Ask Me Anything with Treehouse CEO Ryan Carson

Hey, everybody, welcome back. 0:03 I really enjoyed Dylan's session. 0:05 Thank you so much, Dylan, for talking about mentoring. 0:09 Sharnesia, thank you so much for 0:11 talking about how to be effective at work and what you need to know. 0:13 It's been a joy to work with both of you at Mailchimp. 0:18 So, welcome to my ask me anything session. 0:22 I'm here to answer all your questions. 0:25 Anything about the journey we've had at Treehouse. 0:29 Why I started Treehouse? 0:33 How I learned how to code? 0:35 How to get a job? 0:37 There's a bazillion questions y'all can ask and I would be happy to answer them. 0:38 It's just been so much fun to be at this festival with you all. 0:43 I love this community and I love our students and 0:47 it's why I come to work every day. 0:51 So, I'm ready to take some questions. 0:54 I noticed there was one already. 0:57 So we'll just keep going and keep them coming in, 0:59 pump those questions in, I'll take as many as I can during this session. 1:03 We had a question that said, I love how the Treehouse culture and curriculum is so 1:08 welcoming to people of all professional experiences and educational backgrounds. 1:13 Was this a choice you made when you created this company or 1:19 did it evolve into this business model? 1:22 So, I'll tell you how Treehouse came to be, 1:25 cuz that is a part of the story and then how we evolved as well. 1:28 So I grew up in Colorado Springs, Colorado, was born in 1977. 1:33 And I had a wonderful childhood. 1:39 I was extremely privileged. 1:43 I didn't know that at the time that I had two parents. 1:44 I had a safe home and plenty to eat. 1:48 I'm a white man. 1:51 I'm cisgender, I'm able bodied. 1:53 I'm pretty much as privileged as you can get. 1:55 I didn't know that when I was growing up, and 1:57 another thing that was amazing is I had a computer. 2:01 So, my dad was just on always getting the latest gadgets. 2:04 And so I saw a Apple IIe show up in our house in the 80s and it just blew my mind. 2:09 I had a green screen and there was a command prompt and 2:18 you could type things into it and I just thought this is cool. 2:22 And, as I grew up, I played more and more computer games. 2:26 Shout out to anyone who knows a King's Quest is, and 2:30 eventually I was walking down the hallway in my high school. 2:33 And my math teacher, Miss Bruce walked up to me and she said, hey Ryan, 2:38 have you ever thought about taking our computer programming class? 2:42 And I was like, what's that? 2:46 I love my computer, but I don't know what programming is. 2:49 And she said, It's when you tell the computer what to do, and it does it. 2:52 And my mind just went, [SOUND] [LAUGH] and I thought that, wow, 2:57 sounds amazing, that sounds like a superpower. 3:01 And so, I enrolled in our Turbo Pascal class and it was just so much fun. 3:03 I realized you could create anything that you could imagine, and so 3:09 I fell in love with that. 3:14 I actually grew up in a very religious household. 3:16 So, I was actually planning on being a pastor someday. 3:19 And as I went on that journey, I fell in love with computers and 3:26 I thought I'll figure out the pastor thing maybe I'll go to seminary someday. 3:29 But for now, why don't I go to college and study computer science? 3:34 Computer science was was really becoming cutting edge at that point, 3:38 the Internet was happening, and I enrolled so I went to Colorado State University. 3:42 Again, just looking back, I was so privileged, my parents paid for 3:46 my university education. 3:51 I had no student debt. 3:53 And I was just very well taken care of. 3:54 So I went to Colorado State got my computer science degree. 3:58 But as I was going through it, it was just kind of shocking to me how 4:01 disconnected my curriculum was from what I wanted to do. 4:05 So we were learning about assembly language, 4:09 which is literally like, zeros and ones. 4:12 And we were learning lisp, which is this bonkers recursive language. 4:16 It was just so disconnected from what we want to do, which was build web apps. 4:22 We wanted to create things. 4:26 And I learned C++ and then I learned how to design aircraft systems. 4:28 And I just thought, well, this is great, but how do I use this stuff? 4:32 And so eventually, I graduated. 4:36 And there's kind of a whole side story to this, but 4:39 I decided I wanted an adventure, and I decided to move England. 4:42 So I moved to England with my computer science degree in tow. 4:47 And, my first job interview required a computer science degree. 4:51 And so I went to the interview, and the interview went well and then I said, 4:57 what do we code here? 5:01 What do we do? 5:03 And they said, we write in a language called ColdFusion, and 5:04 I had never heard of it. 5:08 [LAUGH] I was like, what was that? 5:10 And they said, buy a book, you'll be fine. 5:13 And I felt like time stopped at that moment. 5:16 I thought, wait, what, 5:19 I'm supposed to just buy a book that I can get it Barnes and Noble. 5:21 I have a Computer Science degree like doesn't that matter? 5:26 And it became clear to me that my computer Science degree was like this secret 5:29 key that I had access to. 5:33 That I was given a job because of but, actually, 5:35 the skills I learned was not at all what I needed. 5:38 And, I felt like that was wrong. 5:41 There's a deep part of me that was bothered by that the morality of that,. 5:43 That I had access to this special computer science program because I grew up in 5:48 a certain way. 5:52 And that's why I was getting the job instead of I 5:53 got the job cuz I worked hard. 5:56 And at that moment, I thought I wanna change this. 5:58 This system seems broken. 6:01 So that the idea for Treehouse actually began that seed was planted, 6:02 that was the year 2000. 6:08 And I went on to get the job as a software developer and 6:10 I was a web developer for several years, until 2004. 6:15 And I wasn't gonna stay in England but 6:20 I met this amazing woman now my wife and my co-founder Gill. 6:22 If you're watching, I love you, and stayed in England. 6:26 And then I realized, I don't wanna be a software engineer anymore, 6:30 I wanna start my own company. 6:34 I built a simple piece of software called FlightDeck. 6:37 It was basically drops in before drops and existed. 6:40 I got one company to buy a license of it. 6:44 And I quit my job, and Gill and I got married, and that was my first company. 6:46 But this backgrounds, passion and desire to teach people how to code and 6:51 empower them to get a job without a computer science degree was always there. 6:56 And so, it bothered me still. 7:02 I was learning everything by Googling, by reading O'Reilly books, 7:06 by copying and pasting other people's code. 7:10 And I just thought, what I'm doing is so 7:13 disconnected from my computer science degree, it's unbelievable. 7:16 And, so what we started to do is let's teach people how to code in person. 7:21 So we did a workshop and it was, 7:27 I think called how to build an Enterprise PHP web app. 7:29 We did in London, I think we had 30 attendees and I thought, 7:32 this is what I wanna do. 7:37 I wanna teach people how to code. 7:39 I wanna empower people so that they can change their life. 7:41 And so that was in 2006. 7:45 And again, this passion for 7:47 empowering people by teaching them was growing and growing and growing. 7:48 And eventually, these small one day workshops 7:53 turned into these massive conferences, right? 7:59 So we had 2,000 people at one of our conferences in London and 8:04 we're teaching how to code and we are empowering people. 8:07 But then after doing that from 2006 to kinda 2010, 8:10 I just got really frustrated with the in-person conference model. 8:15 I thought we're doing the same thing over. 8:21 People can come to these conferences if they are wealthy, if they can fly on 8:25 planes, if they can get hotel rooms, if they can afford to be away from work. 8:30 Where basically empowering people, again, that have privilege, 8:34 like this is not what I wanna do. 8:38 I want to truly empower people that don't have access to opportunity. 8:40 And so Gill and I were talking one day and I just said, there's 8:45 got to be a way that we can make this more affordable and accessible and effective. 8:49 And she said, why don't we do an online school, 8:53 like why don't we just put all of our lessons online. 8:56 And in 2010, that was pretty cutting edge. 9:00 No one was really doing that yet. 9:02 And so, I tweeted out, is there anybody out there that is good on camera that 9:05 wants to teach coding and design? 9:09 And Nick Pettit and Jim hoskin said, us, we wanna do that. 9:11 And so, that was how we started Treehouse. 9:15 So back in 2010, we launched and it was very simple video lessons for 9:18 coding, video lessons for design. 9:23 And it took off. 9:25 And so we just worked really hard to keep going on this. 9:27 But the mission of the company was to empower people to learn how to code so 9:33 they could get a job, right? 9:38 To be able to go around the computer science degree requirement. 9:41 And so we've just worked very, very hard at that for ten years, right? 9:44 So we've been fortunate to teach 650,000 people now. 9:48 And, I think in 2016, 9:52 I really began to wake up to the systematic barriers 9:56 that are in place around the world that hold people out of tech. 10:02 It's much deeper than I had thought, than I had realized. 10:08 I started reading books like The New Jim Crow and 10:12 I watched documentaries like 13th. 10:16 And I just really started to understand how much privilege I had and 10:19 how that affected everything. 10:23 So then we decided to go further and think about how can we work on 10:25 apprenticeship and how can we empower more people. 10:30 And we've just done more and more on that and so many people have been a part 10:34 of that, we've partnered with the boys and girls clubs, dress for success. 10:39 Amazing people like Sharnicia and Eric Muntz at MailChimp, and there is just been 10:45 such a massive team effort to start to open up these new pathways into tech. 10:49 So I would say equity diversity inclusion, empowering people is at 10:54 the core of treehouse, that is really why we all come to work. 11:00 And we are just gonna keep going on that. 11:05 We think that it's important for people to see so 11:09 they can believe that they can do it, right? 11:12 So we wanna spotlight more people of color and more women in tech so 11:15 people can see those people and say I could do that. 11:19 And Dalin is literally a living example of that, and he's so inspirational to me. 11:23 So that's kind of the long story of how do we get here. 11:28 I'm not perfect, treehouse is not perfect, we're still trying to diversify our team. 11:33 There's still a lot we have to learn, there's still a lot I have to learn. 11:38 But I'm just so thankful to have been on this journey, and 11:42 to work with everyone that we have worked with. 11:46 So that is a very long answer to how do we evolve into this. 11:50 So we're excited about just continuing to serve people, and empower our students. 11:55 I love my job, that's so much fun. 12:02 Another question, what about freelance contract work for treehouse graduates? 12:06 Is that a realistic route for 12:10 someone interested in working remotely not as a full time employee? 12:12 So freelance contract work is absolutely a great idea. 12:17 So if you are going through our tech degree or going through our courses and 12:22 you finish, here's what I would recommend. 12:26 We talked a lot about this in the how to get a job without a computer science 12:29 degree panel. 12:34 This is the basic playbook you should follow. 12:35 So as you're going through your coursework, 12:38 you should begin to build something with what you're learning and 12:40 you should pick a subject that you're passionate about. 12:44 So whether that's golfing, or floristry, or sewing, 12:47 or hiking, or music, anything that you are passionate about. 12:52 You should start building a project that's based on that. 12:59 And then what I mean is a website, build a website or 13:02 build an app that has something to do with what you're passionate about. 13:05 And then you can start to build a community around that, 13:10 you could say that you're passionate about piano. 13:13 You could build a website for 13:16 people who are passionate about piano in your city or town. 13:19 And then you actually have a real thing that you've built, right? 13:24 So as you're learning, you launch your first real thing, 13:28 you buy your first domain, Ilovepiano.com it's probably not available. 13:32 And then you build a website around that and 13:37 all sudden you have a real thing that you've built. 13:39 You didn't get paid to do it, that's okay. 13:41 And then what you do is you take that and then you go to people in your 13:43 community that own businesses or run organizations like a church and 13:48 you say to them, hey, I would love to rebuild or launch your website. 13:54 I'll do it for 50 bucks and 13:59 just charge a tiny bit amount of money and then build that with them. 14:02 And then all sudden you have your first paid project. 14:08 And so Jeremy Smith and Anthonela talked about this. 14:11 This is essentially creating your experience, 14:13 your booting up your own experience as you go, and 14:17 then you launch that second website that you got paid for. 14:21 And then you do it again, so then you go to another small business or community or 14:26 organization and say, here are these two things I built, 14:30 I would like to build one for you too. 14:33 I'll charge you $100 and you charge a little bit more money and you launch 14:34 another project and you just keep doing this while you're learning, right? 14:39 So don't wait until you finish learning to do this, 14:44 do this as soon as you have the ability to do this. 14:47 And all of a sudden, by the time you finish your tech degree you finish 14:49 your coursework you have three, four, five real projects. 14:54 Four of them plus that you've been paid to build. 14:58 And all sudden, you are a software engineer, you are a designer, 15:02 because you've been paid to do that. 15:06 And that's the freelance kind of boot up model you can use. 15:09 And then on your resume, you can list these real world projects with real 15:13 domain names that are alive on the web that you've been paid to build. 15:17 That also shows a tremendous amount of productivity, 15:22 creativity, a hard work, and those are all skills that people look for. 15:25 So I would highly encourage you to try to make that happen. 15:30 Now, remember, it takes time to do this, right? 15:34 We're talking about, you're gonna be learning for six to 12 months, 15:36 then you're gonna parallel process this creation of projects. 15:40 That's gonna be six to 12 months of work, so 15:44 you're preparing yourself for a kind of a two year journey to get into tech. 15:47 And in a minute I can talk about how do you get a job 15:53 once you're ready to start applying as well. 15:57 But that should sum up how I think you can use freelance 16:01 contract work to really get yourself into the industry. 16:06 Another question, do you have an idea of an average time length that 16:11 usually takes for an individual to finish a tech degree course?. 16:15 So this depends 100% on how much time you wanna dedicate to it per day. 16:19 It also depends on there's a lot of things people are juggling, 16:25 especially with a pandemic childcare, education, stress, lack of work. 16:30 It's a pretty stressful time right now for everybody. 16:36 First of all, I would encourage you just start with hundred days of code, right?. 16:39 Dedicate 30 minutes a day, just get started, do that for 100 days. 16:44 And then if you're really enjoying it and you're building up that 16:47 discipline then you could think about moving to an hour to two hours a day. 16:52 If you dedicate one to two hours a day, 16:57 you're gonna finish a tech degree typically in about 40 to 50 weeks. 16:59 So it's important that you set that mental framework and 17:03 commit, hey, this is a long term thing, but 17:08 as long as I don't quit, then no one can stop me. 17:12 So this is why we started code crew, we wanna empower you all to sign up for 17:16 a cohort group model where we go through the tech degree together. 17:21 So that's gonna be our first time ever doing that where there's 100 of us and 17:26 Tony and I are gonna be in that group, 17:29 where we go through the full stack JavaScript type degree. 17:31 Week by week, over about 40, 50 weeks, so really excited about that. 17:34 Question, why do you think it is so difficult for 17:41 a lot of companies to embrace inclusivity and diversity? 17:44 I think the kind of blunt answer is that most companies are run by white men. 17:48 And us white men we live in our privilege bubble and 17:54 we don't have to think about diversity inclusion as sad as that is and 17:59 that's the brutal reality. 18:05 We live in a world that has systematic racism and sexism built into it. 18:07 So, I think though we're seeing more people wake up and 18:14 realize this is something that is a moral issue, 18:19 this is not something that's nice to do. 18:23 And we're beginning to see more progress, which is so encouraging. 18:27 There is obviously a tremendous amount of work to do still, but 18:32 we're beginning to see it and that gives me hope. 18:36 Another question, can you talk a little bit about 18:40 the process of creating a course what comes up with the idea? 18:44 How many people create the content? 18:49 What kind of review process is there? 18:51 All that sort of stuff, thanks. 18:53 So Tony should really answer this question cuz she is our director of learning and 18:54 she's in charge of our course creation process. 18:59 I'll just tell you at treehouse, 19:02 we are passionate about creating high quality curriculum. 19:04 We're passionate about creating curriculum that is for beginners. 19:09 We're passionate about that being video based so 19:12 it's as easy as possible to to understand and learn. 19:15 It's hard, right, I mean, we have a whole team dedicated to this. 19:19 We have a tremendous amount of technical expertise behind 19:24 creating high quality video with motion, with great curriculum. 19:27 [LAUGH] It's a lot, and I'm not gonna do it justice. 19:32 Tony is the best person to answer that question, but thanks for asking. 19:35 I'm sorry, I can't be more helpful in that. 19:41 Another question, what is the best way to stand out from the crowd on your resume? 19:44 So it's actually a trick, Question, 19:51 because actually the best way to stand out is to not rely on your resume at all. 19:53 The best thing to do is to network your way to the company that you wanna 19:58 work for, so that by the time you submit your resume they already know you. 20:04 Everybody, this is the blunt truth about the way hiring works, 20:10 most people get hired by people they know, or people that are recommended. 20:14 So you really have to work with that system. 20:20 All because this is directly related. 20:22 Well, let me answer the question first, in a simple way, 20:25 the way to stand out is to show that you are creative and proactive. 20:29 The way to do that is to do what I said at the beginning where I said, 20:35 pick something you're passionate about, anything. 20:39 It literally doesn't matter, can be tattoos. 20:42 And build a site and a community around that and be the center of that community. 20:44 And work on that for six months to a year, and then you can say I created 20:51 this community for people that are passionate about tattoos. 20:56 Here's the site I built, here's how we're supporting all of our members and 21:01 it's my passion projects. 21:07 And put that I think at the top of your resume, 21:09 because everyone is assuming you know how to code, or you know how to design. 21:12 But what they are looking for, is are you proactive? 21:16 Are you creative? Are you good with people? 21:21 So I would put things like that at the top and that will instantly make you jump out. 21:24 The other thing that Grant, and Anthonella, and 21:28 Jeremy talked about is do not shotgun your resume, it just doesn't work. 21:32 You really to take time to identify the 100 companies you wanna work for, 21:38 and specifically target each one, which is hard, but it works. 21:44 I've had people send me boxes with a resume in it with a tremendous 21:50 amount of work showing, hey, here is why I wanna work at treehouse. 21:55 Here is what I am prepared to do, and of course that gets my attention. 22:00 So there is a lot of things you can do to stand out from the crowd. 22:05 All right, these are great questions, you all, thank you. 22:09 I'm gonna keep going. 22:12 Another question we have is this. 22:14 I have no CS skills outside of using computers to answer emails or 22:17 use applications for work. 22:22 How do I prepare to take classes on treehouse? 22:24 Is there any foundational information I need to seek before I start? 22:27 I'm currently following free options online but 22:31 concerning something more formalized, thanks. 22:34 This is exactly why I started treehouse. 22:36 I wanted to build a school that assumes you have no knowledge of 22:39 coding that you have no technical experience, 22:44 that you've never written a line of code ever, or even know what that means. 22:47 That's exactly why we built treehouse and we want it to be friendly for you. 22:53 So I would encourage you, if you're thinking about treehouse sign up to either 22:57 our our courses product which is only $25 a month. 23:02 Or if you know that you want an outcome and 23:05 you're looking to switch careers or add a skill to your resume, 23:08 then the tech degree is a great option too, it is more expensive. 23:13 So you can sign up for a courses product and and you can take one of our tracks. 23:17 Our tracks are guided literally in a straight line, take this course and 23:21 then take this course and take that course, we take all of the guesswork out. 23:25 And we're gonna assume that you have no knowledge at all. 23:29 Most of our students who now have jobs started actually in that place. 23:33 Never even knowing what a software engineer was or 23:36 UX designer, so try us out. 23:40 Let me know, we have a great community to support you as you learn. 23:42 All right, more great questions. 23:49 What are some of your favorite programming languages? 23:51 Not c++. 23:54 [LAUGH] That's how I learned in college and I hate it. 23:56 But my favorite language is Python at the moment. 23:59 I just love Python is it just kind of a beautiful language, 24:03 it's almost written like English. 24:08 And it's just fun to program in, it's also very powerful. 24:12 It doesn't require semicolons at the end of lines. 24:16 [LAUGH] There's a lot to it that's really nice. 24:20 So I just completed our Python tech degree, which was really fun. 24:22 But now I'm learning our full stack JavaScript type degree. 24:25 And Gil and the other teachers and 24:28 in those courses are making that really easy to learn, as well. 24:30 I'm really excited to learn React and a couple of the modern frameworks as well. 24:34 But Python is great, I love it. 24:40 It's also very powerful if you wanna go into data analysis as well. 24:42 Okay, more questions. 24:48 And if you all that are compiling the questions if you wanna put people's 24:51 names next to these, it's kind of fun for me to say who asked. 24:54 That would be great. 24:58 Next up, how do you come up with the name treehouse? 25:00 And why did you decide to get teamtreehouse and not treehouse.com? 25:03 Well, that's a sore point. 25:08 [LAUGH] So the funny thing is that actually 25:11 treehouse started off being called this hilariously bad name. 25:13 Think vitamin membership. 25:18 [LAUGH] So Jill and I launched a website called thinkvitamin.com 25:21 which was a blog with great content for web designers and web developers. 25:26 How-to articles, inspirational stories, and it got to be very popular. 25:33 It's one of the most popular web design, web development sites on the Internet. 25:38 And so when we launched what is now treehouse, we thought, well, 25:41 let's use all that brand value that we've built up, and attach the product to it. 25:46 So it was thinkvitamin.com, 25:52 so we just did think vitamin.com forward slash membership. 25:54 And then, at some point, I think I was listening to a podcast and someone said, 25:57 you should always run your brand name through what's called the bar test. 26:02 And I was like, what's the bar test? 26:07 And they said, imagine you're sitting at a bar, 26:09 just impossible to imagine now during the pandemic. 26:11 But imagine you're sitting in a bar next to somebody, it's really loud, 26:13 there's glasses clinking, there's music in the background and 26:17 you tell them what your company name is. 26:21 Will they be able to understand it the first time? 26:23 [LAUGH] Just imagine myself sitting in a bar going, 26:26 it's called think vitamin membership. 26:29 [LAUGH] And them just going, what? 26:32 [LAUGH] So, I was like, we gotta change our name, this is ridiculous. 26:34 So at that point, Jill and I, we started, 26:39 thinking about ideas and comeing up with all sorts of ideas. 26:42 And she's a trained journalist, and so she taught me how to do mind mapping. 26:46 And so we started coming up with words and then words that attached to that. 26:51 And she just said, why not treehouse? 26:55 And we immediately googled it, there's got to be something called treehouse. 26:57 And there really was nothing, I mean, 27:01 there was a Canadian TV channel called treehouse, for kids. 27:03 There was treehouse.com that was already taken, 27:06 which was discouraging, but it was this enterprise software company. 27:09 And so I thought, okay, there's not going to be brand confusion. 27:13 And so we locked it in treehouse. 27:17 We couldn't get treehouse Inc, either, so we went with Treehouse Island Inc, 27:21 which is our technical legal name. 27:25 And we were looking for domain names that I contacted treehouse.com and 27:27 they said it's a million dollars if you wanna buy it. 27:32 [LAUGH] We don't have $1 million, so I guess we can't get treehouse.com. 27:35 And we just thought Team Treehouse, it's fun, it implies being a team. 27:40 It's very people friendly until we went teamtreehouse.com which is funny cuz now 27:46 everyone thinks our name is teamtreehouse. 27:51 It's cool if you wanna cause Team Treehouse, I love it. 27:53 We're also treehouse, so whatever works for you. 27:57 The actual treehouse though came from this idea like a treehouse is a magical place, 28:01 right? 28:06 It's somewhere in your childhood that feels safe, it feels creative, 28:06 it's filed with wonder and makes you think anything is possible. 28:12 So we just thought treehouse was just a lovely name. 28:17 Fun question. 28:21 Okay, more great questions. 28:22 Do you feel like you ultimately were a teacher who learned how to code or 28:26 that coding brought you the idea of teaching? 28:30 I feel like I'm a teacher at heart, but I think that it 28:33 was brought out more so by following my other passions. 28:38 I think I view coding as a tool that can change your life. 28:43 It's a tool that you can use to create anything and so 28:50 I'm really passionate about empowering people to create and 28:55 to empower themselves. 29:00 And code is just the most powerful thing you can do now. 29:02 If you understand technology, you know how to control it, 29:06 you really can wield things into existence. 29:11 And build wealth for your family, you can help people, and so 29:15 I think what is really behind teaching people how to code is empowering people. 29:19 Coding is just the tool that we use, or 29:25 UX design is just the tool, but it's really about empowering people. 29:28 Teaching is fun, if you identify as a teacher, 29:32 I'm sure that one of the reasons you love it is cuz it's just so 29:36 fun to see somebody learn something, and then use it. 29:40 It's just wonderful, if you love teaching I always encourage people, 29:44 there's YouTube now, right?. 29:48 So start a YouTube channel and I've started teaching, right?. 29:51 See how it goes right?. 29:54 That's a powerful way to get into teaching. 29:55 If you're interested in that, more great questions, question from Alexandra. 29:57 Do you hire juniors or interns? 30:03 How big is your team? 30:06 Do you have different locations? 30:07 We absolutely hire juniors we actually are working on continuing 30:09 to build out our own apprenticeship program. 30:14 So a couple amazing folks have already come in through that pipeline. 30:18 What we look to do is empower people to learn through a tech degree, 30:22 and then onboard them as apprentices and then they scale up. 30:26 Carlos is an amazing example. 30:30 He's on our software engineering team. 30:32 He came through our apprenticeship program. 30:35 We also have amazing people that come in through our tech degree, 30:37 get involved in Slack become Slack champions. 30:42 And then they apply for a job at Treehouse, and 30:46 we've seen a lot of amazing people go through that route. 30:49 Daniel just joined the team and he was an amazing Slack champion. 30:52 We've seen Randy come through that pipeline as well. 30:58 Meg is now an instructor at Treehouse. 31:03 There's just so many cool examples of that. 31:06 Actually, Liz, who is running this conference, 31:09 she came in through a role at apprenticeship, 31:12 I'm sorry on that on an apprenticeship team, not having experienced doing that. 31:15 And now she's doing amazing things and we're seeing these things work. 31:20 Now is it perfect the Treehouse? 31:23 No, and we're small as well. 31:25 We're about 45-50 people but my vision is that we continue 31:27 use apprenticeship to diversify the team and build our pipeline. 31:32 Now, we don't do internships. 31:37 I'm kind of against internships because I feel that, it should lead to a job. 31:40 And so an apprenticeship leads to a paid job and internship, 31:46 there's no job at the end. 31:49 Internships can be great, they're often unpaid, which I don't think is equitable. 31:51 We don't have different, we have no location now. 31:57 Treehouse has officially gone 100% remote because of the pandemic. 32:01 We're actually the studio team has built out these amazing home 32:07 studio kits that our teachers are gonna start using, or 32:12 eventually gonna walk away from this studio and be completely remote. 32:16 I'm really excited about the future of that. 32:21 So we're hiring, 100% remote right now. 32:24 I have never actually met Toni, our director of learning, in person. 32:27 [LAUGH] She and I had a lot of Zoom calls and a lot of Slack messages, but 32:31 I've literally never met her. 32:35 We obviously will do that once the pandemic dies down. 32:37 I haven't met Kirsten either, our director of HR. 32:41 So it's kinda funny how we live in a world now where you can 32:43 sometimes never meet your own employees, which is fun. 32:48 How do we apply for our apprenticeships? 32:53 Joseph asked this. 32:54 Well, what we did is we open sourced our apprenticeship playbook. 32:56 So, we're gonna launch this site that explains how 33:00 companies can use the apprenticeship program at their own company. 33:03 And then what we'll start doing is seeing companies opening up apprenticeships into 33:08 it is about to do this. 33:12 And some other companies we're hoping are about to launch that. 33:13 Apprenticeships are still new. 33:17 And I would say that they're not very common in tech, 33:18 but we're seeing more of them. 33:22 And I would start googling around for 33:24 apprenticeship programs in tech and apply through those channels. 33:27 Okay, question from Samantha, how do you keep your confidence 33:32 up when other students seem to be learning faster than you? 33:37 This is a good question. 33:41 I literally feel this as a CEO, 33:43 I see other CEOs that are ahead of me that are my age or start at the same time. 33:46 I think we all feel this. 33:51 This is basically a form of imposter syndrome. 33:53 And you have to never want to remind yourself that everybody feels this way. 33:56 So if you perceive other students are learning faster than you, 34:01 they are literally looking at other students and 34:05 feeling that they're not good enough in some other way. 34:08 And everybody feels it so that's thing one. 34:11 Thing two do is remind yourself of how far you've come, right? 34:14 So every skill that you've learned, remind yourself that there are millions of 34:18 other people in the world that haven't even learned that yet, right? 34:23 So you've taken a step that's already brought you closer to your goal, 34:27 there's a lot of other people that haven't even done that. 34:30 So just remind yourself that is impressive and that you should be proud of that. 34:33 And the biggest thing is not quitting, right? 34:40 So what ends up separating most people from getting a job or not getting a job is 34:43 being willing able to march through that long marathon of learning and applying. 34:49 And really what we end up separating is not quitting. 34:55 It's not the speed like that. 34:57 Don't let speed be how you're measuring yourself, it should be measure 34:59 yourself on consistency and grit and did you quit or not? 35:03 If you haven't quit, then you're winning. 35:07 That's a good question, Samantha. 35:09 Thank you. 35:10 From Alleli I think I'm saying that right. 35:12 Can you advise some books that had a strong impact on your life? 35:16 [COUGH] You bet. 35:20 So, my mom made me read how to win friends and influence people. 35:21 And I thought it was the dumbest book ever when I was in high school. 35:26 And I thought it seemed evil winning friends and influencing people. 35:31 And it turns out the concepts in that book are timeless and 35:36 they are extremely important. 35:40 If you can really figure out how to help people and 35:43 figure out what they want, the world opens up. 35:47 I would strongly advise, there's a master class by Chris Voss 35:50 on negotiating, that sounds kind of scary and aggressive. 35:56 But actually what when he teaches mirroring, it can change your life. 36:00 So I would encourage you take that course. 36:07 A couple other books that have changed my life, The New Jim Crow, as a white man. 36:10 And someone who's very privileged, I think understanding the system and 36:17 what's really going on has really, really changed my life. 36:21 So those are a couple, I would advise. 36:25 How did you come up? 36:31 Hubert asked. How did you come up with the name we 36:32 talked about that Treehouse. 36:34 Next is a question from Christopher. 36:37 Crisp said my dream is to build my own startup, creating a service or 36:40 product that everyone in the right market needs. 36:45 Thank you. 36:49 Amazing Patrick just brought me water. 36:50 [LAUGH] Thank you. 36:52 I totally need it. 36:53 My throat is getting really dry. 36:54 Thank you. 36:55 That's like heaven. 36:58 Thank you, okay? 37:00 All right, so Chris said my dream is to build my own startup creating a service or 37:02 product that everyone in the right market needs. 37:06 What are your challenges as CEO and founder. 37:09 This is a great question. 37:12 So I was actually discussing this with another friend of mine. 37:13 He's launching a site that teaches how to do photography and video. 37:18 And I said that the hardest thing about launching a company is, 37:25 being scared to start because you want to be perfect. 37:30 And so what I would encourage you to do is do basic market research testing. 37:33 So what you can do is ask some friends around you, this is the business. 37:40 I'm thinking about launching this service. 37:45 I'm going to launch what do you think? 37:46 Get some basic feedback, and then try to launch the most simple, 37:49 It's gonna be almost embarrassingly simple version of your idea. 37:53 So when I look back at think vitamine membership when we launched it, 37:58 it's almost embarrassing how simple it was. 38:02 Nick and Jim sat in front of a white sheet, and taught. 38:04 It was hard to do it, but looking at what Treehouse is now, 38:10 it's really, really simple. 38:13 So just get your first idea out into the wild as quick as you can and 38:15 see if anybody will pay you for it. 38:21 You can just paralyze yourself by waiting till you think it's perfect. 38:24 And then you launch it turns out, nobody wants it or your price is wrong. 38:29 So I would encourage you get it into market, 38:34 try to get someone to pay you and then adapt. 38:38 So I think that would be my first advice. 38:41 [COUGH] Question from Joel. 38:43 Do you know of or have any programs to help new Bootcamp Grads, 38:47 Treehouse Grads land that first job. 38:52 So, Joel, the multiple sessions that we've done at this 38:55 festival are a great place to start. 39:00 Excuse me, hopefully you're a Treehouse student cuz then you will have access to 39:03 all the videos. 39:07 If you aren't, you can always sign up for 39:08 our seven day free trial to get those videos. 39:10 I would say start there. 39:13 Watch Grant session, watch the Q&A that grant and I did. 39:15 And then watch the bonus session we did yesterday with Ansanelli Jeremy and 39:19 grant myself. 39:23 That will give you a really good playbook on on how to get 39:24 that first job after you finish a bootcamp or a tech degree. 39:29 All right, what I talked about with building your own experience at 39:34 the beginning of these session applies as well. 39:39 If you follow that playbook that will get you really far. 39:42 All right, okay, question from Oliver, is a cross platform 39:47 course such as React Native flutter, coming to Treehouse? 39:52 Maybe, stay tuned, we understand there's a massive desire for 39:57 cross platform mobile development. 40:01 And so stay tuned. 40:04 Naomi said, how long does it take to finish a tech degree? 40:07 If you're studying about two hours a day, it'll take around 40 weeks, 40:10 40 to 45 weeks depending on which tech degree, but that's roughly what it takes. 40:15 You could, of course, go faster. 40:20 We've seen people finish them in three months if they're learning full time. 40:22 Okay, question from. 40:28 A long time ago, there was a store. 40:30 Are there any plans and bring them back the Treehouse merchandise store? 40:32 Would love to represent Treehouse with a hoodie or stickers for example. 40:36 Everyone, thank you. 40:39 Thank you for wanting to do that. 40:40 I love that. 40:42 We're trying to focus and simplify our lives right now during the pandemic. 40:43 And I don't think a store is in our future in the near future. 40:48 There's just so many things to do, but we do have some extra merch lying arounds. 40:53 So if you're really passionate about it, hit, 40:59 you just email me ryan@teamtreehouse.com and I'll try to make that happen. 41:02 So thanks for asking. 41:08 All right, to question, how does the logo connect to Treehouse? 41:10 What is up with the frog hands? 41:16 [LAUGH] Well, 41:17 I believe Tyson Ross is one of our early designers designed our Treehouse logo. 41:18 I think, someone can correct me if I'm wrong. 41:24 And we just thought, a tree, I think it's a tree frog. 41:27 We thought that would just be kind of a fun way to represent the forest, 41:32 tree houses, and it's kind of cute. 41:38 So that's where the frog came from. 41:41 We used to have a mascot named Mike the Frog, if any of you remember that. 41:43 You should pop in the chat if anyone remembers Mike the Frog. 41:48 And [LAUGH] he was cute, 41:52 he was actually voiced by the wife of one of our amazing employees. 41:54 But in the end, we thought maybe it was a bit too Sesame Street, I don't know. 41:58 So Mike the Frog is no more. 42:02 All right, this is such good questions y'all. 42:05 Thank you. 42:08 We're running out of time, I think, but I'll just keep going. 42:09 How tough is the junior market right now? 42:12 Is it a bad time to enter the market entry level? 42:15 Leighton asked that question, so. 42:18 It's impossible to time the market, right? 42:22 So I would worry less about whether right now is a good time, and 42:25 I would focus on your process, right? 42:29 So this has come up a couple times. 42:32 So let me just outline what I think the process is for 42:35 getting a job as an entry level developer. 42:38 I'll try to march through this really quick just as a refresher. 42:41 So you need to do the what I talked about first about building your experience, 42:44 right? 42:50 So as you're learning, start building sites for things you're passionate about. 42:50 Get your first $50 site or $50 app for a friend, 42:55 then get $100 app and do 200, 300, 400. 42:59 Try to get to the point where you're having somebody pay you $500 plus for 43:03 a project. 43:08 Then you have a list of projects that are paid, you're finishing up your 43:09 curriculum as you go, and then you start to feel ready to apply for jobs, right? 43:14 And a lot of people have asked when are you ready to apply for jobs? 43:20 The answer is you will never feel ready. 43:23 You will always feel like you're not good enough. 43:25 But I would say you're ready to start applying once you finish your tech degree 43:28 if you're a tech degree student or once you finish your track in Treehouse, 43:32 you're definitely ready for a junior level role at that point. 43:37 So then what you do is you identify up to 100 companies you wanna work for. 43:41 So find companies with missions that you're aligned with. 43:46 Find companies in your local area or are open to remote hiring, 43:49 which is a lot of companies now and put those 100 companies on a list. 43:54 And then what you start doing is a lot of detective work. 43:59 You start looking for who are five people at each one of these companies that 44:03 you wanna become friends with. 44:08 If you are trying to be a software engineer, look for 44:10 a engineering manager or a junior engineer that recently got hired. 44:14 You wanna find those two types of people. 44:19 If you're UX design, find a design manager, 44:21 a UX manager or a UX designer, right? 44:25 Ideally entry level, so 44:28 you're gonna identify five people at each of those hundred companies. 44:29 That's 500 people, okay? 44:33 So then you've got a list of 500 people and you start doing detective work. 44:36 Get their LinkedIn profile URL, try to find them on Twitter, 44:40 Instagram, Twitch, Tik Tok, any social network, try to find them. 44:45 Try to find their email, which is hard. 44:52 And then what you do is you run a process. 44:55 Each one of those 500 people, 44:58 you should be prepared to contact them 13 times, why 13? 45:01 Most people give up after about three tries, and they don't get a reply and 45:06 they give up. 45:11 It actually takes up to 13 attempts to get someone to reply to you. 45:12 How do you get someone to reply to you without being annoying? 45:17 You basically find a genuine compliment for that person. 45:22 And when you connect on LinkedIn, don't say, I wanna work at your company. 45:27 You say something like, hey, Ryan, I noticed that you made 45:31 a strong statement about Black Lives Matter as a company. 45:36 That's amazing, thank you for leading like that. 45:40 Something, a genuine compliment, right? 45:43 I'm much more likely to see that LinkedIn connection and click accept, right? 45:45 So come up with a genuine compliment. 45:50 If they're not on LinkedIn, do that on Twitter, not on Twitter, 45:53 do it on Instagram, right? 45:55 So find a way to get on their radar. 45:56 They may or may not reply. 45:58 They may or may not answer. 46:00 Then step two, what you do is contact them on 46:01 a different channel with another genuine compliment, right? 46:04 And you're just being non stop about getting on their radar. 46:08 And then what you have to do is accept, probably, 46:15 one out of three of them will end up replying, right? 46:18 So that 500 people, you end up getting 33% of them to reply, right? 46:21 And then they've replied, and 46:26 then you keep building that relationship using mirroring like I talked about. 46:28 So you could say something like you seem really passionate about this topic so 46:31 can you tell me more about that, right? 46:36 You're just trying to get them to engage by giving them genuine compliments and 46:39 then you will get maybe 10% of them to reply. 46:43 So it's a funnel and 46:46 you end up with an actual friend at a company you wanna work for. 46:48 And then you say to them, you know what, I'm probably gonna apply for 46:53 a job at some point at your company. 46:56 I just wanna give you a heads up. 46:58 And then most likely, they'll say, I like you, this is awesome. 47:00 Let me know when you apply and I'll tell the hiring manager. 47:04 And that's how you use the system to get the job, not by applying cold. 47:07 So it's a process. 47:12 It's super hard work. 47:14 It'll take you six months to a year to find that job. 47:16 You'll have 100 companies on your list and 47:20 you'll end up working at one of them, right? 47:23 So prepare yourself that 99% of the companies you wanna work for 47:25 say no, and that one of them will. 47:30 So that's it. 47:33 Samantha was kind of talking about that as long as you don't quit and 47:35 you run that process, you will get a job. 47:39 You just have to not give up and give yourself enough time to do it. 47:41 Okay, we've got time for a few more. 47:45 Sip this amazing water. 47:50 Okay, all right. 47:52 Tim said do you think Treehouse will start a CS fundamentals course, 47:58 computer science fundamentals course, or an interview prep course that focuses 48:01 on things like algorithms, Big O, and interview questions? 48:06 Maybe, stay tuned. 48:09 We know that this is a very important thing to specifically cover. 48:12 We do have a couple computer science fundamentals courses, by the way, but 48:16 we are definitely thinking about digging in and doing even more. 48:19 So stay tuned. 48:22 No promises yet but it's something that I believe strongly in. 48:23 Computer science fundamentals is important. 48:27 You don't need a computer science degree. 48:29 But understanding the basics of computer science is very important, and 48:32 I would recommend that you start digging in. 48:36 There is a CS50 course that's free, right? 48:39 So Harvard offers CS50. 48:42 You can take it on edX, I definitely recommend you enroll in that as well. 48:44 Question from Adasuwa, besides cost, 48:49 what benefits does Treehouse have over coding boot camps? 48:53 The amazing thing about the tech degree is that it is self paced, and 48:59 you can pause at anytime and it is a fraction of the cost of a boot camp. 49:03 The tech degree costs $199 a month, and most people finish in 6 to 12 months. 49:08 So you're talking about $2,400 over 12 months compared 49:14 to $14-15, 20,000 for a lot of boot camps. 49:19 And I believe our curriculum is actually more effective. 49:24 We've taught 650,000 people. 49:29 We've been doing this for a decade. 49:31 This is the one thing I brag about, we're really good at teaching, right? 49:33 So I think you're getting a boot camp education for a fraction of the cost from 49:36 home that's self paced that you can pause anytime or you can cancel, right? 49:41 So we're not gonna lock you in to some sort of long contract. 49:46 Thanks for asking that. 49:50 All right, a question from Ryan. 49:52 Hey, Ryan. 49:56 What is the growth plan for Treehouse's curriculum over the next five years as we 49:58 move into a more data driven intensive environment online data science analytics? 50:02 I- I have exciting news. 50:07 We are building a data analytics tech degree. 50:09 So we absolutely believe that data analysis, machine learning, 50:14 data science, etc., is very important. 50:18 And we are excited that we're working on that, we're gonna be releasing that. 50:21 Our curriculum plan is to teach where the jobs are, right? 50:26 So we're gonna continue to go where that is. 50:29 All right, I can see that Tony's out trying, thank you. 50:34 How did you do marketing for Treehouse? 50:39 A question from Thomas. 50:41 So as I explained, we launched initially doing in-person classes. 50:43 We use think vitamin.com as a content marketing platform. 50:48 And then we launched Treehouse, which was called think about 50:52 a membership on top of that, to tell everybody about it. 50:56 Bo in the marketing team at Treehouse really 51:00 strongly believes in providing value to people. 51:03 And that's how marketing is best done. 51:07 So we do a lot of content marketing trying to offer as much value as we can. 51:10 All right, Cecil asked, will Treehouse ever expand on its design coursework, 51:17 such as a UX track? 51:22 Well, we have a UX tech degree. 51:23 So please check that UX tech degree out. 51:25 We also have a UX track so 51:29 make sure to check that out if you're a courses student. 51:30 Thanks for asking that. 51:34 Another question, how did you make Treehouse so 51:38 successful since it's hard to get websites started and get popular? 51:41 Well, we've been doing this for 10 years, [LAUGH] so it hasn't been quick, 51:44 it hasn't been easy. 51:48 I think the way we become successful is by offering something that's valuable, truly 51:49 working our guts out to serve you all students and then just not quitting, so. 51:54 A question from Jim, does Treehouse have a tech degree scholarship fund set up where 52:01 alumni can donate? 52:05 Wow, that's an amazing idea, Jim. 52:05 We don't, and I love that idea. 52:08 Gosh, so please email me, ryan@teamtreehouse.com and 52:10 we can talk about that. 52:14 Thank you so much for having that idea. 52:16 So we have I think about seven minutes left. 52:19 And so I will take some more questions and then we'll wind this down. 52:23 Okay, question from Pac. 52:29 Hey Ryan, does Treehouse offer career support for 52:31 companies outside of USA particularly in Hong Kong or Singapore? 52:34 We don't, I wish that we could do everything and 52:38 support everybody in that way. 52:41 Unfortunately, just don't have enough people to do that well. 52:42 However, if you take the tech degree or courses and 52:46 you follow that framework that I just laid out, 52:49 you will have a lot of the tools that you need to get that first job. 52:52 So please just follow that playbook and don't quit, 52:56 and that will set you apart from the majority of folks. 53:01 Question from Devin, does Team Treehouse have any good courses or 53:05 programs for more advanced developers? 53:10 We don't, we focus on beginners. 53:13 We really care about empowering people to learn how to code and 53:16 then get into the industry. 53:19 Our belief is that most mid to senior level engineers are just gonna be 53:21 googling. 53:25 [LAUGH] So, the most effective way once you 53:26 are an engineer is to Google, go to Stack Overflow. 53:30 And that's the way you'll learn. 53:35 That's our strategy. 53:38 Question, what is Treehouse doing to implement diverse hiring practices? 53:42 A lot and I wanna give props to my team for working so hard on this. 53:45 We have a strategy that is a two-pronged approach. 53:50 So number one, we embrace apprenticeship whenever we can, right? 53:54 We wanna create new talent and onboard that talent onto the team. 53:57 And we source talent from communities that have been traditionally boxed out of tech. 54:02 That's one thing we do. 54:06 [COUGH] The second thing we do is focus a lot on building an inclusive culture. 54:07 So as soon as people come into the company, we wanna make sure they stay, 54:14 that they feel included, that they belong. 54:18 And we work very hard at training our team, 54:20 measuring our inclusivity and ensuring that we do everything we 54:24 can to retain amazing talent once that talent stays. 54:28 A third thing that we're always doing is if we are advertising for 54:32 a role that is mid to senior, then what we do is we proactively 54:37 recruit from communities where we have under representation. 54:42 So if we know of this team, we don't have enough people from this community. 54:47 We specifically go to that community and try to get as many applications as 54:51 we can from that community to give us a better chance of hiring from that group. 54:56 We do not make decisions based on people's protected classes clearly, 55:01 cuz that is illegal and wrong. 55:06 But we're doing everything we can to proactively diversify our team. 55:09 We're not perfect, but we're making great progress. 55:14 So more questions, okay. 55:18 [LAUGH] Oliver says Black Sabbath or Led Zeppelin? 55:22 Just gonna have to say Black Sabbath. 55:27 So there you go, hence the shirt, which is really thanks to Kenny's friend Dave. 55:28 So thanks Dave if you're watching. 55:34 [LAUGH] Al right, question from Laney. 55:36 Do you have students who start just taking courses, the $25 a month plan to get 55:39 a feel, find out if it's enjoyable and then move on to the tech degree. 55:44 Would that student move through the tech degree faster due to in place knowledge 55:48 obtained through Treehouse already? 55:52 Absolutely, this is a wonderful way to put your feet in the water and 55:54 see if this is what you wanna do. 55:58 Start out on our $25 a month product, take some of the courses, get a feel for 56:00 it and then upgrade to tech degree. 56:05 You will already have completed those courses in tech degree so 56:07 you can move a little bit faster. 56:10 And then you have all the all the slack support, 56:12 you have projects that are graded, you have additional courses. 56:15 So that's a really great way to see if the tech degree is right for you. 56:19 We do everything we can not to lock you into something that you don't want. 56:24 Question from Kenny. 56:30 Do you still have time to play video games just like in your childhood? 56:30 No, not at all. 56:34 [LAUGH] Between being a dad and being a husband and 56:35 being a CEO, I have very little free time. 56:39 But I miss games a lot. 56:43 My kids play a lot of games so 56:45 any Sea of Thieves fans out there, my kids will love you. 56:48 Cavlin said I learned about Treehouse to Code Louisville boot camp. 56:53 You still partner with boot camps around the country? 56:57 Code Louisville has been amazing. 57:00 I wanna give major props to Emily who really makes that program happen at 57:02 Treehouse and for all of you students that have come through Code Louisville. 57:06 I can't make any promises if we're gonna have more programs like that. 57:10 I would love us to. 57:13 But at the moment, Code Lou is one of our amazing partners and 57:16 we hope that relationship continues. 57:21 Got probably time for one more. 57:24 Question from Hannah, will Treehouse be doing more tech festivals? 57:30 I hope so. 57:35 This has been so much fun. 57:36 I just can't believe how energy giving it is for 57:38 us at Treehouse to see you all, to interact with you, 57:42 to hear your stories and also give you encouragement and empower you. 57:46 This has been a blast for me and the team. 57:52 And I really hope that we can do more of these. 57:55 We don't know yet cuz this is our first one. 58:00 But we're blown away that over 7000 of you signed up and and 58:02 have been attending the session. 58:06 So I really hope so. 58:08 With that, I think we actually got through all your questions so that was amazing. 58:12 And thanks to you, Patrick, for the water, appreciate that. 58:16 So I think with that, I'm gonna end this session and 58:19 just I wanna thank you from the bottom of my heart for being with us this week. 58:23 And for all of you that are enrolled in Treehouse, I love you. 58:29 I'm thankful for you, all of you that are thinking about enrolling to Treehouse, 58:33 we hope to meet you and be a part of your success. 58:38 And one last thank you to my amazing team for making this possible. 58:41 This has been an absolute joy and 58:45 I hope that we can continue to be a part of your journey. 58:47 So thank you for coming, and we'll talk to you soon. 58:51 Take care. 58:54