when I, I mean, I read about that when I was in grad school and I always thought of myself as that professional stranger, you know. My job as an ethnographer is to make the familiar strange and the strange familiar.
00:33:51
Speaker
And you can't do that if you're just totally embedded, mindset-wise, embedded in a corporate environment. So is it a foregone conclusion that you're going to have like a crisis as a researcher in a corporate environment? I don't think it is.
00:34:08
Speaker
I don't think it's a foregone conclusion, but I think that there are some crises that are inevitable. And I think that's a crisis of integrity. You know, I'll give you an example that is not a researcher example. I'll tell you, my husband as an accountant, you know, as a CPA, he has a professional obligation to attest to the data that he, the financial reporting, is accurate.
00:34:32
Speaker
And he has faced situations in the past where he has been asked, quote unquote, to not take certain things as seriously, perhaps, as maybe he wants to.
00:34:45
Speaker
he You know, he had had this experience and it and it was gratifying for him to immediately, without reservation, say, I'm not doing that. That's not happening.
00:34:56
Speaker
And the pushback didn't come. they He just immediately, he said, no, I'm not doing that. And then he was like, oh, my God, what have I just done? am I getting fired? But he wasn't. And the pushback he imagined happening wasn't there. And I think that might happen for researchers, too, except for maybe they're self-censoring.
00:35:13
Speaker
You know, maybe they're not pushing it as far as they could. If you had to speculate, where do you think that clarity for him came from? Oh, that's a very good question. i mean, that's it's ah it's it's a multi-layered question.
00:35:26
Speaker
Of course, there's training, right? He had training and he has professional certifications. He has a profession and and they reaffirm ethical obligations all the time, you know? So it isn't just like back in school. It was also, you know, every year you kind of have to attest to that. But on top of that, his father was a police officer and was on the fraud squad. So...
00:35:46
Speaker
I mean, he was steeped in right and wrong in that way. And this was definitely wrong. Like, he didn't even think about it. It was definitely wrong. Maybe it's not so cut and dried for a lot of researchers.
00:35:57
Speaker
We don't have the same kind of professional framework. I'm sure I've seen a discussion of of ethics in research. Of course. Although it comes up more around design, around the thing that gets made, but there a zillion ethical issues. But the things that more parallel what you're talking about, mean, there's ethics around participant and data privacy and all that stuff. Right. In fact, have been codified and then yeah companies now have compliance around them. But... what you've learned and how you want to talk about it and what's the best way to say it and how can we be persuasive. Not so cut and dried.
00:36:31
Speaker
I worked with someone where I was the consultant and they were the internal gatekeeper. I don't want to frame this as an ethical thing, but maybe adjacent to this. And one of the practices that I was sort of advocating for and that i like to do is if you're in the process of doing field work is just to just send out in like a Slack thread or an email thread or whatever, like the most quick highlights of who we talk to. Mm-hmm. Yep. What their name is, something that happened. And it's do a little bit and you get a lot out of it.
00:37:00
Speaker
You start getting stories out there. and It's like one of the most effective low effort things I think to do. And my clients would the be the person who would send them out. I would write them and they would send them out.
00:37:13
Speaker
And they looked over them and decided to pick and choose opposed to sort of having like the library of everyone that we met for crewing, which was how I would do it. I didn't know that group or the politics. So when someone is a gatekeeper and they can kind of help you navigate that situation, i think that's excellent because I'm a bull in a china shop at any new organization. But they decided to pick and choose and their sort of rubric was the ones that were going to be more familiar to people that were reading them.
00:37:43
Speaker
as opposed to the ones that were going to be the most surprising. Well, that is a, okay, keep going. Why did they choose the familiar? I mean, I think they were probably looking to choose their moments when you wanted to... Spring it on people.
00:37:58
Speaker
Right. If we've got four and you're going to pick one, you're going to pick the one that's just going to go down more smoothly. and you know, and then you're sort of saying, hey, we're doing research, but you're not using it as a priming moment to get people ready for like, hey, we're starting to hear some things that go against we thought. Right. So what do you make of that decision?
00:38:18
Speaker
I'm of two very different minds about it. And one is slightly petulant, which is like, no, we're trying to change minds and get people to see what their customers are really like, especially if it goes against what they think today.
00:38:32
Speaker
Right. And this is why I'm not the in-house big shot, because the in-house big shot plays the long game. And oh knows the people and knows the relationship and knows there's not one size fits all communication solutions and that you get more flies with honey, like that kind of thing. Like that's that yeah yeah made a choice. And so we spent 30 seconds debating it and I just took the recommendation because I'm not in a position to say this is the right way to do it. The petulant response still was available to you. You could have done that. right No, that's not what I do. I mean, that's certainly how I felt. I mean, I try not to act on that or let people see that. But I mean, i like having someone be the gatekeeper and giving me in-depth, context-specific, hard-won guidance on how to communicate, how to bring new information
00:39:26
Speaker
But for sure, those gatekeepers are always way more cautious than I am. They have more at stake than I do. just back to the discomfort of the sort of the person that's more of the outsider being in that inside role.
00:39:38
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's more uncomfortable for them to share some of the stuff than it is for me. In fact, I'm not trying to like to have it be a gotcha update. I'm like, this is really cool. Like we learned something that you didn't know.
00:39:51
Speaker
We didn't know. Yeah. It makes me think of, he was talking about design and business at Rotman for so many years. Roger Martin. And he had this thing about, it was like the designer versus the business person.
00:40:03
Speaker
It was like, oh, the business person says like, oh, this has been done before. Cool. And the designer says, oh, this has never been done before. Cool. And I think that duality, like I'm saying to my gatekeeper, like, here's a thing that goes against what all your stakeholders are saying. Cool.
00:40:19
Speaker
And they're saying like, here's the thing that confirms what our stakeholders are saying. Cool. Cool. Your phrasing of it, I'm just like, oh, it's like nails on a chalkboard. Here's the thing that's already been done before. I have an allergic reaction to that.
00:40:34
Speaker
I don't want any part of the thing that's been done before if I'm left to my own devices. And yet I have been inside corporations and I have been part of that thing that has been done before. But I think you have compassion for people that operate that way as opposed to contempt for them. i think you understand why, what their fears and rewards are and why they're sort of enculturated to act that way. On good days, I have that. On bad days, and there are more good days than bad days. But on bad days, I wouldn't go as far as saying I have contempt, but impatience, definitely. Sure, yes.
00:41:10
Speaker
Like a lot of impatience, definitely. When I'm like, oh God, can't we just stop with the same old, same old? Can't we just... But in some ways, like, I think that's for me, you know, up until recently, an internal person, I actually looked at that as being the actual work, right? The work wasn't go find out what customers think about X or the kinds of products that they would really want, or how can we improve what we have for them? Although those are interesting questions to ask. For me, the real game is how do I get all of these people to stop working against their own interests?
00:41:45
Speaker
How do I fool them or guide them or reinvent them into being innovative when everything in their being is getting in their own way?
00:41:58
Speaker
They don't want to get in their own way, and yet they do every single day. Why do they keep doing this? That, to me, is the bottomless, interesting question. And I think my gatekeeper client was asking the same question and making a tactical choice about what's the learning ready moment, then this isn't it.
00:42:18
Speaker
And so if I'm going to help them stop getting in their own way, I'm not going to do myself any favors by taking this opportunity and blowing it. Right. And I mean, i think that's just a tension. And I think it's a good tension, right? Do you slow drip disruptive information? Yeah. Or do you, you know, yeah, don't pull a bandaid off is a terrible way of saying it.
00:42:36
Speaker
And also they had me. Right. I wasn't an employee. So I can be that bull in a china shop and guess what? Blah, blah, blah. You know, and just become off. yeah Yeah. Yeah. Like I can take some of that fall. Well, that's part of the reason you're there. Yes. And so, I mean, we're sort of back to the the stringer for the Wall Street Journal who can sort of find a piece that the staff can't or or whatever. Well, if you're not going to head office every single day and getting to know everybody that works at the head office and being a part of head office, it's really hard if you do that to kind of take a counterintuitive perspective. Like it's really, really difficult.
00:43:13
Speaker
You have to be kind of, I think, a super special person. I would say researchers in general are probably more predisposed to being that special person, like the internal disruptor, the truth teller that somehow gets away with telling the truth and staying still at HQ, however they do that.
00:43:31
Speaker
I would say researchers generally are more likely to do that than you're going to see. I'm just making this up like a marketer or an an engineer. They're less likely, I think, to do that. Maybe because researchers, their whole thing is we're looking at humans and we want to understand how humans work.
00:43:47
Speaker
And that's the game, right? Not the database or the tech stack or the marketing message or whatever, sales funnel, gada yada, yada. Do you think that's in contradiction to the trope that researchers are people pleasers?
00:44:02
Speaker
Is that a trope? Oh, for sure. search yeah Is it? Yes. Wait, is it? Who says that? who's a You're saying that. I'm saying it now, but yes. Okay, why do you say that? Why do you say researchers are people pleasers? I think it's a characteristic that a lot of researchers have that makes them good at research, that they put the other person first. They wait as opposed to leap in.
00:44:26
Speaker
They're excited to learn and they're excited to teach. And so they're kind of working in service of a bunch of different populations. Hmm. I don't think that all necessitates people-pleasers. So there's a leap from what I'm saying in response to your question to the conclusion of people-pleasers. But I don't know. Feels like if I'm with some researchers and I say, we're all people-pleasers, aren't we? I'm going to get a lot of nods. And not an agreement. meant Even if they didn't agree with me, they are agreeing with me, which proves my point. They are people-pleasing. Right, Steve. Right, you are.
00:44:57
Speaker
Wait, so does that mean I'm not a researcher because I just challenged you on that? No, you ask a clarification question, a follow-up question. I mean, we contain multitudes and not every researcher is an introverted people pleaser. Like there's there's lots of different kinds of folks, but that's why I call it a trope. It seems like that's a thing, but... So going back to the original question that we started with today is like, why are you not some internal big
Why Not Become Corporate Big Shots?
00:45:20
Speaker
shot? Why are you not the VP of Google Cheese? Yeah.
00:45:22
Speaker
And when I say you, I mean all of the researchers. Why are you not the VP of Google Cheese? Is it because we're people pleasers? I don't think it's as simple as researchers being people pleasers and therefore aren't big shot big shots. Yeah.
00:45:35
Speaker
But there is something to that concept. I mean, like I said, I think there is an inevitable crisis that everyone experiences regardless of whether you're an accountant or an engineer or a marketer or a researcher. And it is a crisis of integrity. And that means like the things that you are willing to stand up for and prioritize and the things that you're not.
00:45:57
Speaker
And it's everybody's going to have that situation. it may be happening right under their nose and they don't even see it. But I think for researchers in particular, that crisis is often about we are not doing what we said we do. And I'm here to remind you of that.
00:46:13
Speaker
We're not delivering on the promise. We're not doing what we said we would. We failed when we thought this was a good idea because it wasn't. You have to say those things. And how do you be a big shot and say those things? I mean, there are big shots that say such things. Sometimes they're wildly rewarded for saying such things.
00:46:30
Speaker
But not many researchers are comfortable with having that real big question, you know, put to them. How are you going to tell people the truth? You think that's not where researchers are comfortable? Well,
00:46:43
Speaker
No, I don't think they are. And I think they want to be, but I don't think they are. I think they want to be those people. I think they want to be the person who says, we're not delivering the way that we said we would. We haven't kept our promise. Or we thought this was a good idea, but it's not. I think they want to be that person, but I think that they're having difficulty...
00:47:00
Speaker
internalizing messages that other people tell them. Like, hey, you you really shouldn't tell people all of that stuff. And it could be well-intentioned feedback, like maybe this is not the right time to say that stuff, but please don't forget about saying that stuff. I think a lot of times researchers are like, oh, that's scary. That feedback was really difficult. I just won't say anything.
00:47:21
Speaker
It seems to me, and this could be completely wrong, but the scope of questions that you have to answer or you're not going to be heard at all has maybe over the course of the growth of the field has become more closed ended, more tactical, more feature and function kinds of questions.
00:47:42
Speaker
yeah Ironically, that is exactly the kind of question I think that we should be answering. Not the tactical one, the bigger ones, even though I agree with you. I think that the narrowing has happened. Which makes it more uncomfortable because now you're off script. Right. Right. The dashboard didn't deliver the big shift in conversions that we hope based on this experiment. Right. Also, let's say ask ourselves some questions about the whole construct of dashboards and if that's really getting at our customers who don't understand yeah our value proposition. That is a classic example exactly of double loop learning versus single loop learning.
00:48:19
Speaker
You know, when we think about test and learn, test and learn, A-B test, iterative design, la la la, that's like, did this work? Test it. Did that work? Test that. Did this so other thing work? Test that. And then you're in this tiny little test and learn circle, but you've never asked the bigger question.
00:48:35
Speaker
What even is a dashboard? Why did we choose to do a dashboard? Was that a good assumption? That's double loop learning, asking the questions about the basic assumptions. I use this example all the time, this concept.
00:48:48
Speaker
If you don't ask the double loop
Redefining Success
00:48:50
Speaker
learning question, the assumptions question, I don't think you're doing your job. I think that's very uncomfortable. I think you have to be in the right meetings with the right people and have either been, well, no one's going to give it to you, so choose to empower yourself to to ask that question.
00:49:07
Speaker
If you're even doing the, you also have to be looking at the data, whatever that data is, you have to challenge the premise yourself. That's right. If all you're doing is like test A, test B, and then, you know, yeah prioritize, you're not even giving yourself a chance to go like, ah, dashboards, you know, how do they work? If you're not doing that, then you're not in any position to be in that meeting and say, hey, everybody, i have a different question.
00:49:35
Speaker
Maybe there's something really unfortunate about why are you not a big shot? It's because maybe you're just too afraid to ask those big assumption questions.
00:49:49
Speaker
Because i I would argue that big shots do that. Is that how you get to be one? is you I don't know. Am I wrong? I don't i don't know. I think that's how you get to be a big shot is by asking assumption questions. I mean, sometimes you're not successful, which is why, as you brought up earlier, like being the VP of whatever, you don't know how long you're going to last in that job.
00:50:06
Speaker
You could get tossed tomorrow. We know that CEOs have a declining number of years of tenure and then the C-suite even less. And then that down below, the VP is probably more. But I think the average for a chief marketing is officer is like 22 months.
00:50:23
Speaker
Like that's nothing. So you kind of have to be courageous, you know, if you're going to do that, because there's a good chance you're going to get thrown out anyway. Which could be liberating. Could be. Right. If you're sort of a serial CMO.
00:50:35
Speaker
Yeah. And kind of going from one to the next and going in, making all the change and then leaving them better than you found them. I guess the question is, I think you should ask yourself back to like the assumptions. i think we're going to turn that on to this ourselves. Right. I ask you, why aren't you a big shot? And you said, well, wait a minute. What is even a big shot?
00:50:51
Speaker
Why are you even asking that question? Why would I ask such a question? I think it's because everybody expects that to be the definition of success, being that big shot. Well, we hold those people in high regard.
00:51:04
Speaker
We talk about them and we admire or fear them or guess lust after their success, even if it's not right for us individually. Right. That's the hard work is to say, wait a minute, wait a minute.
00:51:16
Speaker
I don't actually want to be the VP of Google Cheese. I don't even like cheese. Perish the thought. I love cheese. Yeah. You know what happened to the the google Google Cheese program? No, what happened to the Google Cheese program? Oh, it got put into their moonshot effort.
00:51:34
Speaker
Oh, my God, that is so... Badum-cha. I've been sitting on that one for 30 minutes. You have not. That's terrible. That's the worst. I appreciate everyone who's listening that's like, what are they talking about right now? Oh, that's terrible. Steve, that's awful.
00:51:50
Speaker
That's awful. That's a terrible joke. Are we ending on a let's, we can end on a low note. Let's, ah the well, but it's like hilarious. So yes. but Well, I mean, the the the issue is like, why are you not a big shot?
00:52:03
Speaker
And I think we asked that question without really examining the assumption underneath it, which is ironic because that's what I said we should do every time. The assumption is is that you want to be a big shot. Maybe you don't.
00:52:15
Speaker
maybe Maybe it's not right for you. Ask your doctor if Big Shot is right for you. Is Big Shot right for you? For some people, i would say i don't think they actually want to be Big Shots, but they haven't stopped and asked themselves, why do I think I want that?
00:52:29
Speaker
It's a hard thing to do. So that's, i think, what we're doing in this these conversations is we're trying to ask ourselves, what is it that was underneath our perspective? And take ah a twisted winding path and not come up with a conclusion, but just, well, it's interesting to us, I think, to examine these different facets and layers. And hopefully it's interesting to other people as well.
00:52:50
Speaker
Well, Sam, this was lots of fun, as always, to talk with you. Thanks for a fun conversation. And we'll have more. It's a lovely talk with you always, Steve. And I will come back to VP Google Cheese at some other time.
00:53:04
Speaker
Thanks for listening to the Off the Path with Sam and Steve, the show that takes you off the beaten path of research careers and onto your own chosen path. Hire Sam for research projects or research coaching.
00:53:16
Speaker
Take one of her classes or sign up for exclusive video content at samladner.com. Sam's books, Practical Ethnography and Mixed Methods, are both available on Amazon.
00:53:29
Speaker
And her new book on strategic foresight is coming out in 2026. Sign up for her newsletter to find out more at samladner.com slash newsletter. Hire Steve Portigal to lead a research study with your team or to help build user research skills in your organization or to deliver a talk or workshop for your event.
00:53:49
Speaker
Learn more portigal.com slash services. Steve's classic book, Interviewing Users, is in its second edition with an audiobook. Check out portigal.com slash books for more.
00:53:59
Speaker
And Steve has his own podcast. dollars to donuts where he talks with people who lead user research that's a portugal.com slash podcast you can also connect with him on linkedin
00:54:41
Speaker
I love you.