Ep. 31: Tory Wobber - PhD in Human Evolutionary Biology turned Career Coach

Jesse Butts: 0:23

Hey everyone. Thanks for joining me for another episode. I'm your host, Jesse Butts. Today, I'm chatting with Tory Wobber, a PhD in human evolutionary biology from Harvard turned career and leadership coach. Tory is the founder of Academic Exit where she helps social science PhDs succeed in the tech industry. After she worked for tech leaders, such as Google and Meta. Tory, welcome to the show. Delighted to have you on.

Tory Wobber: 0:50

Thanks so much for having me here, Jesse. It's really great to join.

Jesse Butts: 0:54

Before we dive into how you found your way from something as seemingly disparate as human evolutionary biology to career coaching for social science folks, can you tell us a little bit about what your work today involves? Like how are you helping these social science PhDs transition into careers in tech?

Tory Wobber: 1:16

Yeah, thanks for asking, Jesse. It's. It's funny. I work with folks who have had enough of academia and who are ready to move into something new. I work with folks around tech in particular, just because that's where I worked, and so I can speak to the sort of domain of how to land a role there with experience having served on hiring committees. I think while I was at Facebook, I, I hired, you know, a hundred people, not as a hiring manager, but I was on the interview loops. So I saw a lot of processes. And so I had that chance to actually have the expertise of the academic world and the tech world and help make connections. For folks who've decided that they're done with the academic hoopla.

Jesse Butts: 1:56

Are your typical clients, you know, have they been either in tenure track or kind of adjunct hell for a while? Or are they, just wrapping up their PhDs and thinking that, The career I thought I wanted in academia is not sounding quite as appealing as it did, you know, in my first couple years? Like where do they fall on that kind of a spectrum?

Tory Wobber: 2:18

Yeah, I would say I probably get three clusters. One are actually folks who are in maybe their third or fourth year of their PhD and who are already saying, Hey, something about this isn't for me. Can I get an internship to see what else is out there? So they're very early on saying, I might not wanna continue this path and explore. Another are folks who are ABD, finishing their PhD post doc, who are maybe on the faculty job market. They've maybe done it a season or two. And they're saying, No no, no, no, no, no, no. Wait a minute. No. And so they're looking for something else at that point. And then I'm now getting a third cluster who are tenure track or tenured faculty members who are saying, This no longer meets what I expected. And so those are folks who... I actually run into as many tenured folks as I do adjunct or other situations who are saying, You know what? The growth here has stopped. I can't move and my partner needs to move. And so they're recognizing the limitation of those positions and moving on.

Jesse Butts: 3:21

So I'm curious, you know, going back to your story, Tory, what were you thinking or not, not in a, I don't mean that any like, accusatory way, but like what was going on in, in your head when you were thinking about going to grad school? What made you want to go beyond undergrad?

Tory Wobber: 3:40

Yeah. What were you thinking? No, it's, well, it's funny. I, I was thinking all about this and remembering one specific conversation. I was sitting in the office of a grad student who I was a research assistant for as an undergrad. Hearing him and another graduate student talk about grad school. And they used the term Intellectual Masturbation. I don't know if that's too risque for, for your podcast, but I heard that and I said, Wow, that sounds fun. Intellectual masturbation. I could do that. And so it was a very easy path to go to grad school. But I don't think at the end of undergrad that I ever did any pause, assessment of the options and then choice of grad school. It was more a continuation of really loving research as an undergrad. And it was only, you know, six, seven years later when I was on the faculty job market that I paused and said, Hang on. Is this actually meeting my values and standards? So I really followed my gut, which led me to a great experience with my PhD. But then after that, the, the path was not as rosy, and I then was sort of forced to do that assessment of, Hey, what does this job actually mean?

Jesse Butts: 4:51

And you said that point of assessment was in your sixth or seventh year. So, so before that, were you feeling pretty confident in either working in a lab for a while or, or a tenure track position? Like what were you thinking before that point of assessment?

Tory Wobber: 5:08

Yeah. I very much pictured myself in a faculty position. And I, I hesitate to say this because many folks will get angry, but I enjoyed doing my PhD. Many folks struggle with the PhD and have frustrations. I actually liked the PhD part. But as I got to the end, so I did my PhD in six years, I applied for faculty positions during my final year of PhD. And then during one year of postdoc. And it was only then when I started going to these departments and talking to folks, I was saying, What is this? What have, what have I done all this work for? I thought that this would be about continued intellectual masturbation and fun and getting to do research. But I, I think I recognize the hard reality of needing to position your work, needing to get funding, needing to have these other folks interested in your work in ways that no longer retained that purity that I had loved. And so it was a rude awakening after two seasons on the job market. And I think only then was I forced to consider other options. But I had absolutely considered myself going on in taking a faculty role.

Jesse Butts: 6:14

And were those two seasons of looking for a tenure track position after you had graduated ?Or was like one or two of them or one or both of them, I should say, were they, while you were wrapping up your PhD?

Tory Wobber: 6:26

I did one when I was ABD and one the year after I completed with my PhD. And I had pretty good success at getting interviews. I had six interview loops, which at least in my field was pretty good because my CV was really strong. But I didn't have any offers. And the last place that didn't give me an offer was my home department, the department where I did my PhD. And I remember I had decided before that last year, that second year, Okay, if nothing works out this year, I'm gonna look for industry roles. And so my home department in, you know, March of 2013 had said, No, we don't want to extend you an offer. And by July I had an offer and jumped over to work at Facebook.

Jesse Butts: 7:08

Can you walk us through a little bit about that pre-Facebook offer. Like how did, how did you get to that point? Were you looking in tech? Was it fascinating to you? Were you, sending your resume anywhere that looked remotely compatible? Like, what was that process like?

Tory Wobber: 7:23

Yeah, well, and I'll, I'll speak to my stages here. And I've seen now many folks go through these same stages. I think I've coached more than 50, almost 60 folks through this transition. And so I can say there are sort of phases that folks go through. The first one was just allowing myself to look. Right? The permission to say, I wanna do something other than academics, was really scary, intimidating, and, and sometimes sad for me. So that first stage, and actually that year of that last year on the job market was just saying, Okay, this is the point when I'm ready to, to move on. I then explored really broadly. So I did a lot of informational interviews where I spoke with folks about their jobs. And I probably did about 40 to 50 of those because I had no idea what I wanted to do. Yeah. I was talking to anyone. Like, guys I had had crush on in college, a friend's mom, like someone who would meet at Starbucks. Right. Like really just trying to chat with folks about, What do you do? Because I had no idea. And I landed on data science because it felt like a good way to leverage things that I enjoyed about my PhD. Sort of this data driven hypothesis testing, controlled experimentation, which they called AB testing. I started learning SQL and I enjoyed that. And so it felt like an opportunity to take my skills and put them in a fast growing field. And so only after maybe a couple of months of exploration, did I hone in on data science and then really optimize my resume towards that and try to find a position. And so I got my position at Facebook through a referral. I think of a friend of a friend of a friend worked there and was willing to pass through my resume. And then I was able to finagle my way through the interview to land the role.

Jesse Butts: 9:09

And just for, for clarity SQL, that's a, a database, right? A database language.

Tory Wobber: 9:15

Yes.

Jesse Butts: 9:15

Got it. So what, what were you doing in, in this data science role? Like what were those first few years of Facebook like for you?

Tory Wobber: 9:24

Yeah, filled with culture shocks. And I think I I'm extremely fortunate because, a fellow PhD who had worked with the same career advisor at Harvard, who I had was there. And she connected us. And so he was a great resource for me, as well as some managers who had managed PhDs and could sort of give it to me straight. And so they were able to help me navigate some of the challenges. But wow, was it different. Right? It really is just a completely different way of work between academics and data science. Now that doesn't mean that my experience didn't matter. I had knowledge of statistics, probability, how to frame a quantitative question that aren't that present in that area. And so my skills were really valuable. But the amount of other learning I had to do to sort of understand how does work get done here? And how do I take my skills and apply them? That took a long time. And I would say Facebook, it probably took me about a year and a half to figure out how to actually get things done well. And then when I moved over to Google, I probably only figured that place out after about three years. I think after three years, I was really hitting my stride. And I say those things just to really normalize that, Okay, within the first three to six months, you have a sense, but there's continued learning in terms of how do I execute well in this environment. That happens for years on end.

Jesse Butts: 10:52

So, so I'm a little curious, you know, for people who might have the research background, social sciences, like applying what they've learned at Facebook, like what were you helping Facebook do? I mean, like what, what problems was your data analysis and, you know, your methodology helping to solve for them?

Tory Wobber: 11:09

Yeah, well, I'll give you my quirky answer and then my genuine answer. My quirky answer was that my PhD was with chimpanzees. And so I'd say, Hey, you know, chimpanzee behavior, behavior of folks on Facebook, not too different. Like, that's sort of the quirky answer. If we wanna, you know, poke fun at ourselves on social media. So in, in reality, what Facebook does with data ultimately is try to make the product better. Right? And you can dispute, you can see the, the sort of stories in the news about how they use data or misuse data. But at least during my time there, the experience I had was, Let's understand how to make this product more usable for folks. So for example, one of the experiments I worked on when I was first there was around how folks used a specific aspect of the product. And we did an AB test. So we basically had the control, which was the current version of the product, tested against a new developer, you know, version. And we compared the two with a sort of random sub sample of folks to then see, Okay, which one is actually creating the user outcomes that we wanna see, which we believe are good user outcomes. And from those results, we were able to say, Hey, this new variant actually seems to be creating better outcomes. So let's replace the former variant with this one. And so that sense of using controlled experiments, which I had done, you know, countless numbers of as a grad student, but then to say, How do we make this product better? It was a new domain area, but the methods and the hypothesis testing were very familiar to me.

Jesse Butts: 12:46

And it, it's my understanding they're running hundreds if not thousands of these tests. And so I imagine it's just an incredible amount of information to keep track of.

Tory Wobber: 12:57

Yeah. And it's interesting because as a data person, you know, and I'll speak to Facebook at the time I worked there. And I'm referring to it Facebook just because between 2013 to 2015 that's what it was called. It's now Meta. You know, the, the data there, even with a tiny, tiny percentage of users, right. I think Facebook has close to 2 billion users at this point. And so even with a tiny percentage of those users, seeing potentially imagine that they're testing a, a green button as opposed to a blue button somewhere. That, for a data person, is a massive amount of data. When I was in graduate school, my biggest data set was about 2,000 data points, where yeah, if you envision, you know, a larger sample from Facebook, which is still a tiny percentage of their users, you're talking data points in the hundreds of thousands. And so that could be just a very different data challenge. And again, for me, that, that took a little bit of learning how to wrangle these databases, where you actually work with very large data sets. Uh, and for me, I, I think I was in a group that really had that intent to say, How do we build good products? How do we do these things? And so even though these stories come out in the news about folks with malintent, my experience there was that there was an intent to actually say, How do we have a better user experience here? As opposed to, you know, we can run a small test, check something and then roll it out. Or we could just roll it out to everyone and have folks say, Oh my gosh, this is terrible. And then change it. Right. And so it would actually be for everyone a much more tough experience if there weren't these little percent tests. The same way that if you were maybe getting a, a new treatment of a medicine and you're the very first person getting it, it's better if you know it's been validated on many folks first where there's sort of a sense and, and it's validated in small doses.

Jesse Butts: 14:45

You know, you mentioned earlier that you've been involved in hiring, and, and you were at Facebook for about three years. While at Facebook or at Google, which, you, you mentioned was your next employer. Did you stay in data science roles? Were you kind of moving up the ladder to, to, pardon the cliche or, you know, what was that progression like in the tech space for you?

Tory Wobber: 15:07

Yeah. So I'll speak to both of those and to the interviewing. So, as an individual contributor data scientist at Facebook. So what I mean there is just someone who is not in management, but just sort of a... contributing as an individual. I was part of, I think, close to a hundred different interview panels to hire more data scientists because the data science organization was growing so rapidly. And I, during my, my couple of years there, I got promoted to sort of a more senior... individual contributor role. And then I moved to Google and sort of kept that senior individual contributor status. I eventually, after seeing into the eyes of Google and finally understanding how it worked after, I think, two and a half, three years, moved into a management role, both got promoted again, and then moved into a, a people management role. And I actually really enjoyed the people management part of people management. But there were parts of it that I didn't realize were part of the role. And now actually, as a coach, I get to do more of the parts of that work that I enjoy, which is growing people, supporting folks, helping them see their goals and achieve those. Where a lot of people management turned out to be upward and sideways management. As opposed to managing your team, you're sort of managing your team's positioning, amidst other teams, which was something that I was less skilled at than developing the people around me.

Jesse Butts: 16:28

What prompted your decision to, to leave tech and to start Academic Exit? I may I, and I suppose maybe I should ask, Was there anything in between tech and you doing academic coaching and consulting? Or did you leave with the express purpose of, of starting this, this solo consultancy and coaching business?

Tory Wobber: 16:50

Yeah, I left to start this business. And it's funny. The, the lead time for this was actually very long because when I left academics in 2013, I would continually get passed folks who wanted to leave academics, right? Anyone who knew someone who wanted to leave, they'd say, Oh, Tory did that. She can talk to you. And so I took those conversations because I wanted to pay it forward. A number of folks had helped me make that leap. And so I said to myself, Okay, I wanna help others make this transition as well. And I think somewhere around 35, 36 of those, I said, You know, I think I've paid it forward. I think I've done it. Like, I think I've, I've, hit my quota. But I actually then realized I really enjoyed those conversations. When I looked at my day to day work, they were the thing that stood out, that made me feel like I got some meaning. Like I could provide some guidance. And so when I recognized that I went and did a formal coaching training, just to say, Hey, can I build skills here? I've been doing this informally. Could I actually make this more of a practice? I loved my coaching training. And through that, I actually encountered other folks building this as a business, which made me believe it was possible. And so I would say from the moment where I realized that I really loved doing those coaching calls with PhDs, to leaving Google to start my business, was probably about two years of just steadily stepping towards it. And in each step saying, Yeah, I like this. I like this. I like this. And so the initial idea was actually planted, you know, many, many years before I did it. And then I moved slowly and checked at each step that it was a good thing. And for me it really was a good fit. And I'm glad I made the move.

Jesse Butts: 18:32

So that coaching training, you completed that while you were at Google?

Tory Wobber: 18:36

I did. Yes. Yes. Mostly.

Jesse Butts: 18:39

So, so when you did start working on your own, I mean, were you searching for clients? Did you have some already on board? Can you talk a little bit about that build up time or, or to, you know, when it became a full-time role versus, just enough clients to make it part-time?

Tory Wobber: 18:58

Yeah. So I, I had a handful of clients because the training program I did, this is the Co-Active Training Institute. They've trained something like 60,000 coaches. And so it really has a great history of, of setting folks up, , for coach craft. They actually, during the program, have you coach folks as homework. And so you're actually really putting this into practice and getting, you know, a real coaching practice and then potentially asking folks to be clients even before you've finished the training program. And so that allowed me to really get an experience of what's it like to coach folks? What's it like to do so in exchange for finances, right? To actually do it, not just as a favor, as a friend, but to say, Hey, there's a service being provided here. And so I had some experience there and I think for me, the, the tipping point for me was, it was the beginning of 2020. And this is funny timing, but we can that on it's the beginning of 2020, and I was doing my new year's resolutions and I was thinking to myself, Hey, what are my goals for Google this year? Right? Looking ahead at 2020, what do I wanna do at Google? The only thing I could come up with was have Google pay for my coaching. And I thought, That's not a very good reason to stay, right? Like, sounds like I've hit a lot of my goals at Google. And so I then started doing the financial projections for, Hey, what would this look like to do this as full time? What sort of growth time do I need to budget for, etc.? And I gave my notice at Google in February 2020. And then by March 2020, I, I remember writing an email to HR being like, wait, can I revoke that notice? Cause this whole COVID thing... it was right in conjunction with things happening. But I'm so glad I had the courage to leave anyway. I ended up staying in San Francisco for a month longer than I had planned because of COVID. But then I, I moved to a lower cost location. I now live in Mexico and started my business in May 2020. And yeah, so glad I had that courage to do that, even amidst COVID, but it was a little dicey there for a couple months.

Jesse Butts: 20:58

So when you did, you know, in May 2020 launch this, were you specifically targeting those social science PhDs into tech? Or did you kind of, as we say, niche down after being a little bit more broad?

Tory Wobber: 21:11

Yeah, I think the latter, because I think it's almost... it's taken me a while to acknowledge and realize like that's where I have something to offer folks. That other folks have things to offer, but just, there's something unique there that in terms of my experience, my perspective, there's a give there that I enjoy giving and that there's a need for. And so it's a good match. But I almost think I had to coach very broadly at the beginning just to throw myself into situations where I wanna coach someone who has this problem and that problem. And who's in this stage of life and this kind of job. And I'm, I'm really thankful that I did because I think early on, I think just getting the hours allowed me to be more flexible as a coach. Allowed me to see different folks in different phases, facing different struggles and transitions. And I can now bring that sort of dovetailing back to PhDs, where if I had focused on PhDs in the beginning, I wouldn't have had that breath. And so I'm happy I did the breadth and I'm now also happy that I'm focusing in.

Jesse Butts: 22:11

You mentioned, as you were looking at your career, how those conversations were one of the things you enjoyed most. Is that still what you enjoy most about your work now? Are there other things that you've found, maybe a little surprisingly even, that you really enjoy about your work?

Tory Wobber: 22:30

Yeah. You know, with this one, I think this is the career move I've made that was the best researched both in terms of knowing myself and knowing the opportunity. Right? So whenever you make a career move, you're sort of saying, Here's what I think I would like. Here's what I think this will be. I'm gonna roll the dice and think that these are a good fit. And for this one, I think I, I know myself better. And I knew the opportunity decently well. And so it was a great fit. And so there's things that I anticipated were gonna be wonderful, are wonderful. I do meaningful work. I get to connect with people in a really meaningful way. I have freedom, all this sort of independence and autonomy that is hard to get when you're part of a big corporate environment. With that freedom comes responsibility. I'm responsible for generating my paycheck. I have to hustle and work hard and there's no one else to fill in if I have a sick day or my dog has a sick day. And so not to say that they're all advantages, there are some considerations. But they're ones that I knew and that I chose. And that even now two years in, as I sort of do my check-ins with myself every six months and say, Hey, how is this squaring with what I want? The amount that this fits with what I had expected and that I can choose these pros and cons willingly, leaves me feeling pretty fulfilled.

Jesse Butts: 23:48

Beyond the data, the research methodologies, some of these things that we've already talked about with your PhD skills, is there a relationship with any other skills that you honed in academia that you think have really helped you in this? Maybe not just in your current work, but when you were at Meta and, and Google as well?

Tory Wobber: 24:11

Yeah, I would say in my current work, and when I was really hitting my element at Meta and Google, my ability to test. To take an experimental mindset. As an entrepreneur, this is huge, right? Because so much of entrepreneurship is you test something, you see if it works, you iterate. You test something, you see if it works, iterate. And for me, that's really just the scientific method. Right? I have a hypothesis. I gather some data. I update the hypothesis, I gather some more data. And so it feels like my scientific training benefits me there. And when I was doing my best work at those companies, I was helping them run smart experiments. Run experiments where the data was actually gonna inform a decision, or we could actually structure the experiment in a way that it was gonna gather good data and not just confirm some execs belief. Right? So structuring good experiments and knowing how to interpret that data. I did that in graduate school. I did that in the tech industry, and I do that now, albeit in different ways with different goals. That methodology, I think, is the thing that carries through all of them.

Jesse Butts: 25:14

So as you've looked back, what do you think you had to learn about yourself to find work that fit you? I, I mean, and I'm particularly interested in this, because you've had two careers post the, the PhD?

Tory Wobber: 25:28

I'm now on my third career, right? My third chapter. I'm finally starting to get it right. I'm finally starting to tune some of the things in line with what I want. So I think it really is about knowing yourself, knowing the opportunity and accurately gauging the fit between the two. Really honestly, the other thing I think I'm realizing is to listen to my gut, but let my head, with the standards have some minimum viable standards and have those be met. But not have my head make the decision. So for example, too often, I see folks wanna make a, a job choice off of, This pays me the highest salary. This looks good on a resume. Those are sort of head choices. Where a gut choice is, This is enjoyable. This is fulfilling. I find meaning here. I wanna do it, and I don't really know why. I now opt towards my gut making the choices and my head supporting it. Almost like my head playing catch up, being like, Well, how do we finance this crazy thing that she's come up with, right? And so that's not to say I ignore that head voice, because everyone needs to have some level of stability and standards. But the more I've learned to listen to my gut and trust it, as opposed to take what other folks say is a good idea, or what other folks value, or what I think I should do as my guidance that clarity and willingness to listen to my own gut voice has allowed me to find work that is really fulfilling for me.

Jesse Butts: 26:54

From your perspective, how important is job fit? Or, or said differently, Do you need to love your work?

Tory Wobber: 27:02

I think for me, it's critical because that would be pretty hypocritical to coach folks on work fulfillment and not be fulfilled myself. Right? Like, this is really important for you, but I don't need it. Like, no. And so me ,being an example, living what I'm, I'm advocating for folks, which it is possible to find work that gives you meaning and enjoyment and pays the bills at the same time. By really crafting that myself, I believe I create space for other folks to see that's possible. And so for me, in particular, that's important. And I think there are phases of life where we may have to turn off meaning. Right? Where something, some financial consideration, some other thing might force us to take a work situation that is not fulfilling for a time. But that eventually, that might eat into your soul. And so the more you can continue to have an eye towards, Where is my fulfillment? Am I consciously making choices to optimize towards it? Am I deprioritizing it? And if so, for how long? I think being deliberate and intentional about those choices. I've then seen folks choose to downplay the role of work in their life, but do so intentionally. And that's very different from almost running on inertia or running on a sense of here's what everyone else is doing. So I'm gonna do the same thing.

Jesse Butts: 28:26

One thing I'm curious about is the concept of fulfillment. Does fulfillment to you mean, at the end of, of work, like, Oh, that was nice. I feel like I did some good. Or is it, That was amazing. I just wanna keep doing this. Like, I know that each of us has our own personal definition. I'm just kind of curious when people might press you for, Well, what exactly does, does that mean? How do you typically guide them?

Tory Wobber: 28:53

Here's how fulfillment looks for me. And again, this does look a little bit different for each person who I work with on this. For me, there are two levels. One is sort of the head level and one is more the heart level. The head level allows me to say, Hey, I'm living in line with my values. Right? These things that I have said are important to me. Freedom, authenticity, integrity. I get to live in line with those most days. That's pretty awesome. And my head is also pretty happy these days that I don't have to do very much work that I don't like. Right? Like when I was in my past roles, it was always this balance of, Well, if I like half of it and I don't like half of it, I guess I can balance that. I now probably the, the percentage of things I do that I don't enjoy is under 5%. Right? That's really lucky. I realize how fortunate that is. So that's sort of the head feeling. The gut feeling is, Yeah, just that sense of, I come out of conversation with folks feeling more alive, feeling energized, and I've learned to sort of monitor my own levels of aliveness. And in coaching, we have this term called resonance, right? Just that sense that someone's oscillating on the frequency that they're in tune with. And so that feeling is there for me. And the head markers are met. And so with both of those, I can say I'm feeling fulfilled and content. That doesn't mean that every day is a party and amazing and whoa, I did the biggest thing in the world. But that sort of, over the longer term, yeah, I really don't have too many days where I say to myself, Why am I doing this? I don't like this. I shouldn't be doing this. And so, yeah, I, I can't think, I mean, I maybe have one of those days, every six months, where I doubt and say, is this right? I don't know, but it's a pretty good, pretty good rate to be satisfied with what I'm doing to that level. At least for me.

Jesse Butts: 30:42

What's your relationship to work? Like how large of a role does it play in your life?

Tory Wobber: 30:47

Yeah, I think work is one of my sources of meaning. Right? I, I really feel meaning in what I do. That opportunity, especially for PhDs to move into tech, that's often an order of magnitude change in salary. They get to have this brand new life and set of opportunities open for them. And so when I help folks make that leap, that really makes me happy to have made that a little bit easier and more pain free for them. But I now have also gotten to the point where work is not me, if that makes sense. So I do meaningful work, but I am not that work. And so one of the great things about living in Mexico actually is that I work in a place where no one around me is part of my work. All of my work is through a screen or a phone. I don't do any of it locally. And so when I turn those things off, I am here. I am living in this place. I'm exploring being part of a different culture, and learning Spanish, and trying foods I'd never imagined. And so there's a sense of really enjoying the life part of my life. While also enjoying the work and having a pretty good boundary and distance between the two almost because my work is not physically co-located. You know, I have this little office space here in my house. And other than that, I am in a place where it's easy to put work down.

Jesse Butts: 32:07

I've noticed with guests who have PhDs, they're, more than my master's guests, they tend to struggle with identity. Like you were bringing up. Like, I put all this work and I just... I am a professor. Or I am an academician. Or you know, I'm a smart person. I have to work where the smart people work, which is, you know, at the university. It sounds like that. And you know, I, if I'm wrong, please correct me, but it sounds like you, you didn't have at least a large struggle in, in those regards?

Tory Wobber: 32:40

I'm gonna, I'm gonna push back because you're talking to me in 2022. If you had talked to me in 2013, oh my gosh. That's where the so struggle was, right? That year that I spent deciding it was okay to leave. That was grieving the loss of my academic identity. Grieving that dream of being the professor who has the books lining the shelves. And, you know, I'll tell you what, I didn't actually get rid of those books until I moved to Mexico. So a little fiber of that dream lasted for years of, No, I'm gonna be that professor who has the books on the shelves, who has the students come in and they see this really smart person. Very much a dream. And so coping with the loss of that identity and then building up an identity of who I was in tech took a ton of work. And so you're talking to me now, having done that work, having done that personal work to say, Am I what I do? And I think having had a few careers, I can say, No, I do what I do. I get meaning from what I do. But it is not my identity. It is a part of my identity. The metaphor I sometimes like to use here, and it's a little bit of a weird one, but I'll pull it out, I assume you've read or seen Harry Potter?

Jesse Butts: 33:53

I read the first book.

Tory Wobber: 33:55

Okay, so you've... Oh, you read only the first book. Okay. Then this metaphor may not land. I'll. I'll see what else I can describe it. The, the bad guy in Harry Potter, Voldemort, he has his system where he divides his soul in parts so that it makes him harder to kill. And so he places his soul in different objects. Sorry, spoiler alert. They're called horcruxes. And when that happens, if you destroy one, he still exists. And so not to say that we should all follow Voldemort. But the redundancy there, the, Hey, my soul, isn't all in one place. And so if any one area is out of whack, my whole world doesn't fall apart. And too often folks put 95% of their soul in work. And so if work isn't going well, everything falls apart. Where now, if I say, Nah, I have 40% of myself in work and 40% of myself in life and 20% tied up in this little dog. If any one of those is actually out of whack. If my dog is in the hospital, it is hard. It is tough. But it doesn't mean my whole world is falling down. If I have a hard month in terms of, Ooh, I didn't really get any clients this month. I didn't really build that much business. Yeah, that's tough. I've gotta have some solutions, but my whole world doesn't fall apart. It doesn't mean that I'm not good enough.

Jesse Butts: 35:06

What was that work when you were referring to you did the work... I mean, if that's a very personal question, but I'm curious, like for people who are listening, who, who are experiencing that, or are nervous about that, like, what did you do to, to help yourself overcome that?

Tory Wobber: 35:22

Yeah. I mean, here's what I'll put. Too often with that work that gets us to the place of feeling comfortable with ourselves, confident in our authentic selves, grounded. That is internal work that we try to do externally. We hope that a job will fix it. We hope that a partner will fix it. We hope that a location change will fix it. And unfortunately, it's work that has to be done internally. And so working with a professional, like a therapist, I've worked with a couple of therapists with a coach. I've worked with a couple of coaches. One of the great things about coaching training is you actually get coached as well as coaching. And so it's a great personal growth experience. Right? Doing that internal work to get to know one's self to be more mindful, more self-aware. I even now am deepening this through doing yoga, right. To actually be more physically aware of my body, cuz I have a decent awareness of my mind and my emotions, but what about my muscles? Like how are they doing on a day to day basis? And so being committed to knowing one's self, people are sometimes scared of it. And so they wanna make the external changes and assume that that's gonna change things. But if you have the courage to do the internal work, that's where you're gonna see the most mileage in my experience on finding that confidence, that authenticity, that groundedness. And it's possible to do alone. You can do some reading. You can do some journaling. But often having resources for folks who can be guides in that growth can help you have a structure to navigate that more effectively. That's what I've found.

Jesse Butts: 36:53

It's a pretty good segue into, to what I was gonna ask you about. Resources? Obviously, you are a great resource, especially if someone has a social science PhD. Any other resources that you recommend for people?

Tory Wobber: 37:05

Yeah. Well, and so my favorite one and, and some folks push back on this, and so I have alternatives are info gathering conversations, informational interviews. Right? And so if you have friends who seem happy in their work, asking if you can have 30, 45 minutes of their time to just say, What do you do? What do you do during your day? What does that mean? What does that translate to? What do you like? What don't you like? Because too often academics only have data on academics as a path. They're not comparing that against alternatives. Where my goal would be that folks choose academia in an informed choice, saying, I know I can do this, or I can do this, this, this right. A, B, or C. I choose to go with A. And so talking to folks about their jobs gives you a sense of external opportunities as well as then you can gauge your own clique. Huh? Do I think I would like that? What would I like about that? What would I hate about that? So you get more external and internal information by being open to exploring. If you don't feel comfortable with one on one conversations, I'm now hosting these panels, which I think are a really easy way to get started. Right? So you can listen to me talk to folks about their jobs, like what you're doing with this podcast, right? You basically hear other people's perspectives. And even that can start to open the door to what's possible. And so podcasts, panels, you know, for folks interested in UX, I think there's like a UX coffee chats one, right? Like really just listening and allowing that to open doors. That is probably your first resource, right? Books, panels, podcasts. After that, I would say conversations. And then when you're actually ready to make the move and you wanna know how then engaging folks like myself, or there're actually a number of other great career coaches on Twitter. O ther PhD coaches who have different focal points. And so engaging, one of us can actually help you navigate those end stages. But very early on, allowing yourself to explore is probably the biggest tool or resource.

Jesse Butts: 39:07

How can people contact you? Where can people find you?

Tory Wobber: 39:10

Yeah. So the best place to find my PhD resources is under this site called Gumroad, where I've basically put all my Academic Exit stuff. So there's my playbook. There's various blog posts. And so if you look for Tory Wobber Gumroad, you'll find my stuff there. And that's G U M R O A D. You can look at my website as well, but that's more generally focused since I have other clients aside from PhD folks. I will also say if you're really just early stages exploring, following me on Twitter. I have the Academic Exit Twitter account. That allows folks just to get a sense of what's possible very early stage. And then if you're saying, No, I'm actually doing this, I need some sort of guidance to get through to the end stages, that's where my Academic Exit package and resources that are available on Gumroad might be best suited for folks.

Jesse Butts: 40:01

And I'll be sure to include links to all of those in the show notes for, for everyone. All right. Well, Tory, this has been a wonderful conversation. Thanks so much for taking the time.

Tory Wobber: 40:09

Thanks so much, Jesse.