Moving from Academia to Tech: An Interview with Dr. Lisa Ibanez

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” Poet Mary Oliver asked this question. I’ve been meditating on it because my mom passed away recently. Missing her is a poignant reminder that life is short. Make choices that honor how dear our lives are.

In this light, I’m delighted to share an interview with my colleague and friend, Dr. Lisa Ibañez. Dr. Ibañez holds a PhD in developmental psychology. She is a Senior User Experience (UX) Researcher at Apple. She previously worked at Microsoft and Meta. I asked her about how she made choices that shaped her career, from academia to tech.

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When you graduated from your PhD program, what did you hope to do?

I hoped to take the conventional path, maybe go to a postdoc for a couple of years, and then try to find a tenure track job. There were other people in my program who were going to private research companies. But they were in educational research, which I was not. So that was a data point that there were other options. But I still didn't view it as immediately accessible to me.

After graduation, you did a postdoc and then secured a tenure track offer. But you turned it down. How did you know it wasn't right for you?

There were two prominent reasons. One, my offer was at a liberal arts college, which meant a heavier teaching load. But I went into this career because I was a curious researcher. I wanted to do as much research as possible. I knew if I took that job I would have to really focus on teaching. I knew that I wasn't super passionate about teaching. The opportunities for teaching I had in graduate school let me know that teaching wasn’t as rewarding for me as it was for others. Second, the job wasn’t in a town or city I was really interested in moving to. That was the ultimate gut check. I realized I would be making very big sacrifices and not for life-changing money. It wasn't easy, but those factors carried so much weight. Also, I had the freedom to make that hard decision because I found out I could stay on at my postdoc institution as a research scientist. I wouldn’t have to struggle to find another postdoc position. Without that opportunity, I might have had to accept the tenure track offer.

You took on that research scientist position in Seattle and were eventually promoted to senior research scientist. At what point did you decide to pursue a career outside academia?

I was in that role about 6 years. We had well funded projects from NIH. But I knew my PI would eventually sunset her career. The money wouldn’t be there forever, which was a problem because I was in a “soft money” position [Betty’s note: that means her salary depended on grants]. I started to ask where is my career going. I already knew I wasn’t going to move just anywhere for a tenure track job. I really enjoyed living in Seattle. I saw there were tons of tech companies here with different research areas like user experience research and machine learning. That grabbed my attention as a potential exit strategy because it related to my academic research in diagnostics and implementation science and could help me stay in Seattle.

How did you figure out how to make the career shift from academia to tech? I started to browse job descriptions. I noticed some of the terminology that kept coming up was for either a research scientist or for a UX researcher. I got curious and started to immerse myself in learning what research looks like in those roles. I took Coursera courses on UX and machine learning. I even talked to non-researchers at tech companies because they had perspective on what researchers did, and in some cases, they interviewed researchers for jobs.

What did you learn when you did this research? A lot of the primary skills I had transferred: survey development, study design, interviews, focus groups, statistical analyses, research plans. Academic researchers already easily have 80% of the skills you need for tech. You just need to be able to translate it to the tech world. Things like understanding job descriptions, what does it mean to work with cross-functional partners, or how do you develop research that is going to impact and help people on your team.

How long did it take to make this career shift?

I started applying fairly quickly once I decided to make a change. It took about three years to land my first tech job at Meta. During that time, I did about 5 full interview loops. They were all roles that I thought would be interesting. I just didn't make the cut. I think the main reason I got beat out was because I was coming from academia with no prior industry experience. The biggest questions that companies have is will you be able to pivot and do research that has faster turnover time to what they typically associate with academia, and will you be able to do research that successfully influences decisions for your team, which could include a product manager, engineers, designers, and data scientists.

What are the main differences between academia and tech?

In academia, the researcher is the product owner. You have final say about the direction of the tool, survey, paper, or research products. That is not at all the case in tech. You're not the product owner. It's not your vision. You go and get information that will hopefully impact directions for the work and gaps the team is wondering about, but you're not the final say. You have to know how to lobby to make sure they get what you're recommending, and be able to correct or validate assumptions the team has, based on the research.

What are the big differences for you between working in and outside of academia?

The time scale is very different. It’s much faster. The longest project I’ve scoped in tech was a quarter [Betty’s note: meaning three months]. More often, research happens in as short as a month. And you're developing a survey that will reach a few 1,000 people in different parts of the world. You have to make research decisions very quickly. It doesn't mean you cut corners. In some cases, you pilot your questions to make sure it gets out what you think it's going to get before you waste a lot of resources and time. Also, you have to make sure the research scope hits on the goals your teams are working on for that quarter, half, and/or year. That’s the roadmap everybody is trying to fall in line with. Everybody is evaluated on their impact. When you get your annual review, which is really important, the questions are: What impact did you have on the product team’s decision making and product direction? Knowing how to work with the team, knowing what they need, knowing how to broaden their vision, knowing how to impact their decisions, matters. The last thing is you have to be ready to expand your research toolbox and learn on the fly. You have to do that in academia too, but you’re less forced to do it. You can build research around what you feel confident doing and work with collaborators that bring different research-related technical skills. But as an example, in tech, I’ve had to quickly learn how to co-design workshops, card sort, querying SQL, Python, and more.

Do you feel like the career switch was worth it?

I definitely think it's been worth it. Things are constantly changing. New projects, new questions, new methods are always coming up. It keeps you from getting into a rut. Everybody feels like they constantly have to be learning. It’s part of your job. And it's a good thing.

I’m surprised you didn’t mention location choice or benefits as the main difference?

Yes, location was very important. And you can’t compare the compensation. In tech, you get paid what people who have PhDs could and should be earning. It can be a much faster path to building a career, without having to wait years to make a decent salary. And when you go into offices, you get all these free snacks and sometimes free food. And in general, they’re very supportive about learning opportunities and growth mindset - conferences, trainings, allocation of funds for buying books, things like that. So yes, the perks are great.

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Thank you to Dr. Ibañez for sharing her journey from academia to tech. Stay tuned for our next newsletter, where Dr. Ibañez will share tips for scholars looking to break into tech. And if you’re interested in more scholar stories, check out the Scholar Voices archive. Thanks to all the scholars who have shared their experiences to help others.

If you know someone who might be interested in a career change, would you mind sharing today’s newsletter with them? Sharing stories is one way we humanize what it means to be a scholar today.

As always, thanks for reading and believing that scholars deserve support for incredible ideas.

Betty

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P.S. Here’s my beautiful mom. She battled pancreatic cancer with grace. She said never to feel sorry for her, she had lived a full and happy life. May she rest in peace.