Jofish Kaye on industry research, having an impact, and values-driven decision making

Jofish Kaye is a Principle Research Scientist at Mozilla, and before this he worked at Yahoo and Nokia. Jofish made a deliberate decision not to pursue an academic career after he finished his PhD and it’s interesting to hear how his decision-making criteria evolved from being primarily about the people he could work with to being more values-driven and being able to make an impact. A strong sense of values and having impact are threads in a lot of what he talks about. He also discusses his experiences more generally working in an industry context and also moving into more management/leadership roles. “I think I’m the only person on the planet who likes job searches because you get to re-invent yourself.”“I am concerned the way we treat publications as the way to make success in the world.”“It’s so important and so incumbent upon research as a field to make clear and visible how valuable what it is we do.”“We need to be taking seriously this call for public outreach.”You can download full transcript here Overview: Jofish discusses (approximate times):01:38 Getting a PhD at Cornell and moving into an industry job at Nokia and being able to teach at Stanford09:24 Why he didn’t want to apply for an academic position – the difficulty getting funding vs the freedom to do what he wants in industry, the current Mozilla grant process and research they have supported19:16 Triggers for moving to different companies, looking at what he really enjoyed doing (CHI4Good), and seeking out a way to do that – the job search as a way to reinvent yourself25:11 Moving from more of an industry research role to now also being concerned for shipping product to customers and having impact in the world in a different way30:55 How his thinking about job searching has changed over time, from thinking about the people he would work with, to more values-driven decision making with some additional criteria36:00 Broader accessibility for young people to universities, and the role of public universities, 38:40 His usual pattern of working now with kids/family; and experiences being in a management role, recruiting people, and the ‘Noah’s Ark’ theory about having people who share the same assumptions42:00 Being a leader and manager – managing as administration, checking boxes, etc; leading as trying to build a strategic narrative and the difficulty of coordinating with people who have different epistemological assumptions and how you measure impact50:45 Practical team strategies when people are distributed, combining in-person and online techniques, daily video ‘stand up’ meetings57:18 Challenges around issues of diversity and inclusion across the industry and in particular how to improve diversity in an open source volunteer community 1:01.40 Challenges for academics moving into industry, getting to actionable insights quickly and how to communicate those in the slide deck (the coin of the realm)1:07:38 EndRelated LinksPhoebe Sengers - http://www.cs.cornell.edu/people/sengers/Elizabeth Churchill - http://elizabethchurchill.com Wendy Ju - http://www.wendyju.comPam Hinds - https://profiles.stanford.edu/pamela-hinds Terry Winograd -

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