Bio
Hi, I'm Greg. I specialize in making difficult things easy, whether that is onboarding new users to integrate a product into their workflow, optimizing an online course for learner success, or helping graduate students and early-career faculty finding rewarding careers in industry. I see things the way newbies do.
Currently, I work in product at Stack Overflow, where I use data and my understanding of the new person's perspective to improve the new user onboarding experience. That means providing just-in-time messaging and recommending data-informed design revisions to optimize user engagement and success.
I hold a Ph.D. in philosophy and was for several years a full-time faculty member in philosophy. I remain active in academic philosophy, with peer-reviewed papers forthcoming, regularly reviewing papers for top journals, and teaching courses in higher education as an adjunct instructor. More information about my career change, and how I am able to help others through it, can be found below.
I also work on a contract basis as an instructional designer, with particular expertise in aligning activities and assignments to outcomes, identifying technologies that can accomplish instructional goals, and increasing student success. Here and there I review academic manuscripts, instructional titles, and book chapters by contract.
Currently, I work in product at Stack Overflow, where I use data and my understanding of the new person's perspective to improve the new user onboarding experience. That means providing just-in-time messaging and recommending data-informed design revisions to optimize user engagement and success.
I hold a Ph.D. in philosophy and was for several years a full-time faculty member in philosophy. I remain active in academic philosophy, with peer-reviewed papers forthcoming, regularly reviewing papers for top journals, and teaching courses in higher education as an adjunct instructor. More information about my career change, and how I am able to help others through it, can be found below.
I also work on a contract basis as an instructional designer, with particular expertise in aligning activities and assignments to outcomes, identifying technologies that can accomplish instructional goals, and increasing student success. Here and there I review academic manuscripts, instructional titles, and book chapters by contract.
In 2021, I left my full-time position in philosophy for a non-academic career. I didn't know where I was going, but I knew the future would be brighter than the past. It had to be.
Here is my website as it was in 2019. As you can see, I had 10+ peer-reviewed publications, a teaching award, a research award, good teaching evaluations. The works. My Google Scholar profile shows lots of citations, too.
In total, I had tenure-track interviews at four places in four years. That's what all that work got me. Mine is the story of someone who did things right, and the reward just wasn't there.
It took a few agonizing years to figure out how to make a big change from my dead-end, low-pay academic position to something else. A "non-academic" job, whatever that could be.
I did eventually figure it out, and now, looking back, I'm confident that I could have made my way into a more satisfying position in about three months if I had known what I was doing, because three months is about how much time I spent actively pursuing my career change goal (after years of inactively doing it). I wrote down some tips that were widely shared here: How to leave philosophy (Guest post by Greg Stoutenburg) - The Philosophers' Cocoon (typepad.com)
Now I'm sharing my strategy for transitioning from academia--whether that's being a graduate student or faculty member--to a rewarding career in another industry. Flexibility, more opportunity for growth, higher pay, better culture. Much of what I say will apply to people transitioning from other fields, but I'm sticking to what I know well enough to be sure that my advice works.
Here is my website as it was in 2019. As you can see, I had 10+ peer-reviewed publications, a teaching award, a research award, good teaching evaluations. The works. My Google Scholar profile shows lots of citations, too.
In total, I had tenure-track interviews at four places in four years. That's what all that work got me. Mine is the story of someone who did things right, and the reward just wasn't there.
It took a few agonizing years to figure out how to make a big change from my dead-end, low-pay academic position to something else. A "non-academic" job, whatever that could be.
I did eventually figure it out, and now, looking back, I'm confident that I could have made my way into a more satisfying position in about three months if I had known what I was doing, because three months is about how much time I spent actively pursuing my career change goal (after years of inactively doing it). I wrote down some tips that were widely shared here: How to leave philosophy (Guest post by Greg Stoutenburg) - The Philosophers' Cocoon (typepad.com)
Now I'm sharing my strategy for transitioning from academia--whether that's being a graduate student or faculty member--to a rewarding career in another industry. Flexibility, more opportunity for growth, higher pay, better culture. Much of what I say will apply to people transitioning from other fields, but I'm sticking to what I know well enough to be sure that my advice works.