Amy Santee
Money, Ethics, and Building a Meaningful UX Career
In this episode of Brave UX, Amy Santee encourages us to take control of our careers, to take action when we see something that’s wrong, and to realise we have more power than we think we do.
Highlights include:
- Are jobs in UX and other ares of HCD bullshit jobs?
- Why did you write and publish your own code of ethics?
- How do you help people to establish useful career goals?
- What should people considering a career change to think about?
- What can people do when they see something that’s not right at work?
Who is Amy Santee?
Amy is a Career Strategist & Coach for User Experience Professionals, who want to navigate their own path to success and impact the world for the better.
Through her coaching practice, Amy has helped clients who work at (and have landed jobs at) a wide range of organisations, including Sony, Google, Github, Peloton, Mayo Clinic and the Government of Canada.
Amy’s own career journey has been quite the story, moving from academic Anthropology, to in-house UX research roles at companies like State Farm Insurance and eBay, where she was a Senior Design Researcher.
Transcript
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Hello, brave UXer. You've just hit play on the 50th episode of Brave UX. Recorded 13 months after this journey into the stories, learnings, and expert advice of world class UX, design and product management professionals began. Thank you for being part of the journey so far. And don't worry, it's not about to end anytime soon. There are plenty more conversations with people who will inspire, inform, and challenge you to come. If you found value in these conversations, if they have helped you in some small way, I have a simple request, take a moment now and share Brave UX with someone else. Someone who you believe will also find value here. They'll probably be someone like you, someone who cares deeply about this field, who wants to go beneath the surface, who has the courage to go beyond Vegas assertions and actually make the world a better place. That's it. Just share brave UX with one other person. And remember, keep being brave. Now, let's get to that episode, shall we?
- Hello and welcome to another episode of Brave UX. I'm Brendan Jarvis, Managing Founder of The Space InBetween, the home of New Zealand's only specialist evaluative UX research practice and world-class UX lab, enabling brave teams across the globe to de-risk product design and equally brave leaders to shape and scale design culture. Here on Brave UX though, it's my job to help you to put the pieces off the product puzzle together, I do that by unpacking the stories, learnings, and expert advice of world class UX, design and product management professionals. My guest today is Amy Santee. Amy is a Career Strategist and Coach for user experience professionals who want to navigate their own path to success and impact the world for the better. Through her coaching practice, Amy has helped clients who work at and have landed jobs at a wide range of organizations, including Sony, Google, GitHub, Peloton, Mayo Clinic, and the government of Canada.
- Amy's own career journey has been quite the story, moving from anthropology in academia to in-house UX research roles at companies like State Farm Insurance and eBay, where she was a Senior Design Researcher. Across the past decade, Amy's also done a healthy dose of UX consulting, giving her a unique perspective on the challenges and constraints that UX has faced both inside and outside of organizations. In April, 2020, Amy officially transitioned from UX consulting into a full-time coaching practice, and it seems to be going pretty well. Clients have described the experience of working with Amy as transformative, and they've felt seen. One person even said that Amy helped her to be brave to speak up and to achieve her purpose, known one for her eloquent and anti-BS style, and someone who is clearly purpose driven. I'm excited to have Amy here to speak with me today on Brave UX. Amy, welcome to the show.
- Amy Santee:
- Thank you so much, Brendan. I've really been looking forward to our conversation. Really excited to jump in. And when you were introducing me, I had such a positive physical sensation in my body. Just to hear you say that stuff, it feels really good. I feel like I've made it.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Well. You did all that wonderful stuff and it's really great to have you on the show to tell the audience and for myself selfishly, to hear about the things that you've been doing and your unique perspective in the UX community. I had a great time looking at your previous posts, your blog, and all the other things that you've done, and something that I picked up on when I was looking at those things was that you were, and possibly still are a gamer, and that it was through games that you actually realized you wanted to be a researcher. Is this true?
- Amy Santee:
- I'm not a gamer, but I know where you got that. Yes. I wanna say back in the early two thousands, there was a computer game called Amazon Trail, and it's basically like Oregon Trail, which everyone's familiar with. And you go down the Amazon River, you meet a bunch of people, you have to go fishing, try not to fall out of your canoe, and you meet various people along the way. So one of those people was an ethnobotanist and you know, talk to the ethnobotanist, you learn about local plants and their medicinal purposes, and then you move on and you know, meet Henry Ford at some point. And that's weird. But yeah, it kind of got me curious and that led me to anthropology and Ethnobotany is just a subdiscipline of anthropology. And I think just immediately after that I became enthralled with at least my initial understanding of anthropology, which was go travel pla to places and live with people who are different and study them. And that is definitely not what anthropology means to me now that's a pretty colonial [laugh] definition of anthropology. And of course I figured that out as I went along when I got my bachelor's and my master's in the anthropology. But yeah, I think that was around the age of, I don't know, 14 or something. So kind of had my path set out for me, but figured out what it really meant as I went along.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And I also discovered looking at your website, which is such a wicked design and all the best sense of wicked amy Santee.com, it's such an eclectic mix of fonts and imagery. I even saw in there there was a hotdog and a top hat, and it's got such a direct and personal tone to it. It really is a wonderful piece of self-expression. Is that website, your website that now represents your coaching business and your thinking? Is that the way you thought it would be when you first started that project?
- Amy Santee:
- Do you mean the coaching project specifically or the web design specifically?
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yeah, the web design. Did it turn out the way that you initially thought it might when you first started
- Amy Santee:
- Part of the process? I went through with someone who I partnered with, puree Fantastico, Jenny Ambrose. I would say a quarter of the work we did was just the creative process of exploring the themes visually, conceptually, as with any web designer, she had me do an inspiration board and I spent hours and hours culling through imagery from online, but also open access museum archives from Rec across the globe, just gathering whatever I wanted. I pulled in all kinds of stuff that initially didn't make sense, but it, it's what appealed to me. And what we realized was that was the concept is kind of like chaos and randomness and eclectic, but bringing it all together to make sense of it. And I guess that's really how I think about my life, my career, the approach that I use when working with my clients. So I am, I'm super proud of it. I, I've never loved any of my websites until this one.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- It is, like I said, it is a wicked form of self-expression and it's got so many nice little curiosities in here, which made it a real joy to research for today's conversation. And something that piqued my curiosity when I was looking at your website was there's a statement in there which you say birth, and I'm quoting now birth from the beaches of Florida in 1986. I navigate the waters of bullshit. Well, please explain
- Amy Santee:
- Florida, I mean Florida, period. All you need to know anyway, we all know about Florida, but that's an interesting question. I have dealt with a lot of bullshit in my life, personal things, professional things that have, I think really instilled in me the values of advocacy, self-advocacy, advocating for other people. When you have personal experiences, you can take those and turn them into something positive, especially through a lot of self-reflection and personal growth. And that's just something I've had to develop over time and that's been infused into all of my work. So that's what attracted me to anthropology. And to go back to what is anthropology, my understanding of it and my practice of it throughout my career is solving problems based on understanding people. And part of that at least one school of thought, is advocacy, anthropology. So not just building theory and knowledge within academia and writing books and that sort of thing, but what can we learn and how can we use that information to make things better and solve problems?
- So that's what attracted me to anthropology. And then at least in my earlier understanding of being a UX researcher, the advocacy side of things, when it comes to, again, understanding people their lives, how they interact with a product or service, like what are their problems and what are their goals and how can an organization help with those things? That was another kind of way for me to practice this sense of advocacy, but also my interest in just learning about people and the excitement of doing UX research. And so I've had some thoughts on that over time. Developed some, I guess more nuanced understanding of anthropology, of user experience, human-centered design, working within businesses and all of that. And this is what ultimately, I guess my reflections are what ultimately led me to make a career change into coaching. Because for me, this is the way that I can have the most impact on the world via individuals impacting those individuals and helping them navigate the waters of bullshit in their careers in the society we live in their personal lives. So it's all come full circle on that way
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And you have helped people to navigate those borders quite publicly. Your blog recently turned 10, and I know that you've actually recently moved that onto your main website and we'll link to that in the show notes so that people can find that. But you've written about quite openly aspects of your personal and your professional life. How do you feel about the risk of putting your life on show in that way?
- Amy Santee:
- That's the world we live in today, and I think most people do it to some extent, whether it's on Instagram with a small group of friends or on Twitter, having discussions participating in contentious debates, engaging with the UX community on LinkedIn writing a blog, going on podcasts. Not everyone does it, but I think we all are participating in this aspect of society that's essentially ubiquitous and we get to decide how we tell our story, we get to decide what we put out into the world. And when I started my blog, probably I would say right after I got my master's in 2011, I wanted to just start thinking about my career and sharing how I was figuring things out. And coming from academia, which was a very writing oriented field, you write a lot, you write papers and publications and all of that. That was the best way I knew how to communicate at that point.
- And so yeah, it was a lot of reflecting on what was going on in my career and figuring things out and then ultimately trying to help people. So over time I've just gotten more comfortable sharing certain aspects of myself because it's really important for me to be transparent and to be genuine or authentic in how I interact with people in the world. And of course I get to choose what I talk about, but I try to push the boundaries for myself by talking about things that maybe other people are not willing to talk about. And maybe it just gives them some inspiration or maybe someone can connect to one of my own personal experiences. And that's kind of the nice thing about being self-employed is I can talk about whatever I want and there are no ramifications that I care about that would come as a result of that.
- And that's pretty freeing. Part of what I've struggled with in the past is working inside of organizations and feeling very, very passionate about pointing out things that could be better, talking about issues with organizational culture, speaking truth to power as they say. And I did it and I tried not to censor myself, but there is a limit to how much you can do that and also thrive within an organization and be seen as a team player and go with the flow of stuff. And so I have had a lot of experiences with doing that, I wanna say in every single job that I've ever had, even in consulting to some extent. And those were formative experiences for me. And so I guess I like to walk the talk and talk the walk. I want to inspire people out there to feel like they can do the same thing and consider the risks that are involved. But it's a nice thing to be able to put something out into the world and break down that barrier of fear that you might have.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And I definitely want to come to, well, several of the elements of the way that you help others to break down that fear of what's going on in the world and how they're living their careers. Before we do that, I just want to focus in on you on your coaching practice. Coaching strikes me to be a fairly selfless but hugely rewarding professional path to walk your helping people to help themselves to be better people. As one lens that I've looked at, what it is that you do, what is it about you that coaching is something that you were drawn to?
- Amy Santee:
- I think it goes back to impact and freedom and control over what's going on in my life. And I can be really intentional and creative about my coaching practice to not only help other people, but to meet my own needs and live my life and my career according to my personal values. And when I can work with one person and help them to gain some confidence in order to speak up at work or to quit their job, even if it's a scary thing to envision doing. And that is a scary thing, generally speaking, if I can help people to get a better understanding of who they are and how to surface their strengths, to practice boundaries, to ask for what they want to negotiate, ask for more compensation, push back to do all of these things, if I help one person with one of those things that's really meaningful to me and that's a change people can make and a practice that someone can implement that will just help them in the future.
- You know, negotiate once it's scary, but you're going to do it for the rest of your life and it's going to become second nature. You speak up at work once and then maybe you gain the confidence to continue doing that. So that impact is really, really important to me. And if I reflect back on the clients I've had this year, I'm going to do this in December, I'm going to do my annual review and think back to the impact that I've had. And that's it's important to have that self-validation for my work. I can't get validation from other people. I can't seek out validation in an organization that doesn't consider my work to be valid. So yeah, I mean I think that's what attracts me to it. It's also a fun challenge, helping people get a job, get their first job in UX research or whatever.
- That is a fun challenge. I just love going along for the ride with people, that big decision to quit a job or to go up for promotion and make your case. I love that kind of stuff. And then I also love the really juicy kind of questions of what am I even doing? Especially since the pandemic started to occur last year, there's just been an uptick in people reflecting on what's going on in their lives, how they're living their lives, thinking about everything that's going on around them. And there's a lot of social problems that have been around for a long time, but they're becoming exacerbated and there's no ignoring those things now. So no matter who you are in the world, we're all taking this in and trying to make sense of it, but it's causing people to really reflect and decide how they want to spend their time and how they want to live their lives because mortality is inevitable.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- We were talking about the impact of Covid 19 and the decisions and the things that people are thinking about that they want out of their lives and out of their careers. Now, one of those decisions that people have made is the decision to come and work with you as a career coach and strategist. Now you run an anti-capitalist, anti-racist feminist coaching practice, and that seems like an excellent way to screen out capitalist bigots and misogynists, so it's obviously not for everybody. What is it about those three dimensions that are so important to you and how do they shape the way that you coach people?
- Amy Santee:
- You're right, I am very intentional about attracting the kind of people that I want to work with because there's already an alignment with values and the way that we see the world. And yes, people will Google anti-capitalist career coach and find me, which is really amazing and exciting for me. But again, it's about the values. And so people who come to me, they take a look at my website, they get a sense for who I am, going back to the visual design and the concepts of the website that can turn someone off or it can get someone interested in working with me. I run a business, I have a funnel that I've created to help people decide if it's worth contacting me, and then should we have a conversation and does it make sense to work together? Are we the right fit for each other?
- And yeah, part of that is this lens of critique on the system that we live in and the organizations that we work in. And while I do work with folks in say academia or government, nonprofit primarily I work with people who work in businesses and the goal of a business is to maximize profit. And the way they do that is provide a product or service that people want to buy [laugh]. And we as UX practitioners, I think we're starting to interrogate the role or the purpose of our work in service to who we might call a user or in service to the business and thing. It's pretty clear that we have jobs in companies because we serve the purpose of the business and we might think, or we might actually be improving the user experience or creating value products and valuable products and services. And that's true, but it goes beyond that and people are just starting to be uncomfortable with that and reflect on what is my role as a UX designer or a researcher, especially going back to impact so many of us, our work doesn't go anywhere.
- Projects get canceled executives say, no, we're not doing this. If researchers make recommendations that don't align with quarterly goals that are set at the beginning of a quarter, meaning we know what we're going to build and ship. If we get in the way of that, yeah, people aren't going to listen and people aren't going to take into consideration what we recommend because it goes against a bump in the stock price and people's ability to maximize their bonuses. And everyone has different motivations. I'm not saying money is a bad motivation, but there is a tension or even a contradiction between trying to be human centered designers and researchers and the ultimate purpose of the organizations we live in. And so these are my clients primarily.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Well, let's go into that because you've said that human-centered design, and I'm paraphrasing, is really just business centered design because businesses aren't going to spend money on things that things that don't make them more money. So you're really not pulling any punches there with just how clear you are with how you feel about the sort of state of human-centered design at the moment. Is UX and any other human-centered design profession outside of Apple and maybe a handful of other businesses simply a bullshit job?
- Amy Santee:
- Yeah, bullshit jobs is a concept that comes from David Graber who's an anarchist, well he passed away last year I think, but an anarchist anthropologist who was involved in Occupy Wall Street and is probably one of the most inspiring anthropologists to me. And he wrote a book called Bullshit Jobs. Not sure if you read it, but the idea is that so many jobs that exist, especially when it comes to management and executives and all of these bureaucratic jobs, and even to some extent you might consider UX in this bucket, a bullshit job is just a job that serves no purpose. And so we might as UXers intend to have a certain impact and we see a purpose in our goal, but if we spend months on a project and it doesn't go anywhere, there was no purpose in doing that thing. And I'm not saying all of our work has to lead to impact some of our work.
- It's fine to deprioritize or whatever, but that's one reason I left research practice. Why I stopped working in organizations is because I felt like I was wasting my life. I don't wanna waste my life and my professional identity is inextricably linked to my personal identity and that's just who I am as a person. And that's not true for other people. But the bullshit was just the status quo, dealing with all of this stuff and not feeling like I served a legitimate purpose according to other people. And so that's another nice thing about running my own business and being a consultant or a coach, is I get to decide all of those things and what are the measures of success for my own self. So yeah, I think to an extent we can use the bullshit jobs lens in looking at our own work. And that's not a nice thing to realize for anyone. I think that's causing people to start reflecting and asking themselves, what can I do to feel like I'm living my fullest life and being fulfilled? And it doesn't have to happen in the workplace, it can happen outside of the workplace. But I also find that a lot of user experience professionals do have a strong connection between their profession and their personal identity.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- So if people are in that position where they suspect that despite best intentions that they're in a situation where they're not having the kind of impact that they first set out to achieve, what can they do? Where is the ray of sunshine in this demonn that seems to haunt us, that maybe our profession is turning into a bullshit profession?
- Amy Santee:
- It's kind of like the stages of grief maybe. I don't know. That's what comes to mind. Denial, anger, I don't know what all the levels are. Acceptance ultimately. And so there's a processing or reflection that needs to happen and we have to take in new information and each person is different. And one way I think about it is finding balance. Everyone has to decide what kind of bullshit they wanna deal with, the amount of bullshit, the type of bullshit. Not all bullshit weighs the same. Some of them are worse than others. And I used to get upset at people who didn't care about this kind of stuff, but what I realized is they're motivated by different things and that's totally okay. But for those of us who really are bothered and shaken by this kind of realization, I think balance is a one way to look at it.
- And so if you're not feel feeling fulfilled in your job to the extent that you want to be, then what changes can you make in your current job? Can you leave that organization? Do you wanna start your own thing? Do you switch to a different function in that organization? Do you move to another company or do you stay there and try to start accepting certain realities and things that are not in your control? And then maybe look for some other ways of operationalizing or defining what impact and fulfillment means to you, whether it's in that job or outside, how you spend your money and contribute to local organizations pro bono projects. That's probably, if I could give myself one piece of advice as now thinking back on my career, is to try and adopt more of this mindset of what can I control? What is outta my control?
- How much and what am I willing to deal with and what can I do about it and what boundaries can I draw? Part of this too is what's the risk you're willing to take and are you willing to sacrifice something? And so thinking back to when I worked in tech, I made a lot of money and it was great. Running a business, running a small business costs a lot of money as there's a lot of expenses. And the us, if your insurance isn't tied to an employer, you have to pay a lot more money and it's not as good of quality. I have all of this backend work that I do. I have to pay for processing payments from my clients. There's a lot of expenses there. I don't make tech money, I don't get bonuses, I don't get stocks. I don't get all of these perks that people in tech jobs, full-time tech jobs, not contractors, cuz they don't get that kind of stuff either.
- And sometimes it bugs me. Sometimes I think like, wow, I could really use that tech money. Wow, it's really hard for me to invest in my ira. I think about these financial constraints and I have to remind myself that I made a decision to leave that kind of environment regardless and that the money is less important to me than to be able to have the freedom to do what I want and to have impact in the way that I want to have impact. And so I do have to remind myself of that because sometimes I go back and think about those things. And I guess I just wanna loop it back to what I was saying about taking risks and sacrifice. What are you willing to sacrifice in order to be happier in your career, essentially,
- Brendan Jarvis:
- It sounds like what you're saying is for people or in that you realize in yourself that you had a choice, you had some agency and you chose to exercise that agency to fulfill an outcome or a purpose that you could live with. And that might be different for everybody in your coaching practice. Do you see it as part of your job to open people's eyes to the broader impacts of the system that they're working and living in?
- Amy Santee:
- The people I work with have a pretty strong sense of that, but what I notice is we have to get a little bit more nuanced. So I work with a lot of women, people of color, non-binary, transgender, marginalized groups of people who don't have as much power as they should. And we have to dig a little bit more deeply into how people have internalized certain aspects of capitalism and oppression. And I mean confidence is related to that due to gender norms and expectations in society for women and how they need to be perceived. And if you negotiate, you're taking a risk of being perceived negatively. So there's all
- Brendan Jarvis:
- That's being pushy, right? Exactly. That you are pushy woman.
- Amy Santee:
- Exactly. That you're asking for too much. The mere fact of asking for something and being assertive, and sometimes that works. And if someone gets rejected from a job because of that, then they don't wanna work there. That's probably not a good place to work, but it's a reality and people have challenges with confidence and all kinds of other things in their professions that are not about them. It's about what society expects from them. And so sometimes it's a matter of digging more deeply into that. I also find that people might not truly understand just how exploited they are. And don't get me wrong, tech workers, people in user experience we're extremely privileged to make the kind of money that we do to have some semblance of job security, but we're still exploited. And I say we just thinking about myself as someone in the UX world and as a previous UX practitioner, although I wouldn't consider myself to be exploited in the same way because I'm not employed by someone who's capitalizing on my labor.
- But just digging into that kind of stuff and helping people get clarity about that and what kind of boundaries can they enact to minimize this kind of oppression, essentially how can they advocate for themselves? How can they advocate for other people? There's all these little ways that we can improve what's going on around us and improve our own lives and the lives of other people. And I think it relates to what we were just talking about, which is, oh, I work at Amazon. It's a monopoly conglomerate run by one of the worst people on earth. Well that doesn't mean you're a bad person and you also can't change that. And capitalism is not the fault of any one individual person and we have to live in the system that we do. So I, I invest in stocks and stocks are profits made off of the exploitation of other people. So you can't cut all of it off. You have to participate in society to be able to have a decent life and be comfortable to some extent. So it's really a matter of picking all this apart and making some decisions about what works for each of us individually.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And I, you'll have to excuse the directness of this question, and I think that you've been touching on this and what you've just said, but I was curious about, given your views and your clear passion against, if you like, the status quo, the capitalist system, what did the internal conversation look like when you were deciding to get into business and to run a business, which from my limited understanding of sort of capitalist or anti-capitalist worldview a business as one of those clear demonstrations of capitalism,
- Amy Santee:
- My business is different because I'm not capitalizing on anyone. I don't have employees whose labor I'm profiting off of. So that's the best way for me to practice what I preach. But businesses that make profits off of other people, that's a different thing.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Is there such a thing as a good capitalist?
- Amy Santee:
- It's kind of like there's no such G good, there's no such thing as a good billionaire. There's no such thing as a good cop. But there are good people out there. And I guess I could call myself a capitalist again because I invest in stocks. But there are people who, there are a very small number of people who actually control all of this stuff. I don't think those are good people because they're able to live their lives based on undue privilege and power that negatively affects most of the population on the planet.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- I want to come back to something that you said a few minutes ago, which is you touched on your coaching practice works, you work with people that have been marginalized by mainstream society as part of the people that you are working with. You've got people from transgender community, people from that are women, people of color. What is it that the mainstream isn't aware of or that is choosing to ignore that people from these marginalized groups are having to deal with on a daily basis that is just not getting enough attention and enough awareness?
- Amy Santee:
- The conversation about all of this is public and ongoing and being discussed in professional circles and being addressed to a very minimal extent by organizations, but in a performative kind of way for the most part. So I think a lot of people are aware of the issues, but our ability to change the environment is minimal to zero anti-racist diversity training, blah, blah, blah. If you're a major corporation and you're doing that and you're trying to educate people on the reality, but then you're continuing to exploit people, that's make a change. So
- Brendan Jarvis:
- I think this comes back to what you were saying potentially earlier where if the company can't see a way of making money off something, then very little gets done. And I think this is something that was touched on by, is it Francis Hagen, the Facebook whistle blower? I'm just trying to find my note here. Francis Hogan, how she observed that there were very surface level efforts made to address safety on the platform and that there was no real appetite to put profit up on the altar to be sacrificed for some form of greater good. Now we can't all be Francis. You talked about risk and the risk that people are willing to take with their careers and Francis was in a relatively high state of privilege when she took the risk that she did not to take away from the risk that she did take. But not everybody's going to be in that same position, particularly people from marginalized groups. So stopping short of that level of activism, what are some of the meaningful actions, no matter how big or small that people can take when they see something happening in their corporate culture that is just objectively not okay.
- Amy Santee:
- I mean, think the first thing is to get some education on what to even look for. And Vivian Castillo and Ali VI and their organization, humanity Centered I think is bringing that awareness to UX practitioners in a way that is moving things forward in a lot of positive ways. So just to even know what to look for. And I think that's the first step. And I really admire these whistleblowers and organizers from Google, apple major organizations. There are also people of color, women, other folks who have quit their jobs and talked about it publicly, which is a huge risk, are really admirable. Those are the kind of people I'm really inspired by. But you're right, not everyone can do that. Most people can't do that. And part of it is it there's a risk professionally, do you get put on the list of people to not hire?
- Even thinking about myself, I wonder given who I am, would anyone ever hire me back into an organization because I am staunchly opposed to [laugh] most organizations and their motives and all of that stuff. But yes, there are small things that we can do. If you can find someone who's being discriminated against or mistreated and do something to help that one individual, that's a huge deal. It's kind of like coaching. If I can do one thing to help one person that that's really meaningful, what is it that we can control around us? I think that's the framework that we have to look at or the lens is like what's even controllable? And oftentimes it's these personal interactions that we have. It's not about saying or just learning about things, but how can you practice anti-racism and actually show up for someone in an organization when you identify a problem like that?
- There was a Twitter thread that I saw last week from a developer at, what's the company that, oh, John Deere. So a software engineer who works at John Deere. There's a strike going on in the US with John Deere workers and he posted on Twitter a whole thread about his solidarity with those folks. And that guy had the privilege and power to do something like that and he's taking a risk, but he is probably not going to get fired because he's a white male and a developer and developers are in super high demand and all of that stuff. But there are things like that that you can do, even just talking about stuff with people, planting seeds to get people to understand what's going on, leading by example. I mean looking at the little things, it's kind of like how we can, I think have the most impact on society locally in our local communities. And so we can vote in federal elections and state elections and all of that stuff, but what can we affect locally about policy and legislation contributing to local organizations that we support? I think that local lens on impact, the small things that you can impact or the little things you can chip away at really, really adds up, especially if you think about a lot of people doing these little actions.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And one of the little actions that you've recently taken to chip away at some of the rot that exists in our industry is published. You published your personal code of ethics and if we think about some of the aberrations that we've seen out there in tech that we have actively contributed to, they seem to me at least in part to be a result of some fairly flimsy ethics that we have applied in the way in which we do business. You've generated this personal code of ethics and shared it generously under a creative Commons license. I was curious about this because this seems like a small yet generous thing to do. What were the debates that you were having with yourself as you were putting this together? What was that internal conversation like for you?
- Amy Santee:
- When I put something out in the world, it solidifies it for me. It's a way for me to keep practicing the act of sharing and contributing and advocating and professional development for myself. And we were talking earlier about my blog and why I got started and reflecting on my career and here's some interview questions that I got and here's some suggestions for navigating corporate culture. And here's an event that I did, but I really have started to get, I guess deeper on some of the topics that I care a lot about. And when I wrote the code of ethics in, well, little over a year ago, so not that long ago, I was still consulting and working as a research practitioner. And over the years in the companies and organizations that I've worked at, I had just noticed a lot of things that I thought were unethical.
- And my professional ethics, not only from my personal experiences in life, but also from my anthropology training and anthropology started in the colonial era in the 18 hundreds. And the discipline reflected over time that we needed to have actual ethics for our practice and our learning to guide our research and to not exploit people like the discipline used to a long time ago. And so my ethics come from that training and when I was practicing research or practicing anthropology as a researcher, I noticed a lot of things that I disagreed with consent and non-disclosure forms that were written in such a way that they were not understandable to people, participants being transparent with people about the purpose of our projects, working with clients and guiding them in a way that aligned with how I thought research projects should be conducted, which involves sometimes tense conversations with clients about how to be ethical when we're doing projects, how to not cause harm to participants.
- So things like that and transparency with people being honest these are just all things that I have felt strongly about and to articulate it on paper and put it out into the world helps us solidify it for me. But I do hope that it encourages other people to think about their own personal code of ethics and what I have observed, actually I'm really excited to see all of the discussion and work going on right now and in the past few years about ethics within our work. I see a lot of people working in this area, especially folks in civic design. Matthew Bernies is someone who comes to mind. He is a UX researcher, he works at Code for America, he's also an anthropologist and I know he's been doing a lot of work in this area, not just to solidify ethics within his organization, but to put information out into the world that I think can encourage other people to decide and draw boundaries and figure out what they want to implement when it comes to the ethics of their practices.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Why does it matter? Why do we need ethics and UX research?
- Amy Santee:
- We need ethics in everything. We have to I think make intentional decisions about what we do in our everyday lives, but especially in our workplaces where we are working on things that have an impact on a lot of people out in the world. And I mean there's a million examples of how this has gone wrong in the past year, in the past five years, in the past hundred years. I mean, we car companies didn't want to have to put seat belts in their vehicles and they like lobbied against that marketing. Just all of these things that we're aware of that are going on. If people cared, if decision makers cared about not harming the public and the environment, they would be thinking about ethical guidelines to put in place even if it goes against the goal of maximizing profits. And that's just not how it works.
- But again, I think individually we can try to implement this sort of thing and we can decide what risk are we willing to take. When I worked at eBay and I'll just call it out, I became aware of a team working on what I consider to be a dark pattern, essentially something manipulative in the product. And this happens at all kinds of companies. But when I called it out, I was reprimanded in such a way that I had a panic attack reprimanded by an executive who told me that I was negatively impacting the morale of that team [laugh] by calling out that thing. And yeah, it was a really traumatic experience just for that one thing. And that's the reality that a lot of us face. And so we have to decide what are we willing to do? What is too much of a risk? And people's tolerance for risk is different. If you're possibly going to lose your job and that would negatively affect your family, your income or whatever it may be, then yeah, that doesn't probably make sense for you.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- What did you say to that executive?
- Amy Santee:
- The way things worked were such that I couldn't even respond to that executive. So I was made aware of the complaint, I freaked out, I talked to my manager. And before that though, there was an exchange between myself and the product manager and some other folks on the team that I copied and I kept pushing back and I kept providing rationale for why this decision would be harmful and then it snowballed and that person became aware of it and I got a big slap on the wrist. It didn't stop me from continuing to do that kind of stuff though. And that can be painful, it can be traumatic, but that's just not who I am. And that's one of the main reasons why I decided to not work in organizations because I need to have the psychological safety to be able to communicate the things that I think are important. And that was just a repeated pattern of my experience there and in other places. And I think it's common for a lot of folks out there. And so I kind of wear that as a badge of honor. Now it's nice to reflect on, but it's also nice that I don't have to deal with that sort of thing anymore.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- What does it say about our field that we haven't together arrived at a universal code of ethics as to how we work with people outside of our organizations, our participants in the research that we do, and to some degree from what you've been saying, protected, protect ourselves from the pushback potentially related to some of the short term incentives that are at play within a corporate against what we would consider to be appropriate and ethical behavior.
- Amy Santee:
- UX practitioners come from so many different backgrounds and there's so many different paths into the field. So there's a lot of variety in terms of how people even approach their jobs. Like UX as a field can't even agree on the terminology when it comes to a lot of our work and job titles and research methodologies and all kinds of stuff. There's so many opinions and so many ways of practicing UX. So I think by nature there is not alignment on these bigger things about how we practice and our boundaries. And there are definitely conversations, like I said, humanity centered is, there's a lot of conversation that they are facilitating around this. And the people who attend humanity centered cohorts learn a lot. They have conversations, they reflect, they practice, and then bringing back that back to their organizations, it's still a question of what can they actually do with that. So it's the variation of practitioners, which is an excellent thing. I am all about that. I think it's a beautiful thing that makes her feel even better. But I also think it's part of the constraints of working in organizations where some things are just not doable because of the workplace culture and the essence of running a business. So I'm glad to see conversations happening in this way, but some people have more freedom to do these things than others.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And we'll be putting a link to your personal code of ethics because I think it's a really great starting point for people that have been wondering about their approach to research and have been trying to grapple with what that could look like and how they could start to formalize the ethical approach that they're taking to that research. I want to come to your coaching practice, Amy. I know that you help people with a variety of stages in their career, all the way from people that are trying to break into the field, to people that are considering quite monumental, maybe mid-career decisions. I've realized about my own career that I've been both my greatest ally and also my greatest enemy. What are, if any common fears that people are facing or either trying to run from when they come to you with the challenge of helping them to develop their careers?
- Amy Santee:
- I'm not good enough. That's a common one.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Where does that come from?
- Amy Santee:
- Generally speaking, people have confidence challenges. That's one thing rooted in all kinds of life experiences, career experiences, traumatic workplaces or toxic workplaces rather. That's part of it. I mentioned before about women and other groups of people having even more challenge with that because of their lack of privilege and the way society treats them. The other thing I can think of is going back to the multitude of paths into UX as a discipline. There's so much variation. And if you are coming right outta your PhD, if you're coming out of social work and any other kind of thing that's not HCI or UX or more common social science backgrounds that people can use to get into UX, there's a challenge to figure out what qualifies me and how do I know I'm qualified enough and what do I need to know? And there's a million things in UX that I could know.
- People don't know where to start. There's so much information out there. There's a lot of misinformation too. Frankly. There are a lot of people who talk about the field only from their perspective. And that's one thing I try to do differently is I try to get perspectives from so many different people, whether it's attending panels or listening to podcasts or just from my own clients cuz it wouldn't be fair or accurate for me to talk about this just from my own perspective. So I think those are some factors and it can be really stressful for people and it takes a while for some people to get their first job, say as a UX researcher. Some people it's just a few months. Sometimes it takes a year because there's a lot of gaps to fill. But again, it's like what are the gaps and when do I know I am ready?
- And some people think they're just faking it or tricking people and that's not what they're doing. They're learning and they will never know everything. I don't know everything about UX research, no one does. Even the most advanced practitioners in the field, I did one card sort ever. I did eye tracking once half of my job wasn't even doing research projects. It was all kinds of other stuff. So it looks different for every single person, but when they are afraid of that, it can really impact their confidence. And so that's where the coaching comes in. The strategy is like, hey, let's come up with a plan. Here's what you need to do and in what order. And then the coaching part is in these conversations about confidence and practice and feeling good about yourself and reminding people what they're bringing to the table and what makes them different from other candidates and how to really make that shine in their materials, in their interviewing, on their LinkedIn profile.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- I'm assuming you can't just say to someone that they are good enough.
- Amy Santee:
- Sometimes I do, but I don't leave it at that and I don't start it with that. It's an evolving conversation that might happen over a period of time or over several sessions where we're digging into strengths and values and what differentiates people and reflecting on, here's your career path so far, what are your accomplishments? What are the impacts that you've had? And so people, I just kind of try to help people look for the evidence of their successes and their contributions. And then I can remind them sometimes you're ready. In fact, I don't allow people to start applying for jobs if they're not ready. I literally will not do that because that would be unethical. But people's expectations need to be realistic. And I will tell someone, look, there's some things we need to do before you're ready. It could be some gaps in learning. It could be just getting their professional materials in order, getting a little bit more experience. But I don't want people to think that they're ready if they're not, because it is such a challenging thing to do to get into research or into UX in general.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- So you build that confidence in them bit by bit.
- Amy Santee:
- Exactly. And some of the things I do with people are reflective exercises and frameworks that they can use to start thinking about this stuff. So it's like iterative research and design. You do some learning and exploring, then you test some hypotheses. Okay, is this resume working? Let me fix it up, let me try it again. Oh, my measurement of success is I am starting to get more bites or more screener interviews. Okay, it's not working. Let's make some revisions and on on where you're iterating on your approach to your job search and being strategic, knowing what actions you're going to take and how those tie to your ultimate goals. The smart goals framework is totally legit, specific, measurable, actionable, relevant, timely. That is totally legit. And so anchoring onto those things, but also building up that confidence again by looking for the data that proves the hypothesis of I know what I'm doing, I'm ready to apply.
- And it's the same thing for people who are trying to figure out what to do next and how to find that fulfillment in their career if that's what they're seeking. So a lot of self-reflection anchoring in values, for example, I think UX people are very values driven, but when you actually go through the process of thinking deeply and articulating the actual words and having your list of values, it helps you make better decisions. So you're making decisions based on how you wanna live your life. The data that comes from testing hypotheses and experimenting, you know, could make a whole spreadsheet of your options and compare them. And that's a very data analysis, research, UX oriented way of looking at things. And then you could do journaling in the conversations that I have with people really are the foundation of that as well. And so we go through a process over a few months and help, I'm there to just essentially help them navigate and partner with them so they can gain that clarity through this process. That is essentially the same thing as UX.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- You mentioned goals and the smart goals framework in particular. I'm really curious about goals because I've recently heard a couple of different perspectives on goals and their role in helping people to change the status quo. Effectively one camp is the goals are essential and if you don't know where you're going, how are you going to know when you have arrived? And the other campers, that goals set people up for disappointment when the universe ultimately conspires to not deliver them what it is that they're seeking to achieve. How do you help people to set goals that aren't going to set them up for disappointment, particularly when you're dealing with people that are making either significant career changes where there's a bit of ambiguity or risk or people that are trying to come and break into the industry and there's a bit of uncertainty as to just how quickly they might be able to do that.
- Amy Santee:
- Part of it is having a structure of some kind, a plan. What is your plan of action? How do you know your being successful towards the goal or sub goals that you have decided on?
- Brendan Jarvis:
- So this is this iteration that you were talking about that, oh, that's not working. Let's try a different tactic.
- Amy Santee:
- Right. And I mean I think the smart goals apply here because if you set a goal of I want to do, I wanna be able to deadlift a hundred pounds at some point, that's, that's not really an effective goal. It's like I want to increase my ability to deadlift by five pounds every month and that means I need to go to personal training three times a week. And then it becomes so much more accessible and doable because they're smaller, but they're leading, these actions are leading towards something. But I think it's also trusting the process and frankly it's very, very challenging. And I think my business coach, Tara Butler flock for helping me with this part of my business building to communicate to someone what I even do is very challenging. What are the outcomes? Cuz it's not necessarily tangible a lot of the time.
- Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. And then to have an initial conversation with someone where I really try to get them to understand what the process is and the fact that it's organic and some things you can plan, but sometimes things change when you get new information. When something happens say we're working on resume, but then they get an interview next week, we don't need to work on that resume, let's prepare for the interview. So I have a process and it's tailored to each person. But yeah, I mean I think it's kind of a mix of that and people just have to understand that that's how things will turn out. And it's interesting you mentioned goals not being so effective for some people. I think what I just mentioned is helpful, but thinking about myself, I will occasionally identify goals, but I'm kind of just going with the flow and being open to what comes to me.
- And so I didn't plan to go into coaching three years ago. I think it occurred to me a couple years ago, but I didn't do it until last year. And so it was just a seed that I planted and I think absorbing that and my brain kind of connecting that to the activities and interests and things through that reflection is just what made it occur to me. That was my next step. So I think part of it is that intuition and being open to new things as they come along, but also trying to be intentional as well.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yeah, I really like that. It's actually reminding me of something that I'm quite, I think that I'm quite fond of Seth Godden and he wrote a brilliant little book called The Dip, I think around 2006, 2007. And he talks about the market that you want to play in. So in your case it's UX, but that you listen to what the market is telling you and you don't be afraid to change your tactic. So how this relates back to what we've been talking about is your tactic after leaving the corporate America was consulting and you were listening to your own internal voice and what the market was saying and coaching then came up and you didn't quit the market, as in you love the UX field and the people within that field, you've just changed the way in which you are serving the marketplace or those people.
- Amy Santee:
- That's the cool thing about being involved in this field still is I can participate and learn, but I'm doing it for a different purpose. Frankly. I don't like talking about research projects. I'm not interested in coaching people through their practice. And that's actually part of why I quit practicing and quit consulting is cuz I just got kind of bored frankly. And the overhead of running a business and pitching and all the client work and this and that, I mean I enjoyed my clients. Some of the projects were cool, but it just became a slog. And you're right, I paid attention to my own observations because that's just so important to me to pay attention. And I made that realization and it was kind of abrupt. I just decided, you know what? I'm going to switch into this. It was scary. Don't get me wrong, it's taken time for me to build up this practice and be successful and shape it and it takes a lot of work. But this is the kind of work that I really like to do.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- You spoke about it being scary and I think it's incredibly brave what you've done and the way in which you've put yourself out there. And we talked about that earlier at the beginning of this conversation. Something that a lot of people find scary is money is the conversation at that point of a job search where money comes up, their compensation, it makes a lot of people squirm. In fact, I've been in business for 11 years and still I get a little uncomfortable when it comes to discussing it in terms of projects. And I feel like there's a lot of, generally speaking, guilt and shame and a bit of self self-loathing that gets wrapped up in how we feel about money. But it's completely essential to our own success and to our ability to look after the people that we care about. When money comes up in a job conversation, what do you coach your clients to do in that situation?
- Amy Santee:
- I love this topic. I am, this is just one of the main things I've been thinking a lot about over my career, but just more and more over time as I've come to understand how all of this stuff works. And you're right, people have all kinds of stories and self-beliefs and thoughts about money and how that comes about and plays a role in their lives, and there's all kinds of reasons for that. When it comes to compensation negotiation, I find that a lot of people don't negotiate, especially women, people of color, other folks we've talked about the reasons for that. They also don't push beyond some minimal incremental increase. Oh, can I get $5,000 more? Let's try $40,000 more [laugh] people.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Now we're token,
- Amy Santee:
- Right? PE people, I think because there's a lack of transparency. Talking about money is at a taboo. People feel guilty. They're like, oh, I don't wanna be greedy first, I have to remind them that this is a business transaction. Just like you know, and I have the consulting experience, we, there's a negotiation that happens, but if a client's not willing to pay what the project costs, then you don't wanna work with them like bye. And that was super helpful for me to practice in my consulting job, which just made me a lot happier with the people I worked with. And practicing that over time made it easier. And I'm sure you've had the same experience. If you're competing on price, that's just not helpful for anyone, especially other folks who are trying to get jobs. So I think that's something that people don't consider, but they also don't know how much money they can make.
- They don't think about a total compensation package. You don't just negotiate your base salary. You can get, it's like, hey, bonuses, stock options educational budget, work from home, flexibility. Hey, I need a thousand bucks for a standup desk because I work at home and I don't have an ergonomic setup. You can ask for the things that you want, and the negotiation conversation starts way before you get an offer. In fact, it starts as soon as you apply for the job because submitting a top-notch resume cover letter portfolio, kicking ass at that recruiter screener conversation like that's setting you up for success and exhibiting confidence, feeling confident, but also exhibiting confidence so that person knows that I'm serious, I'm excited about the role. I have a lot to offer. You wanna set the stage for the rest of the conversation. And you also want to gather data along the way so that when it comes time to have a conversation, you can point back to the hiring manager's comments to you about how you be such a great fit for the team.
- You can be ready with data on compensation from all kinds of resources out there. There's tons of UX compensation reports and websites, databases where people can add their data and just having access to that and using it to your advantage. And then also if at any point someone's pressuring you to give them your current salary, which is totally irrelevant to say what amount of money you want, you have to look for the red flags and decide what is this telling me about the organization? Are they so focused on money? And I find this a lot with contracting agencies and there's some really great ones. And then there's some that are really exploiting people who have no idea that they, $35 is what they can make per hour, but it should be 70 and should be is relative. It should be more than that. But what they could actually get is double or whatever. They just don't know that. And these conversations are scary. If you don't never done it, then you might not know how to do it when the next conversation comes up. And so I think preparation, confidence, assertiveness, and working with this person as your negotiation partner rather than an adversary. A lot of people approach these conversations just assuming that it's a confrontation, that the recruiter's going to try to lobe all them. And not to say that that doesn't happen, but that's not always the case.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Who should bring money up first?
- Amy Santee:
- What I've seen in companies that want top talent is no one brings up money first. It's about that person's fit. It's about assessing their qualifications, just having a conversation. And sometimes it doesn't come up until the end because it's more about finding the best candidate for the job to meet the needs. So I've noticed that from some companies. I think that's a really good way to do it. I don't see candidates bringing it up. That's an interesting idea, but I've never seen that done. And I really have to think through what that could look like. Cuz maybe it could be something to consider, but for a very specific reason. And I guess what I mean by that is someone would have to determine why that would be important to bring up right away, I guess. So I don't exactly have an answer to that kind of scenario, but if the recruiter brings it up, you don't need to agree to anything. And I think the best thing to say is just I'd like to continue the conversation. I'm not ready to discuss that right now. Just being firm on it and nice about it and people who understand that will be fine with it. And people who are really focused on the money for whatever reason, we'll push back and if it becomes a tense conversation again, that might tell you something.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yeah, 100%. I love that. I love it. How you are are actually always in that conversation, that job conversation. You should always be listening and looking for tells or signs about company culture and what people value. I also love what you've touched on there, which is the importance of confidence in that conversation. The importance of realizing that it is a conversation and it's not an argument that you have power in that conversation, that you shouldn't defer to the company, which traditionally has been seen to have the majority of power in that everything is up for negotiation. I really think there's some huge pillar of wisdom in what you've just said. Amy, I'm just mindful of time. I think we should bring the show down to a close. We've covered some huge topics in the time that we've had together and there's a lot going on for the people that'll be listening to this podcast right now. There's still a lot of uncertainty out there, but hopefully also a lot of opportunity for people who are considering making a career change but are feeling a little bit anxious at the moment. What do you want them to think about?
- Amy Santee:
- It's never a wrong time to start thinking about it and to start taking some kind of actions towards figuring this out. I spoke to someone just today who talked about how the past year and a half is what caused him to start thinking about this kind of stuff. And he had been mulling it over before then, but things have just surfaced to an extent that he's not feeling comfortable about the kind of work he does and the match with his values. And so I actually think that regular self-reflection is important and it's what will help you be more aware of the signs and not have to all of a sudden hit the brakes and decide you need to start thinking about stuff and making changes. So that's probably what I would recommend is to have a regular practice of self-reflection, know your values and go back to those. Pay attention to what changes for you in life and what your priorities are. Maybe you have a kid and that changes everything. Maybe you have to move somewhere. I don't know. So paying attention to that and not letting it, not being surprised by it randomly out of nowhere, but if you are, it's okay. And you can implement this process at any point.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yeah, get that journal out, people, get some time to yourselves and start thinking about things and writing your thoughts down. I know Amy, that values are literally quite close to your heart as well, aren't they?
- Amy Santee:
- Absolutely. Yeah. I've talked about a lot of these already. Advocacy, transparency, collaboration, community, and that is what makes my life so fulfilling now, even without some of these other nice to haves that would make things more comfortable for me.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Well, Amy, thank you for bravely living your values and bravely putting yourself out there on this conversation today. I really appreciate your ability to go deep into some of these quite challenging and quite personal and professional issues, and also the value that you've shared with the people that are listening to this episode today. I think there's a lot in here for people to think about and also to apply in their daily practice in their lives.
- Amy Santee:
- Thank you so much. I have really enjoyed this conversation. It's helped me to even further think about things based on your excellent questions. So thank you. It felt very much like a conversation rather than a podcast interview.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Amy, you're most welcome. For people that are interested in finding out about you, about your blog, your writing, your thinking, and your coaching practice, what's the best way for them to do that?
- Amy Santee:
- They can come to my website, which is AmySantee.com, connect on LinkedIn. I hang out on LinkedIn a lot. I love engaging with the community there. I love meeting new people, and so I encourage anyone to find me on there, get in touch, and yeah, that's it.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Thanks, Amy. And if you want to check out how to do LinkedIn properly and really, really effectively, I do recommend if you're listening to this today that you do go and check out Amy on LinkedIn. She is a complete master of that platform, [laugh] to everyone that has tuned in, it's been great having you here as well. Everything that we've covered, including where you can find Amy and her coaching practice, her blog, all the great stuff that we've talked about will be in the show notes on YouTube and also on the podcast platforms. If you've enjoyed the conversation and you want to hear more great conversations like this with world-class leaders in UX design and product management, don't forget to leave a review and subscribe to the podcast and also pass it along. If you think that somebody in your network, your circle of friends, your professional acquaintances would find value from these conversations. If you want to reach out to me, you can also find my LinkedIn profile on the show notes, and there's a link through to my website, which is thespaceinbetween.co.nz. And until next time, keep being brave.