1 00:00:03,983 --> 00:00:05,683 Hey, everybody, welcome back. 2 00:00:05,683 --> 00:00:09,347 I really enjoyed Dylan's session. 3 00:00:09,347 --> 00:00:11,622 Thank you so much, Dylan, for talking about mentoring. 4 00:00:11,622 --> 00:00:13,957 Sharnesia, thank you so much for 5 00:00:13,957 --> 00:00:18,637 talking about how to be effective at work and what you need to know. 6 00:00:18,637 --> 00:00:22,015 It's been a joy to work with both of you at Mailchimp. 7 00:00:22,015 --> 00:00:25,570 So, welcome to my ask me anything session. 8 00:00:25,570 --> 00:00:29,828 I'm here to answer all your questions. 9 00:00:29,828 --> 00:00:33,376 Anything about the journey we've had at Treehouse. 10 00:00:33,376 --> 00:00:35,906 Why I started Treehouse? 11 00:00:35,906 --> 00:00:37,082 How I learned how to code? 12 00:00:37,082 --> 00:00:38,279 How to get a job? 13 00:00:38,279 --> 00:00:43,527 There's a bazillion questions y'all can ask and I would be happy to answer them. 14 00:00:43,527 --> 00:00:47,705 It's just been so much fun to be at this festival with you all. 15 00:00:47,705 --> 00:00:51,396 I love this community and I love our students and 16 00:00:51,396 --> 00:00:54,081 it's why I come to work every day. 17 00:00:54,081 --> 00:00:57,702 So, I'm ready to take some questions. 18 00:00:57,702 --> 00:00:59,597 I noticed there was one already. 19 00:00:59,597 --> 00:01:03,219 So we'll just keep going and keep them coming in, 20 00:01:03,219 --> 00:01:08,581 pump those questions in, I'll take as many as I can during this session. 21 00:01:08,581 --> 00:01:13,712 We had a question that said, I love how the Treehouse culture and curriculum is so 22 00:01:13,712 --> 00:01:19,161 welcoming to people of all professional experiences and educational backgrounds. 23 00:01:19,161 --> 00:01:22,808 Was this a choice you made when you created this company or 24 00:01:22,808 --> 00:01:25,394 did it evolve into this business model? 25 00:01:25,394 --> 00:01:28,757 So, I'll tell you how Treehouse came to be, 26 00:01:28,757 --> 00:01:33,284 cuz that is a part of the story and then how we evolved as well. 27 00:01:33,284 --> 00:01:39,204 So I grew up in Colorado Springs, Colorado, was born in 1977. 28 00:01:39,204 --> 00:01:43,426 And I had a wonderful childhood. 29 00:01:43,426 --> 00:01:44,965 I was extremely privileged. 30 00:01:44,965 --> 00:01:48,891 I didn't know that at the time that I had two parents. 31 00:01:48,891 --> 00:01:51,237 I had a safe home and plenty to eat. 32 00:01:51,237 --> 00:01:53,590 I'm a white man. 33 00:01:53,590 --> 00:01:55,744 I'm cisgender, I'm able bodied. 34 00:01:55,744 --> 00:01:57,948 I'm pretty much as privileged as you can get. 35 00:01:57,948 --> 00:02:01,204 I didn't know that when I was growing up, and 36 00:02:01,204 --> 00:02:04,910 another thing that was amazing is I had a computer. 37 00:02:04,910 --> 00:02:09,724 So, my dad was just on always getting the latest gadgets. 38 00:02:09,724 --> 00:02:18,435 And so I saw a Apple IIe show up in our house in the 80s and it just blew my mind. 39 00:02:18,435 --> 00:02:22,350 I had a green screen and there was a command prompt and 40 00:02:22,350 --> 00:02:26,895 you could type things into it and I just thought this is cool. 41 00:02:26,895 --> 00:02:30,032 And, as I grew up, I played more and more computer games. 42 00:02:30,032 --> 00:02:33,728 Shout out to anyone who knows a King's Quest is, and 43 00:02:33,728 --> 00:02:38,027 eventually I was walking down the hallway in my high school. 44 00:02:38,027 --> 00:02:42,540 And my math teacher, Miss Bruce walked up to me and she said, hey Ryan, 45 00:02:42,540 --> 00:02:46,920 have you ever thought about taking our computer programming class? 46 00:02:46,920 --> 00:02:49,744 And I was like, what's that? 47 00:02:49,744 --> 00:02:52,879 I love my computer, but I don't know what programming is. 48 00:02:52,879 --> 00:02:57,729 And she said, It's when you tell the computer what to do, and it does it. 49 00:02:57,729 --> 00:03:01,147 And my mind just went, [SOUND] [LAUGH] and I thought that, wow, 50 00:03:01,147 --> 00:03:03,974 sounds amazing, that sounds like a superpower. 51 00:03:03,974 --> 00:03:09,682 And so, I enrolled in our Turbo Pascal class and it was just so much fun. 52 00:03:09,682 --> 00:03:14,540 I realized you could create anything that you could imagine, and so 53 00:03:14,540 --> 00:03:16,338 I fell in love with that. 54 00:03:16,338 --> 00:03:19,868 I actually grew up in a very religious household. 55 00:03:19,868 --> 00:03:26,151 So, I was actually planning on being a pastor someday. 56 00:03:26,151 --> 00:03:29,619 And as I went on that journey, I fell in love with computers and 57 00:03:29,619 --> 00:03:34,117 I thought I'll figure out the pastor thing maybe I'll go to seminary someday. 58 00:03:34,117 --> 00:03:38,159 But for now, why don't I go to college and study computer science? 59 00:03:38,159 --> 00:03:42,090 Computer science was was really becoming cutting edge at that point, 60 00:03:42,090 --> 00:03:46,835 the Internet was happening, and I enrolled so I went to Colorado State University. 61 00:03:46,835 --> 00:03:51,358 Again, just looking back, I was so privileged, my parents paid for 62 00:03:51,358 --> 00:03:53,154 my university education. 63 00:03:53,154 --> 00:03:54,594 I had no student debt. 64 00:03:54,594 --> 00:03:58,448 And I was just very well taken care of. 65 00:03:58,448 --> 00:04:01,007 So I went to Colorado State got my computer science degree. 66 00:04:01,007 --> 00:04:05,267 But as I was going through it, it was just kind of shocking to me how 67 00:04:05,267 --> 00:04:09,000 disconnected my curriculum was from what I wanted to do. 68 00:04:09,000 --> 00:04:12,981 So we were learning about assembly language, 69 00:04:12,981 --> 00:04:16,664 which is literally like, zeros and ones. 70 00:04:16,664 --> 00:04:22,911 And we were learning lisp, which is this bonkers recursive language. 71 00:04:22,911 --> 00:04:26,518 It was just so disconnected from what we want to do, which was build web apps. 72 00:04:26,518 --> 00:04:28,371 We wanted to create things. 73 00:04:28,371 --> 00:04:32,780 And I learned C++ and then I learned how to design aircraft systems. 74 00:04:32,780 --> 00:04:36,511 And I just thought, well, this is great, but how do I use this stuff? 75 00:04:36,511 --> 00:04:39,123 And so eventually, I graduated. 76 00:04:39,123 --> 00:04:42,968 And there's kind of a whole side story to this, but 77 00:04:42,968 --> 00:04:47,806 I decided I wanted an adventure, and I decided to move England. 78 00:04:47,806 --> 00:04:51,658 So I moved to England with my computer science degree in tow. 79 00:04:51,658 --> 00:04:57,252 And, my first job interview required a computer science degree. 80 00:04:57,252 --> 00:05:01,977 And so I went to the interview, and the interview went well and then I said, 81 00:05:01,977 --> 00:05:03,330 what do we code here? 82 00:05:03,330 --> 00:05:04,912 What do we do? 83 00:05:04,912 --> 00:05:08,939 And they said, we write in a language called ColdFusion, and 84 00:05:08,939 --> 00:05:10,494 I had never heard of it. 85 00:05:10,494 --> 00:05:13,018 [LAUGH] I was like, what was that? 86 00:05:13,018 --> 00:05:16,461 And they said, buy a book, you'll be fine. 87 00:05:16,461 --> 00:05:19,707 And I felt like time stopped at that moment. 88 00:05:19,707 --> 00:05:21,504 I thought, wait, what, 89 00:05:21,504 --> 00:05:26,018 I'm supposed to just buy a book that I can get it Barnes and Noble. 90 00:05:26,018 --> 00:05:29,156 I have a Computer Science degree like doesn't that matter? 91 00:05:29,156 --> 00:05:33,833 And it became clear to me that my computer Science degree was like this secret 92 00:05:33,833 --> 00:05:35,380 key that I had access to. 93 00:05:35,380 --> 00:05:38,496 That I was given a job because of but, actually, 94 00:05:38,496 --> 00:05:41,619 the skills I learned was not at all what I needed. 95 00:05:41,619 --> 00:05:43,339 And, I felt like that was wrong. 96 00:05:43,339 --> 00:05:48,398 There's a deep part of me that was bothered by that the morality of that,. 97 00:05:48,398 --> 00:05:52,600 That I had access to this special computer science program because I grew up in 98 00:05:52,600 --> 00:05:53,452 a certain way. 99 00:05:53,452 --> 00:05:56,382 And that's why I was getting the job instead of I 100 00:05:56,382 --> 00:05:58,220 got the job cuz I worked hard. 101 00:05:58,220 --> 00:06:01,359 And at that moment, I thought I wanna change this. 102 00:06:01,359 --> 00:06:02,657 This system seems broken. 103 00:06:02,657 --> 00:06:08,518 So that the idea for Treehouse actually began that seed was planted, 104 00:06:08,518 --> 00:06:10,951 that was the year 2000. 105 00:06:10,951 --> 00:06:15,325 And I went on to get the job as a software developer and 106 00:06:15,325 --> 00:06:20,216 I was a web developer for several years, until 2004. 107 00:06:20,216 --> 00:06:22,778 And I wasn't gonna stay in England but 108 00:06:22,778 --> 00:06:26,874 I met this amazing woman now my wife and my co-founder Gill. 109 00:06:26,874 --> 00:06:30,075 If you're watching, I love you, and stayed in England. 110 00:06:30,075 --> 00:06:34,960 And then I realized, I don't wanna be a software engineer anymore, 111 00:06:34,960 --> 00:06:37,078 I wanna start my own company. 112 00:06:37,078 --> 00:06:40,022 I built a simple piece of software called FlightDeck. 113 00:06:40,022 --> 00:06:44,032 It was basically drops in before drops and existed. 114 00:06:44,032 --> 00:06:46,473 I got one company to buy a license of it. 115 00:06:46,473 --> 00:06:51,384 And I quit my job, and Gill and I got married, and that was my first company. 116 00:06:51,384 --> 00:06:56,934 But this backgrounds, passion and desire to teach people how to code and 117 00:06:56,934 --> 00:07:02,852 empower them to get a job without a computer science degree was always there. 118 00:07:02,852 --> 00:07:06,484 And so, it bothered me still. 119 00:07:06,484 --> 00:07:10,684 I was learning everything by Googling, by reading O'Reilly books, 120 00:07:10,684 --> 00:07:13,471 by copying and pasting other people's code. 121 00:07:13,471 --> 00:07:16,307 And I just thought, what I'm doing is so 122 00:07:16,307 --> 00:07:21,326 disconnected from my computer science degree, it's unbelievable. 123 00:07:21,326 --> 00:07:27,829 And, so what we started to do is let's teach people how to code in person. 124 00:07:27,829 --> 00:07:29,613 So we did a workshop and it was, 125 00:07:29,613 --> 00:07:32,714 I think called how to build an Enterprise PHP web app. 126 00:07:32,714 --> 00:07:37,468 We did in London, I think we had 30 attendees and I thought, 127 00:07:37,468 --> 00:07:39,304 this is what I wanna do. 128 00:07:39,304 --> 00:07:41,721 I wanna teach people how to code. 129 00:07:41,721 --> 00:07:45,505 I wanna empower people so that they can change their life. 130 00:07:45,505 --> 00:07:47,115 And so that was in 2006. 131 00:07:47,115 --> 00:07:48,972 And again, this passion for 132 00:07:48,972 --> 00:07:53,785 empowering people by teaching them was growing and growing and growing. 133 00:07:53,785 --> 00:07:59,070 And eventually, these small one day workshops 134 00:07:59,070 --> 00:08:04,631 turned into these massive conferences, right? 135 00:08:04,631 --> 00:08:07,846 So we had 2,000 people at one of our conferences in London and 136 00:08:07,846 --> 00:08:10,723 we're teaching how to code and we are empowering people. 137 00:08:10,723 --> 00:08:15,812 But then after doing that from 2006 to kinda 2010, 138 00:08:15,812 --> 00:08:21,737 I just got really frustrated with the in-person conference model. 139 00:08:21,737 --> 00:08:25,700 I thought we're doing the same thing over. 140 00:08:25,700 --> 00:08:30,200 People can come to these conferences if they are wealthy, if they can fly on 141 00:08:30,200 --> 00:08:34,856 planes, if they can get hotel rooms, if they can afford to be away from work. 142 00:08:34,856 --> 00:08:38,843 Where basically empowering people, again, that have privilege, 143 00:08:38,843 --> 00:08:40,705 like this is not what I wanna do. 144 00:08:40,705 --> 00:08:45,578 I want to truly empower people that don't have access to opportunity. 145 00:08:45,578 --> 00:08:49,115 And so Gill and I were talking one day and I just said, there's 146 00:08:49,115 --> 00:08:53,826 got to be a way that we can make this more affordable and accessible and effective. 147 00:08:53,826 --> 00:08:56,766 And she said, why don't we do an online school, 148 00:08:56,766 --> 00:09:00,008 like why don't we just put all of our lessons online. 149 00:09:00,008 --> 00:09:02,996 And in 2010, that was pretty cutting edge. 150 00:09:02,996 --> 00:09:05,091 No one was really doing that yet. 151 00:09:05,091 --> 00:09:09,744 And so, I tweeted out, is there anybody out there that is good on camera that 152 00:09:09,744 --> 00:09:11,868 wants to teach coding and design? 153 00:09:11,868 --> 00:09:15,220 And Nick Pettit and Jim hoskin said, us, we wanna do that. 154 00:09:15,220 --> 00:09:18,246 And so, that was how we started Treehouse. 155 00:09:18,246 --> 00:09:23,374 So back in 2010, we launched and it was very simple video lessons for 156 00:09:23,374 --> 00:09:25,995 coding, video lessons for design. 157 00:09:25,995 --> 00:09:27,967 And it took off. 158 00:09:27,967 --> 00:09:33,424 And so we just worked really hard to keep going on this. 159 00:09:33,424 --> 00:09:38,827 But the mission of the company was to empower people to learn how to code so 160 00:09:38,827 --> 00:09:41,052 they could get a job, right? 161 00:09:41,052 --> 00:09:44,159 To be able to go around the computer science degree requirement. 162 00:09:44,159 --> 00:09:48,828 And so we've just worked very, very hard at that for ten years, right? 163 00:09:48,828 --> 00:09:52,073 So we've been fortunate to teach 650,000 people now. 164 00:09:52,073 --> 00:09:56,832 And, I think in 2016, 165 00:09:56,832 --> 00:10:02,256 I really began to wake up to the systematic barriers 166 00:10:02,256 --> 00:10:08,957 that are in place around the world that hold people out of tech. 167 00:10:08,957 --> 00:10:12,941 It's much deeper than I had thought, than I had realized. 168 00:10:12,941 --> 00:10:16,431 I started reading books like The New Jim Crow and 169 00:10:16,431 --> 00:10:19,318 I watched documentaries like 13th. 170 00:10:19,318 --> 00:10:23,237 And I just really started to understand how much privilege I had and 171 00:10:23,237 --> 00:10:25,131 how that affected everything. 172 00:10:25,131 --> 00:10:30,095 So then we decided to go further and think about how can we work on 173 00:10:30,095 --> 00:10:34,231 apprenticeship and how can we empower more people. 174 00:10:34,231 --> 00:10:39,529 And we've just done more and more on that and so many people have been a part 175 00:10:39,529 --> 00:10:45,194 of that, we've partnered with the boys and girls clubs, dress for success. 176 00:10:45,194 --> 00:10:49,995 Amazing people like Sharnicia and Eric Muntz at MailChimp, and there is just been 177 00:10:49,995 --> 00:10:54,391 such a massive team effort to start to open up these new pathways into tech. 178 00:10:54,391 --> 00:11:00,375 So I would say equity diversity inclusion, empowering people is at 179 00:11:00,375 --> 00:11:05,836 the core of treehouse, that is really why we all come to work. 180 00:11:05,836 --> 00:11:09,621 And we are just gonna keep going on that. 181 00:11:09,621 --> 00:11:12,533 We think that it's important for people to see so 182 00:11:12,533 --> 00:11:15,245 they can believe that they can do it, right? 183 00:11:15,245 --> 00:11:19,870 So we wanna spotlight more people of color and more women in tech so 184 00:11:19,870 --> 00:11:23,500 people can see those people and say I could do that. 185 00:11:23,500 --> 00:11:28,526 And Dalin is literally a living example of that, and he's so inspirational to me. 186 00:11:28,526 --> 00:11:33,864 So that's kind of the long story of how do we get here. 187 00:11:33,864 --> 00:11:38,950 I'm not perfect, treehouse is not perfect, we're still trying to diversify our team. 188 00:11:38,950 --> 00:11:42,275 There's still a lot we have to learn, there's still a lot I have to learn. 189 00:11:42,275 --> 00:11:46,647 But I'm just so thankful to have been on this journey, and 190 00:11:46,647 --> 00:11:50,232 to work with everyone that we have worked with. 191 00:11:50,232 --> 00:11:55,957 So that is a very long answer to how do we evolve into this. 192 00:11:55,957 --> 00:12:02,612 So we're excited about just continuing to serve people, and empower our students. 193 00:12:02,612 --> 00:12:06,335 I love my job, that's so much fun. 194 00:12:06,335 --> 00:12:10,457 Another question, what about freelance contract work for treehouse graduates? 195 00:12:10,457 --> 00:12:12,370 Is that a realistic route for 196 00:12:12,370 --> 00:12:17,013 someone interested in working remotely not as a full time employee? 197 00:12:17,013 --> 00:12:22,479 So freelance contract work is absolutely a great idea. 198 00:12:22,479 --> 00:12:26,710 So if you are going through our tech degree or going through our courses and 199 00:12:26,710 --> 00:12:29,383 you finish, here's what I would recommend. 200 00:12:29,383 --> 00:12:34,184 We talked a lot about this in the how to get a job without a computer science 201 00:12:34,184 --> 00:12:35,209 degree panel. 202 00:12:35,209 --> 00:12:38,267 This is the basic playbook you should follow. 203 00:12:38,267 --> 00:12:40,685 So as you're going through your coursework, 204 00:12:40,685 --> 00:12:44,156 you should begin to build something with what you're learning and 205 00:12:44,156 --> 00:12:47,207 you should pick a subject that you're passionate about. 206 00:12:47,207 --> 00:12:52,849 So whether that's golfing, or floristry, or sewing, 207 00:12:52,849 --> 00:12:59,201 or hiking, or music, anything that you are passionate about. 208 00:12:59,201 --> 00:13:02,651 You should start building a project that's based on that. 209 00:13:02,651 --> 00:13:05,979 And then what I mean is a website, build a website or 210 00:13:05,979 --> 00:13:10,793 build an app that has something to do with what you're passionate about. 211 00:13:10,793 --> 00:13:13,918 And then you can start to build a community around that, 212 00:13:13,918 --> 00:13:16,856 you could say that you're passionate about piano. 213 00:13:16,856 --> 00:13:19,393 You could build a website for 214 00:13:19,393 --> 00:13:24,693 people who are passionate about piano in your city or town. 215 00:13:24,693 --> 00:13:28,329 And then you actually have a real thing that you've built, right? 216 00:13:28,329 --> 00:13:32,517 So as you're learning, you launch your first real thing, 217 00:13:32,517 --> 00:13:37,976 you buy your first domain, Ilovepiano.com it's probably not available. 218 00:13:37,976 --> 00:13:39,585 And then you build a website around that and 219 00:13:39,585 --> 00:13:41,563 all sudden you have a real thing that you've built. 220 00:13:41,563 --> 00:13:43,733 You didn't get paid to do it, that's okay. 221 00:13:43,733 --> 00:13:48,775 And then what you do is you take that and then you go to people in your 222 00:13:48,775 --> 00:13:54,100 community that own businesses or run organizations like a church and 223 00:13:54,100 --> 00:13:59,547 you say to them, hey, I would love to rebuild or launch your website. 224 00:13:59,547 --> 00:14:02,076 I'll do it for 50 bucks and 225 00:14:02,076 --> 00:14:08,097 just charge a tiny bit amount of money and then build that with them. 226 00:14:08,097 --> 00:14:11,138 And then all sudden you have your first paid project. 227 00:14:11,138 --> 00:14:13,763 And so Jeremy Smith and Anthonela talked about this. 228 00:14:13,763 --> 00:14:17,596 This is essentially creating your experience, 229 00:14:17,596 --> 00:14:21,520 your booting up your own experience as you go, and 230 00:14:21,520 --> 00:14:26,110 then you launch that second website that you got paid for. 231 00:14:26,110 --> 00:14:30,129 And then you do it again, so then you go to another small business or community or 232 00:14:30,129 --> 00:14:33,071 organization and say, here are these two things I built, 233 00:14:33,071 --> 00:14:34,943 I would like to build one for you too. 234 00:14:34,943 --> 00:14:39,780 I'll charge you $100 and you charge a little bit more money and you launch 235 00:14:39,780 --> 00:14:44,711 another project and you just keep doing this while you're learning, right? 236 00:14:44,711 --> 00:14:47,157 So don't wait until you finish learning to do this, 237 00:14:47,157 --> 00:14:49,445 do this as soon as you have the ability to do this. 238 00:14:49,445 --> 00:14:54,332 And all of a sudden, by the time you finish your tech degree you finish 239 00:14:54,332 --> 00:14:58,731 your coursework you have three, four, five real projects. 240 00:14:58,731 --> 00:15:02,092 Four of them plus that you've been paid to build. 241 00:15:02,092 --> 00:15:06,820 And all sudden, you are a software engineer, you are a designer, 242 00:15:06,820 --> 00:15:09,537 because you've been paid to do that. 243 00:15:09,537 --> 00:15:13,134 And that's the freelance kind of boot up model you can use. 244 00:15:13,134 --> 00:15:17,963 And then on your resume, you can list these real world projects with real 245 00:15:17,963 --> 00:15:22,652 domain names that are alive on the web that you've been paid to build. 246 00:15:22,652 --> 00:15:25,955 That also shows a tremendous amount of productivity, 247 00:15:25,955 --> 00:15:30,426 creativity, a hard work, and those are all skills that people look for. 248 00:15:30,426 --> 00:15:34,177 So I would highly encourage you to try to make that happen. 249 00:15:34,177 --> 00:15:36,685 Now, remember, it takes time to do this, right? 250 00:15:36,685 --> 00:15:40,916 We're talking about, you're gonna be learning for six to 12 months, 251 00:15:40,916 --> 00:15:44,681 then you're gonna parallel process this creation of projects. 252 00:15:44,681 --> 00:15:47,923 That's gonna be six to 12 months of work, so 253 00:15:47,923 --> 00:15:53,261 you're preparing yourself for a kind of a two year journey to get into tech. 254 00:15:53,261 --> 00:15:57,244 And in a minute I can talk about how do you get a job 255 00:15:57,244 --> 00:16:01,132 once you're ready to start applying as well. 256 00:16:01,132 --> 00:16:06,139 But that should sum up how I think you can use freelance 257 00:16:06,139 --> 00:16:11,489 contract work to really get yourself into the industry. 258 00:16:11,489 --> 00:16:15,626 Another question, do you have an idea of an average time length that 259 00:16:15,626 --> 00:16:19,707 usually takes for an individual to finish a tech degree course?. 260 00:16:19,707 --> 00:16:25,481 So this depends 100% on how much time you wanna dedicate to it per day. 261 00:16:25,481 --> 00:16:30,536 It also depends on there's a lot of things people are juggling, 262 00:16:30,536 --> 00:16:36,635 especially with a pandemic childcare, education, stress, lack of work. 263 00:16:36,635 --> 00:16:39,821 It's a pretty stressful time right now for everybody. 264 00:16:39,821 --> 00:16:44,122 First of all, I would encourage you just start with hundred days of code, right?. 265 00:16:44,122 --> 00:16:47,876 Dedicate 30 minutes a day, just get started, do that for 100 days. 266 00:16:47,876 --> 00:16:52,299 And then if you're really enjoying it and you're building up that 267 00:16:52,299 --> 00:16:57,208 discipline then you could think about moving to an hour to two hours a day. 268 00:16:57,208 --> 00:16:59,372 If you dedicate one to two hours a day, 269 00:16:59,372 --> 00:17:03,580 you're gonna finish a tech degree typically in about 40 to 50 weeks. 270 00:17:03,580 --> 00:17:08,457 So it's important that you set that mental framework and 271 00:17:08,457 --> 00:17:12,316 commit, hey, this is a long term thing, but 272 00:17:12,316 --> 00:17:16,499 as long as I don't quit, then no one can stop me. 273 00:17:16,499 --> 00:17:21,622 So this is why we started code crew, we wanna empower you all to sign up for 274 00:17:21,622 --> 00:17:26,327 a cohort group model where we go through the tech degree together. 275 00:17:26,327 --> 00:17:29,813 So that's gonna be our first time ever doing that where there's 100 of us and 276 00:17:29,813 --> 00:17:31,426 Tony and I are gonna be in that group, 277 00:17:31,426 --> 00:17:34,051 where we go through the full stack JavaScript type degree. 278 00:17:34,051 --> 00:17:40,263 Week by week, over about 40, 50 weeks, so really excited about that. 279 00:17:41,831 --> 00:17:44,795 Question, why do you think it is so difficult for 280 00:17:44,795 --> 00:17:48,353 a lot of companies to embrace inclusivity and diversity? 281 00:17:48,353 --> 00:17:54,624 I think the kind of blunt answer is that most companies are run by white men. 282 00:17:54,624 --> 00:17:59,010 And us white men we live in our privilege bubble and 283 00:17:59,010 --> 00:18:05,070 we don't have to think about diversity inclusion as sad as that is and 284 00:18:05,070 --> 00:18:07,697 that's the brutal reality. 285 00:18:07,697 --> 00:18:14,985 We live in a world that has systematic racism and sexism built into it. 286 00:18:14,985 --> 00:18:19,665 So, I think though we're seeing more people wake up and 287 00:18:19,665 --> 00:18:23,749 realize this is something that is a moral issue, 288 00:18:23,749 --> 00:18:27,251 this is not something that's nice to do. 289 00:18:27,251 --> 00:18:32,453 And we're beginning to see more progress, which is so encouraging. 290 00:18:32,453 --> 00:18:36,942 There is obviously a tremendous amount of work to do still, but 291 00:18:36,942 --> 00:18:40,515 we're beginning to see it and that gives me hope. 292 00:18:40,515 --> 00:18:44,662 Another question, can you talk a little bit about 293 00:18:44,662 --> 00:18:49,711 the process of creating a course what comes up with the idea? 294 00:18:49,711 --> 00:18:51,135 How many people create the content? 295 00:18:51,135 --> 00:18:53,141 What kind of review process is there? 296 00:18:53,141 --> 00:18:54,854 All that sort of stuff, thanks. 297 00:18:54,854 --> 00:18:59,373 So Tony should really answer this question cuz she is our director of learning and 298 00:18:59,373 --> 00:19:02,171 she's in charge of our course creation process. 299 00:19:02,171 --> 00:19:04,802 I'll just tell you at treehouse, 300 00:19:04,802 --> 00:19:09,436 we are passionate about creating high quality curriculum. 301 00:19:09,436 --> 00:19:12,634 We're passionate about creating curriculum that is for beginners. 302 00:19:12,634 --> 00:19:15,793 We're passionate about that being video based so 303 00:19:15,793 --> 00:19:19,211 it's as easy as possible to to understand and learn. 304 00:19:19,211 --> 00:19:24,131 It's hard, right, I mean, we have a whole team dedicated to this. 305 00:19:24,131 --> 00:19:27,868 We have a tremendous amount of technical expertise behind 306 00:19:27,868 --> 00:19:32,226 creating high quality video with motion, with great curriculum. 307 00:19:32,226 --> 00:19:35,785 [LAUGH] It's a lot, and I'm not gonna do it justice. 308 00:19:35,785 --> 00:19:41,030 Tony is the best person to answer that question, but thanks for asking. 309 00:19:41,030 --> 00:19:44,677 I'm sorry, I can't be more helpful in that. 310 00:19:44,677 --> 00:19:51,113 Another question, what is the best way to stand out from the crowd on your resume? 311 00:19:51,113 --> 00:19:53,637 So it's actually a trick, Question, 312 00:19:53,637 --> 00:19:58,691 because actually the best way to stand out is to not rely on your resume at all. 313 00:19:58,691 --> 00:20:04,238 The best thing to do is to network your way to the company that you wanna 314 00:20:04,238 --> 00:20:10,277 work for, so that by the time you submit your resume they already know you. 315 00:20:10,277 --> 00:20:14,729 Everybody, this is the blunt truth about the way hiring works, 316 00:20:14,729 --> 00:20:20,020 most people get hired by people they know, or people that are recommended. 317 00:20:20,020 --> 00:20:22,899 So you really have to work with that system. 318 00:20:22,899 --> 00:20:25,473 All because this is directly related. 319 00:20:25,473 --> 00:20:29,963 Well, let me answer the question first, in a simple way, 320 00:20:29,963 --> 00:20:35,111 the way to stand out is to show that you are creative and proactive. 321 00:20:35,111 --> 00:20:39,107 The way to do that is to do what I said at the beginning where I said, 322 00:20:39,107 --> 00:20:42,537 pick something you're passionate about, anything. 323 00:20:42,537 --> 00:20:44,663 It literally doesn't matter, can be tattoos. 324 00:20:44,663 --> 00:20:51,185 And build a site and a community around that and be the center of that community. 325 00:20:51,185 --> 00:20:56,502 And work on that for six months to a year, and then you can say I created 326 00:20:56,502 --> 00:21:01,388 this community for people that are passionate about tattoos. 327 00:21:01,388 --> 00:21:07,218 Here's the site I built, here's how we're supporting all of our members and 328 00:21:07,218 --> 00:21:09,352 it's my passion projects. 329 00:21:09,352 --> 00:21:12,092 And put that I think at the top of your resume, 330 00:21:12,092 --> 00:21:16,801 because everyone is assuming you know how to code, or you know how to design. 331 00:21:16,801 --> 00:21:21,293 But what they are looking for, is are you proactive? 332 00:21:21,293 --> 00:21:24,334 Are you creative? Are you good with people? 333 00:21:24,334 --> 00:21:28,821 So I would put things like that at the top and that will instantly make you jump out. 334 00:21:28,821 --> 00:21:32,614 The other thing that Grant, and Anthonella, and 335 00:21:32,614 --> 00:21:38,317 Jeremy talked about is do not shotgun your resume, it just doesn't work. 336 00:21:38,317 --> 00:21:44,913 You really to take time to identify the 100 companies you wanna work for, 337 00:21:44,913 --> 00:21:50,595 and specifically target each one, which is hard, but it works. 338 00:21:50,595 --> 00:21:55,337 I've had people send me boxes with a resume in it with a tremendous 339 00:21:55,337 --> 00:22:00,357 amount of work showing, hey, here is why I wanna work at treehouse. 340 00:22:00,357 --> 00:22:05,196 Here is what I am prepared to do, and of course that gets my attention. 341 00:22:05,196 --> 00:22:07,274 So there is a lot of things you can do to stand out from the crowd. 342 00:22:09,762 --> 00:22:12,018 All right, these are great questions, you all, thank you. 343 00:22:12,018 --> 00:22:14,907 I'm gonna keep going. 344 00:22:14,907 --> 00:22:17,512 Another question we have is this. 345 00:22:17,512 --> 00:22:22,268 I have no CS skills outside of using computers to answer emails or 346 00:22:22,268 --> 00:22:24,391 use applications for work. 347 00:22:24,391 --> 00:22:27,277 How do I prepare to take classes on treehouse? 348 00:22:27,277 --> 00:22:31,569 Is there any foundational information I need to seek before I start? 349 00:22:31,569 --> 00:22:34,119 I'm currently following free options online but 350 00:22:34,119 --> 00:22:36,737 concerning something more formalized, thanks. 351 00:22:36,737 --> 00:22:39,482 This is exactly why I started treehouse. 352 00:22:39,482 --> 00:22:44,274 I wanted to build a school that assumes you have no knowledge of 353 00:22:44,274 --> 00:22:47,963 coding that you have no technical experience, 354 00:22:47,963 --> 00:22:53,978 that you've never written a line of code ever, or even know what that means. 355 00:22:53,978 --> 00:22:57,813 That's exactly why we built treehouse and we want it to be friendly for you. 356 00:22:57,813 --> 00:23:02,636 So I would encourage you, if you're thinking about treehouse sign up to either 357 00:23:02,636 --> 00:23:05,887 our our courses product which is only $25 a month. 358 00:23:05,887 --> 00:23:08,641 Or if you know that you want an outcome and 359 00:23:08,641 --> 00:23:13,022 you're looking to switch careers or add a skill to your resume, 360 00:23:13,022 --> 00:23:17,501 then the tech degree is a great option too, it is more expensive. 361 00:23:17,501 --> 00:23:21,210 So you can sign up for a courses product and and you can take one of our tracks. 362 00:23:21,210 --> 00:23:25,428 Our tracks are guided literally in a straight line, take this course and 363 00:23:25,428 --> 00:23:29,943 then take this course and take that course, we take all of the guesswork out. 364 00:23:29,943 --> 00:23:33,064 And we're gonna assume that you have no knowledge at all. 365 00:23:33,064 --> 00:23:36,823 Most of our students who now have jobs started actually in that place. 366 00:23:36,823 --> 00:23:40,728 Never even knowing what a software engineer was or 367 00:23:40,728 --> 00:23:42,967 UX designer, so try us out. 368 00:23:42,967 --> 00:23:47,776 Let me know, we have a great community to support you as you learn. 369 00:23:49,991 --> 00:23:51,513 All right, more great questions. 370 00:23:51,513 --> 00:23:54,345 What are some of your favorite programming languages? 371 00:23:54,345 --> 00:23:56,527 Not c++. 372 00:23:56,527 --> 00:23:59,508 [LAUGH] That's how I learned in college and I hate it. 373 00:23:59,508 --> 00:24:03,382 But my favorite language is Python at the moment. 374 00:24:03,382 --> 00:24:08,920 I just love Python is it just kind of a beautiful language, 375 00:24:08,920 --> 00:24:12,431 it's almost written like English. 376 00:24:12,431 --> 00:24:16,813 And it's just fun to program in, it's also very powerful. 377 00:24:16,813 --> 00:24:20,650 It doesn't require semicolons at the end of lines. 378 00:24:20,650 --> 00:24:22,136 [LAUGH] There's a lot to it that's really nice. 379 00:24:22,136 --> 00:24:25,572 So I just completed our Python tech degree, which was really fun. 380 00:24:25,572 --> 00:24:28,341 But now I'm learning our full stack JavaScript type degree. 381 00:24:28,341 --> 00:24:30,601 And Gil and the other teachers and 382 00:24:30,601 --> 00:24:34,982 in those courses are making that really easy to learn, as well. 383 00:24:34,982 --> 00:24:40,627 I'm really excited to learn React and a couple of the modern frameworks as well. 384 00:24:40,627 --> 00:24:42,868 But Python is great, I love it. 385 00:24:42,868 --> 00:24:47,510 It's also very powerful if you wanna go into data analysis as well. 386 00:24:48,576 --> 00:24:51,107 Okay, more questions. 387 00:24:51,107 --> 00:24:54,935 And if you all that are compiling the questions if you wanna put people's 388 00:24:54,935 --> 00:24:58,215 names next to these, it's kind of fun for me to say who asked. 389 00:24:58,215 --> 00:25:00,321 That would be great. 390 00:25:00,321 --> 00:25:03,385 Next up, how do you come up with the name treehouse? 391 00:25:03,385 --> 00:25:08,187 And why did you decide to get teamtreehouse and not treehouse.com? 392 00:25:08,187 --> 00:25:11,067 Well, that's a sore point. 393 00:25:11,067 --> 00:25:13,937 [LAUGH] So the funny thing is that actually 394 00:25:13,937 --> 00:25:18,511 treehouse started off being called this hilariously bad name. 395 00:25:18,511 --> 00:25:21,456 Think vitamin membership. 396 00:25:21,456 --> 00:25:26,827 [LAUGH] So Jill and I launched a website called thinkvitamin.com 397 00:25:26,827 --> 00:25:33,008 which was a blog with great content for web designers and web developers. 398 00:25:33,008 --> 00:25:38,378 How-to articles, inspirational stories, and it got to be very popular. 399 00:25:38,378 --> 00:25:41,899 It's one of the most popular web design, web development sites on the Internet. 400 00:25:41,899 --> 00:25:46,494 And so when we launched what is now treehouse, we thought, well, 401 00:25:46,494 --> 00:25:52,250 let's use all that brand value that we've built up, and attach the product to it. 402 00:25:52,250 --> 00:25:54,162 So it was thinkvitamin.com, 403 00:25:54,162 --> 00:25:57,991 so we just did think vitamin.com forward slash membership. 404 00:25:57,991 --> 00:26:02,969 And then, at some point, I think I was listening to a podcast and someone said, 405 00:26:02,969 --> 00:26:07,669 you should always run your brand name through what's called the bar test. 406 00:26:07,669 --> 00:26:09,208 And I was like, what's the bar test? 407 00:26:09,208 --> 00:26:11,269 And they said, imagine you're sitting at a bar, 408 00:26:11,269 --> 00:26:13,484 just impossible to imagine now during the pandemic. 409 00:26:13,484 --> 00:26:17,558 But imagine you're sitting in a bar next to somebody, it's really loud, 410 00:26:17,558 --> 00:26:21,180 there's glasses clinking, there's music in the background and 411 00:26:21,180 --> 00:26:23,391 you tell them what your company name is. 412 00:26:23,391 --> 00:26:26,435 Will they be able to understand it the first time? 413 00:26:26,435 --> 00:26:29,590 [LAUGH] Just imagine myself sitting in a bar going, 414 00:26:29,590 --> 00:26:32,227 it's called think vitamin membership. 415 00:26:32,227 --> 00:26:34,676 [LAUGH] And them just going, what? 416 00:26:34,676 --> 00:26:39,776 [LAUGH] So, I was like, we gotta change our name, this is ridiculous. 417 00:26:39,776 --> 00:26:42,603 So at that point, Jill and I, we started, 418 00:26:42,603 --> 00:26:46,621 thinking about ideas and comeing up with all sorts of ideas. 419 00:26:46,621 --> 00:26:51,434 And she's a trained journalist, and so she taught me how to do mind mapping. 420 00:26:51,434 --> 00:26:55,782 And so we started coming up with words and then words that attached to that. 421 00:26:55,782 --> 00:26:57,915 And she just said, why not treehouse? 422 00:26:57,915 --> 00:27:01,641 And we immediately googled it, there's got to be something called treehouse. 423 00:27:01,641 --> 00:27:03,593 And there really was nothing, I mean, 424 00:27:03,593 --> 00:27:06,681 there was a Canadian TV channel called treehouse, for kids. 425 00:27:06,681 --> 00:27:09,621 There was treehouse.com that was already taken, 426 00:27:09,621 --> 00:27:13,799 which was discouraging, but it was this enterprise software company. 427 00:27:13,799 --> 00:27:17,211 And so I thought, okay, there's not going to be brand confusion. 428 00:27:17,211 --> 00:27:21,420 And so we locked it in treehouse. 429 00:27:21,420 --> 00:27:25,314 We couldn't get treehouse Inc, either, so we went with Treehouse Island Inc, 430 00:27:25,314 --> 00:27:27,044 which is our technical legal name. 431 00:27:27,044 --> 00:27:32,023 And we were looking for domain names that I contacted treehouse.com and 432 00:27:32,023 --> 00:27:35,708 they said it's a million dollars if you wanna buy it. 433 00:27:35,708 --> 00:27:40,951 [LAUGH] We don't have $1 million, so I guess we can't get treehouse.com. 434 00:27:40,951 --> 00:27:46,721 And we just thought Team Treehouse, it's fun, it implies being a team. 435 00:27:46,721 --> 00:27:51,257 It's very people friendly until we went teamtreehouse.com which is funny cuz now 436 00:27:51,257 --> 00:27:53,737 everyone thinks our name is teamtreehouse. 437 00:27:53,737 --> 00:27:57,353 It's cool if you wanna cause Team Treehouse, I love it. 438 00:27:57,353 --> 00:28:01,073 We're also treehouse, so whatever works for you. 439 00:28:01,073 --> 00:28:06,434 The actual treehouse though came from this idea like a treehouse is a magical place, 440 00:28:06,434 --> 00:28:06,971 right? 441 00:28:06,971 --> 00:28:12,524 It's somewhere in your childhood that feels safe, it feels creative, 442 00:28:12,524 --> 00:28:17,632 it's filed with wonder and makes you think anything is possible. 443 00:28:17,632 --> 00:28:21,734 So we just thought treehouse was just a lovely name. 444 00:28:21,734 --> 00:28:22,813 Fun question. 445 00:28:22,813 --> 00:28:26,300 Okay, more great questions. 446 00:28:26,300 --> 00:28:30,399 Do you feel like you ultimately were a teacher who learned how to code or 447 00:28:30,399 --> 00:28:33,121 that coding brought you the idea of teaching? 448 00:28:33,121 --> 00:28:38,078 I feel like I'm a teacher at heart, but I think that it 449 00:28:38,078 --> 00:28:43,271 was brought out more so by following my other passions. 450 00:28:43,271 --> 00:28:50,774 I think I view coding as a tool that can change your life. 451 00:28:50,774 --> 00:28:55,243 It's a tool that you can use to create anything and so 452 00:28:55,243 --> 00:29:00,529 I'm really passionate about empowering people to create and 453 00:29:00,529 --> 00:29:02,674 to empower themselves. 454 00:29:02,674 --> 00:29:06,446 And code is just the most powerful thing you can do now. 455 00:29:06,446 --> 00:29:11,348 If you understand technology, you know how to control it, 456 00:29:11,348 --> 00:29:15,079 you really can wield things into existence. 457 00:29:15,079 --> 00:29:19,721 And build wealth for your family, you can help people, and so 458 00:29:19,721 --> 00:29:25,718 I think what is really behind teaching people how to code is empowering people. 459 00:29:25,718 --> 00:29:28,245 Coding is just the tool that we use, or 460 00:29:28,245 --> 00:29:32,986 UX design is just the tool, but it's really about empowering people. 461 00:29:32,986 --> 00:29:36,325 Teaching is fun, if you identify as a teacher, 462 00:29:36,325 --> 00:29:40,664 I'm sure that one of the reasons you love it is cuz it's just so 463 00:29:40,664 --> 00:29:44,520 fun to see somebody learn something, and then use it. 464 00:29:44,520 --> 00:29:48,942 It's just wonderful, if you love teaching I always encourage people, 465 00:29:48,942 --> 00:29:51,051 there's YouTube now, right?. 466 00:29:51,051 --> 00:29:54,413 So start a YouTube channel and I've started teaching, right?. 467 00:29:54,413 --> 00:29:55,695 See how it goes right?. 468 00:29:55,695 --> 00:29:57,760 That's a powerful way to get into teaching. 469 00:29:57,760 --> 00:30:03,603 If you're interested in that, more great questions, question from Alexandra. 470 00:30:03,603 --> 00:30:06,250 Do you hire juniors or interns? 471 00:30:06,250 --> 00:30:07,261 How big is your team? 472 00:30:07,261 --> 00:30:09,895 Do you have different locations? 473 00:30:09,895 --> 00:30:14,643 We absolutely hire juniors we actually are working on continuing 474 00:30:14,643 --> 00:30:18,024 to build out our own apprenticeship program. 475 00:30:18,024 --> 00:30:22,483 So a couple amazing folks have already come in through that pipeline. 476 00:30:22,483 --> 00:30:26,664 What we look to do is empower people to learn through a tech degree, 477 00:30:26,664 --> 00:30:30,488 and then onboard them as apprentices and then they scale up. 478 00:30:30,488 --> 00:30:32,380 Carlos is an amazing example. 479 00:30:32,380 --> 00:30:35,656 He's on our software engineering team. 480 00:30:35,656 --> 00:30:37,162 He came through our apprenticeship program. 481 00:30:37,162 --> 00:30:42,561 We also have amazing people that come in through our tech degree, 482 00:30:42,561 --> 00:30:46,497 get involved in Slack become Slack champions. 483 00:30:46,497 --> 00:30:49,283 And then they apply for a job at Treehouse, and 484 00:30:49,283 --> 00:30:52,801 we've seen a lot of amazing people go through that route. 485 00:30:52,801 --> 00:30:58,512 Daniel just joined the team and he was an amazing Slack champion. 486 00:30:58,512 --> 00:31:03,486 We've seen Randy come through that pipeline as well. 487 00:31:03,486 --> 00:31:06,607 Meg is now an instructor at Treehouse. 488 00:31:06,607 --> 00:31:09,513 There's just so many cool examples of that. 489 00:31:09,513 --> 00:31:12,609 Actually, Liz, who is running this conference, 490 00:31:12,609 --> 00:31:15,417 she came in through a role at apprenticeship, 491 00:31:15,417 --> 00:31:20,463 I'm sorry on that on an apprenticeship team, not having experienced doing that. 492 00:31:20,463 --> 00:31:23,939 And now she's doing amazing things and we're seeing these things work. 493 00:31:23,939 --> 00:31:25,204 Now is it perfect the Treehouse? 494 00:31:25,204 --> 00:31:27,191 No, and we're small as well. 495 00:31:27,191 --> 00:31:32,348 We're about 45-50 people but my vision is that we continue 496 00:31:32,348 --> 00:31:37,708 use apprenticeship to diversify the team and build our pipeline. 497 00:31:37,708 --> 00:31:40,080 Now, we don't do internships. 498 00:31:40,080 --> 00:31:46,369 I'm kind of against internships because I feel that, it should lead to a job. 499 00:31:46,369 --> 00:31:49,598 And so an apprenticeship leads to a paid job and internship, 500 00:31:49,598 --> 00:31:51,067 there's no job at the end. 501 00:31:51,067 --> 00:31:57,691 Internships can be great, they're often unpaid, which I don't think is equitable. 502 00:31:57,691 --> 00:32:01,906 We don't have different, we have no location now. 503 00:32:01,906 --> 00:32:07,510 Treehouse has officially gone 100% remote because of the pandemic. 504 00:32:07,510 --> 00:32:12,300 We're actually the studio team has built out these amazing home 505 00:32:12,300 --> 00:32:16,470 studio kits that our teachers are gonna start using, or 506 00:32:16,470 --> 00:32:21,807 eventually gonna walk away from this studio and be completely remote. 507 00:32:21,807 --> 00:32:24,223 I'm really excited about the future of that. 508 00:32:24,223 --> 00:32:27,915 So we're hiring, 100% remote right now. 509 00:32:27,915 --> 00:32:31,452 I have never actually met Toni, our director of learning, in person. 510 00:32:31,452 --> 00:32:35,568 [LAUGH] She and I had a lot of Zoom calls and a lot of Slack messages, but 511 00:32:35,568 --> 00:32:37,531 I've literally never met her. 512 00:32:37,531 --> 00:32:41,536 We obviously will do that once the pandemic dies down. 513 00:32:41,536 --> 00:32:43,994 I haven't met Kirsten either, our director of HR. 514 00:32:43,994 --> 00:32:48,505 So it's kinda funny how we live in a world now where you can 515 00:32:48,505 --> 00:32:53,037 sometimes never meet your own employees, which is fun. 516 00:32:53,037 --> 00:32:54,265 How do we apply for our apprenticeships? 517 00:32:54,265 --> 00:32:56,557 Joseph asked this. 518 00:32:56,557 --> 00:33:00,203 Well, what we did is we open sourced our apprenticeship playbook. 519 00:33:00,203 --> 00:33:03,567 So, we're gonna launch this site that explains how 520 00:33:03,567 --> 00:33:08,006 companies can use the apprenticeship program at their own company. 521 00:33:08,006 --> 00:33:12,369 And then what we'll start doing is seeing companies opening up apprenticeships into 522 00:33:12,369 --> 00:33:13,530 it is about to do this. 523 00:33:13,530 --> 00:33:17,085 And some other companies we're hoping are about to launch that. 524 00:33:17,085 --> 00:33:18,477 Apprenticeships are still new. 525 00:33:18,477 --> 00:33:22,110 And I would say that they're not very common in tech, 526 00:33:22,110 --> 00:33:24,307 but we're seeing more of them. 527 00:33:24,307 --> 00:33:27,109 And I would start googling around for 528 00:33:27,109 --> 00:33:32,368 apprenticeship programs in tech and apply through those channels. 529 00:33:32,368 --> 00:33:37,151 Okay, question from Samantha, how do you keep your confidence 530 00:33:37,151 --> 00:33:41,595 up when other students seem to be learning faster than you? 531 00:33:41,595 --> 00:33:43,855 This is a good question. 532 00:33:43,855 --> 00:33:46,221 I literally feel this as a CEO, 533 00:33:46,221 --> 00:33:51,962 I see other CEOs that are ahead of me that are my age or start at the same time. 534 00:33:51,962 --> 00:33:53,597 I think we all feel this. 535 00:33:53,597 --> 00:33:56,625 This is basically a form of imposter syndrome. 536 00:33:56,625 --> 00:34:01,586 And you have to never want to remind yourself that everybody feels this way. 537 00:34:01,586 --> 00:34:05,258 So if you perceive other students are learning faster than you, 538 00:34:05,258 --> 00:34:08,045 they are literally looking at other students and 539 00:34:08,045 --> 00:34:11,318 feeling that they're not good enough in some other way. 540 00:34:11,318 --> 00:34:14,963 And everybody feels it so that's thing one. 541 00:34:14,963 --> 00:34:18,315 Thing two do is remind yourself of how far you've come, right? 542 00:34:18,315 --> 00:34:23,128 So every skill that you've learned, remind yourself that there are millions of 543 00:34:23,128 --> 00:34:27,391 other people in the world that haven't even learned that yet, right? 544 00:34:27,391 --> 00:34:30,910 So you've taken a step that's already brought you closer to your goal, 545 00:34:30,910 --> 00:34:33,867 there's a lot of other people that haven't even done that. 546 00:34:33,867 --> 00:34:40,957 So just remind yourself that is impressive and that you should be proud of that. 547 00:34:40,957 --> 00:34:43,720 And the biggest thing is not quitting, right? 548 00:34:43,720 --> 00:34:49,547 So what ends up separating most people from getting a job or not getting a job is 549 00:34:49,547 --> 00:34:55,751 being willing able to march through that long marathon of learning and applying. 550 00:34:55,751 --> 00:34:57,042 And really what we end up separating is not quitting. 551 00:34:57,042 --> 00:34:59,339 It's not the speed like that. 552 00:34:59,339 --> 00:35:03,851 Don't let speed be how you're measuring yourself, it should be measure 553 00:35:03,851 --> 00:35:07,363 yourself on consistency and grit and did you quit or not? 554 00:35:07,363 --> 00:35:09,624 If you haven't quit, then you're winning. 555 00:35:09,624 --> 00:35:10,790 That's a good question, Samantha. 556 00:35:10,790 --> 00:35:12,105 Thank you. 557 00:35:12,105 --> 00:35:16,928 From Alleli I think I'm saying that right. 558 00:35:16,928 --> 00:35:20,271 Can you advise some books that had a strong impact on your life? 559 00:35:20,271 --> 00:35:21,994 [COUGH] You bet. 560 00:35:21,994 --> 00:35:26,827 So, my mom made me read how to win friends and influence people. 561 00:35:26,827 --> 00:35:31,728 And I thought it was the dumbest book ever when I was in high school. 562 00:35:31,728 --> 00:35:36,491 And I thought it seemed evil winning friends and influencing people. 563 00:35:36,491 --> 00:35:40,975 And it turns out the concepts in that book are timeless and 564 00:35:40,975 --> 00:35:43,507 they are extremely important. 565 00:35:43,507 --> 00:35:47,222 If you can really figure out how to help people and 566 00:35:47,222 --> 00:35:50,856 figure out what they want, the world opens up. 567 00:35:50,856 --> 00:35:56,013 I would strongly advise, there's a master class by Chris Voss 568 00:35:56,013 --> 00:36:00,993 on negotiating, that sounds kind of scary and aggressive. 569 00:36:00,993 --> 00:36:07,062 But actually what when he teaches mirroring, it can change your life. 570 00:36:07,062 --> 00:36:10,680 So I would encourage you take that course. 571 00:36:10,680 --> 00:36:17,303 A couple other books that have changed my life, The New Jim Crow, as a white man. 572 00:36:17,303 --> 00:36:21,931 And someone who's very privileged, I think understanding the system and 573 00:36:21,931 --> 00:36:25,766 what's really going on has really, really changed my life. 574 00:36:25,766 --> 00:36:28,093 So those are a couple, I would advise. 575 00:36:31,431 --> 00:36:32,483 How did you come up? 576 00:36:32,483 --> 00:36:34,983 Hubert asked. How did you come up with the name we 577 00:36:34,983 --> 00:36:37,042 talked about that Treehouse. 578 00:36:37,042 --> 00:36:40,603 Next is a question from Christopher. 579 00:36:40,603 --> 00:36:45,464 Crisp said my dream is to build my own startup, creating a service or 580 00:36:45,464 --> 00:36:49,065 product that everyone in the right market needs. 581 00:36:49,065 --> 00:36:50,057 Thank you. 582 00:36:50,057 --> 00:36:52,197 Amazing Patrick just brought me water. 583 00:36:52,197 --> 00:36:53,955 [LAUGH] Thank you. 584 00:36:53,955 --> 00:36:54,610 I totally need it. 585 00:36:54,610 --> 00:36:55,692 My throat is getting really dry. 586 00:36:55,692 --> 00:36:58,597 Thank you. 587 00:36:58,597 --> 00:37:00,141 That's like heaven. 588 00:37:00,141 --> 00:37:02,369 Thank you, okay? 589 00:37:02,369 --> 00:37:06,504 All right, so Chris said my dream is to build my own startup creating a service or 590 00:37:06,504 --> 00:37:09,123 product that everyone in the right market needs. 591 00:37:09,123 --> 00:37:12,443 What are your challenges as CEO and founder. 592 00:37:12,443 --> 00:37:13,148 This is a great question. 593 00:37:13,148 --> 00:37:18,558 So I was actually discussing this with another friend of mine. 594 00:37:18,558 --> 00:37:25,600 He's launching a site that teaches how to do photography and video. 595 00:37:25,600 --> 00:37:30,132 And I said that the hardest thing about launching a company is, 596 00:37:30,132 --> 00:37:33,991 being scared to start because you want to be perfect. 597 00:37:33,991 --> 00:37:40,017 And so what I would encourage you to do is do basic market research testing. 598 00:37:40,017 --> 00:37:45,157 So what you can do is ask some friends around you, this is the business. 599 00:37:45,157 --> 00:37:46,584 I'm thinking about launching this service. 600 00:37:46,584 --> 00:37:49,240 I'm going to launch what do you think? 601 00:37:49,240 --> 00:37:53,996 Get some basic feedback, and then try to launch the most simple, 602 00:37:53,996 --> 00:37:58,941 It's gonna be almost embarrassingly simple version of your idea. 603 00:37:58,941 --> 00:38:02,465 So when I look back at think vitamine membership when we launched it, 604 00:38:02,465 --> 00:38:04,853 it's almost embarrassing how simple it was. 605 00:38:04,853 --> 00:38:10,057 Nick and Jim sat in front of a white sheet, and taught. 606 00:38:10,057 --> 00:38:13,881 It was hard to do it, but looking at what Treehouse is now, 607 00:38:13,881 --> 00:38:15,996 it's really, really simple. 608 00:38:15,996 --> 00:38:21,474 So just get your first idea out into the wild as quick as you can and 609 00:38:21,474 --> 00:38:24,431 see if anybody will pay you for it. 610 00:38:24,431 --> 00:38:29,498 You can just paralyze yourself by waiting till you think it's perfect. 611 00:38:29,498 --> 00:38:34,858 And then you launch it turns out, nobody wants it or your price is wrong. 612 00:38:34,858 --> 00:38:38,065 So I would encourage you get it into market, 613 00:38:38,065 --> 00:38:41,282 try to get someone to pay you and then adapt. 614 00:38:41,282 --> 00:38:43,913 So I think that would be my first advice. 615 00:38:43,913 --> 00:38:47,311 [COUGH] Question from Joel. 616 00:38:47,311 --> 00:38:52,149 Do you know of or have any programs to help new Bootcamp Grads, 617 00:38:52,149 --> 00:38:55,136 Treehouse Grads land that first job. 618 00:38:55,136 --> 00:39:00,020 So, Joel, the multiple sessions that we've done at this 619 00:39:00,020 --> 00:39:03,119 festival are a great place to start. 620 00:39:03,119 --> 00:39:07,362 Excuse me, hopefully you're a Treehouse student cuz then you will have access to 621 00:39:07,362 --> 00:39:08,236 all the videos. 622 00:39:08,236 --> 00:39:10,640 If you aren't, you can always sign up for 623 00:39:10,640 --> 00:39:13,270 our seven day free trial to get those videos. 624 00:39:13,270 --> 00:39:15,324 I would say start there. 625 00:39:15,324 --> 00:39:19,751 Watch Grant session, watch the Q&A that grant and I did. 626 00:39:19,751 --> 00:39:23,910 And then watch the bonus session we did yesterday with Ansanelli Jeremy and 627 00:39:23,910 --> 00:39:24,776 grant myself. 628 00:39:24,776 --> 00:39:29,341 That will give you a really good playbook on on how to get 629 00:39:29,341 --> 00:39:34,317 that first job after you finish a bootcamp or a tech degree. 630 00:39:34,317 --> 00:39:39,252 All right, what I talked about with building your own experience at 631 00:39:39,252 --> 00:39:42,815 the beginning of these session applies as well. 632 00:39:42,815 --> 00:39:45,661 If you follow that playbook that will get you really far. 633 00:39:47,650 --> 00:39:52,397 All right, okay, question from Oliver, is a cross platform 634 00:39:52,397 --> 00:39:57,071 course such as React Native flutter, coming to Treehouse? 635 00:39:57,071 --> 00:40:01,598 Maybe, stay tuned, we understand there's a massive desire for 636 00:40:01,598 --> 00:40:04,050 cross platform mobile development. 637 00:40:04,050 --> 00:40:07,595 And so stay tuned. 638 00:40:07,595 --> 00:40:10,563 Naomi said, how long does it take to finish a tech degree? 639 00:40:10,563 --> 00:40:15,199 If you're studying about two hours a day, it'll take around 40 weeks, 640 00:40:15,199 --> 00:40:20,588 40 to 45 weeks depending on which tech degree, but that's roughly what it takes. 641 00:40:20,588 --> 00:40:22,395 You could, of course, go faster. 642 00:40:22,395 --> 00:40:25,531 We've seen people finish them in three months if they're learning full time. 643 00:40:28,362 --> 00:40:30,923 Okay, question from. 644 00:40:30,923 --> 00:40:32,873 A long time ago, there was a store. 645 00:40:32,873 --> 00:40:36,354 Are there any plans and bring them back the Treehouse merchandise store? 646 00:40:36,354 --> 00:40:39,763 Would love to represent Treehouse with a hoodie or stickers for example. 647 00:40:39,763 --> 00:40:40,835 Everyone, thank you. 648 00:40:40,835 --> 00:40:42,115 Thank you for wanting to do that. 649 00:40:42,115 --> 00:40:43,539 I love that. 650 00:40:43,539 --> 00:40:48,363 We're trying to focus and simplify our lives right now during the pandemic. 651 00:40:48,363 --> 00:40:53,714 And I don't think a store is in our future in the near future. 652 00:40:53,714 --> 00:40:59,523 There's just so many things to do, but we do have some extra merch lying arounds. 653 00:40:59,523 --> 00:41:02,969 So if you're really passionate about it, hit, 654 00:41:02,969 --> 00:41:08,612 you just email me ryan@teamtreehouse.com and I'll try to make that happen. 655 00:41:08,612 --> 00:41:10,489 So thanks for asking. 656 00:41:10,489 --> 00:41:16,246 All right, to question, how does the logo connect to Treehouse? 657 00:41:16,246 --> 00:41:17,974 What is up with the frog hands? 658 00:41:17,974 --> 00:41:18,947 [LAUGH] Well, 659 00:41:18,947 --> 00:41:24,883 I believe Tyson Ross is one of our early designers designed our Treehouse logo. 660 00:41:24,883 --> 00:41:27,262 I think, someone can correct me if I'm wrong. 661 00:41:27,262 --> 00:41:32,939 And we just thought, a tree, I think it's a tree frog. 662 00:41:32,939 --> 00:41:38,376 We thought that would just be kind of a fun way to represent the forest, 663 00:41:38,376 --> 00:41:41,341 tree houses, and it's kind of cute. 664 00:41:41,341 --> 00:41:43,950 So that's where the frog came from. 665 00:41:43,950 --> 00:41:48,687 We used to have a mascot named Mike the Frog, if any of you remember that. 666 00:41:48,687 --> 00:41:52,837 You should pop in the chat if anyone remembers Mike the Frog. 667 00:41:52,837 --> 00:41:54,224 And [LAUGH] he was cute, 668 00:41:54,224 --> 00:41:58,312 he was actually voiced by the wife of one of our amazing employees. 669 00:41:58,312 --> 00:42:02,586 But in the end, we thought maybe it was a bit too Sesame Street, I don't know. 670 00:42:02,586 --> 00:42:05,267 So Mike the Frog is no more. 671 00:42:05,267 --> 00:42:08,787 All right, this is such good questions y'all. 672 00:42:08,787 --> 00:42:09,297 Thank you. 673 00:42:09,297 --> 00:42:12,587 We're running out of time, I think, but I'll just keep going. 674 00:42:12,587 --> 00:42:15,343 How tough is the junior market right now? 675 00:42:15,343 --> 00:42:18,331 Is it a bad time to enter the market entry level? 676 00:42:18,331 --> 00:42:20,721 Leighton asked that question, so. 677 00:42:22,689 --> 00:42:25,057 It's impossible to time the market, right? 678 00:42:25,057 --> 00:42:29,376 So I would worry less about whether right now is a good time, and 679 00:42:29,376 --> 00:42:32,080 I would focus on your process, right? 680 00:42:32,080 --> 00:42:35,157 So this has come up a couple times. 681 00:42:35,157 --> 00:42:38,574 So let me just outline what I think the process is for 682 00:42:38,574 --> 00:42:41,448 getting a job as an entry level developer. 683 00:42:41,448 --> 00:42:44,871 I'll try to march through this really quick just as a refresher. 684 00:42:44,871 --> 00:42:50,096 So you need to do the what I talked about first about building your experience, 685 00:42:50,096 --> 00:42:50,658 right? 686 00:42:50,658 --> 00:42:55,188 So as you're learning, start building sites for things you're passionate about. 687 00:42:55,188 --> 00:42:59,079 Get your first $50 site or $50 app for a friend, 688 00:42:59,079 --> 00:43:03,157 then get $100 app and do 200, 300, 400. 689 00:43:03,157 --> 00:43:08,291 Try to get to the point where you're having somebody pay you $500 plus for 690 00:43:08,291 --> 00:43:09,084 a project. 691 00:43:09,084 --> 00:43:14,451 Then you have a list of projects that are paid, you're finishing up your 692 00:43:14,451 --> 00:43:20,437 curriculum as you go, and then you start to feel ready to apply for jobs, right? 693 00:43:20,437 --> 00:43:23,767 And a lot of people have asked when are you ready to apply for jobs? 694 00:43:23,767 --> 00:43:25,784 The answer is you will never feel ready. 695 00:43:25,784 --> 00:43:28,279 You will always feel like you're not good enough. 696 00:43:28,279 --> 00:43:32,915 But I would say you're ready to start applying once you finish your tech degree 697 00:43:32,915 --> 00:43:37,412 if you're a tech degree student or once you finish your track in Treehouse, 698 00:43:37,412 --> 00:43:41,226 you're definitely ready for a junior level role at that point. 699 00:43:41,226 --> 00:43:46,433 So then what you do is you identify up to 100 companies you wanna work for. 700 00:43:46,433 --> 00:43:49,914 So find companies with missions that you're aligned with. 701 00:43:49,914 --> 00:43:54,603 Find companies in your local area or are open to remote hiring, 702 00:43:54,603 --> 00:43:59,919 which is a lot of companies now and put those 100 companies on a list. 703 00:43:59,919 --> 00:44:03,896 And then what you start doing is a lot of detective work. 704 00:44:03,896 --> 00:44:08,683 You start looking for who are five people at each one of these companies that 705 00:44:08,683 --> 00:44:10,743 you wanna become friends with. 706 00:44:10,743 --> 00:44:14,414 If you are trying to be a software engineer, look for 707 00:44:14,414 --> 00:44:19,270 a engineering manager or a junior engineer that recently got hired. 708 00:44:19,270 --> 00:44:21,132 You wanna find those two types of people. 709 00:44:21,132 --> 00:44:25,036 If you're UX design, find a design manager, 710 00:44:25,036 --> 00:44:28,244 a UX manager or a UX designer, right? 711 00:44:28,244 --> 00:44:29,657 Ideally entry level, so 712 00:44:29,657 --> 00:44:33,777 you're gonna identify five people at each of those hundred companies. 713 00:44:33,777 --> 00:44:36,479 That's 500 people, okay? 714 00:44:36,479 --> 00:44:40,693 So then you've got a list of 500 people and you start doing detective work. 715 00:44:40,693 --> 00:44:45,932 Get their LinkedIn profile URL, try to find them on Twitter, 716 00:44:45,932 --> 00:44:52,000 Instagram, Twitch, Tik Tok, any social network, try to find them. 717 00:44:52,000 --> 00:44:55,033 Try to find their email, which is hard. 718 00:44:55,033 --> 00:44:58,245 And then what you do is you run a process. 719 00:44:58,245 --> 00:45:01,198 Each one of those 500 people, 720 00:45:01,198 --> 00:45:06,691 you should be prepared to contact them 13 times, why 13? 721 00:45:06,691 --> 00:45:11,525 Most people give up after about three tries, and they don't get a reply and 722 00:45:11,525 --> 00:45:12,463 they give up. 723 00:45:12,463 --> 00:45:17,485 It actually takes up to 13 attempts to get someone to reply to you. 724 00:45:17,485 --> 00:45:22,891 How do you get someone to reply to you without being annoying? 725 00:45:22,891 --> 00:45:27,476 You basically find a genuine compliment for that person. 726 00:45:27,476 --> 00:45:31,422 And when you connect on LinkedIn, don't say, I wanna work at your company. 727 00:45:31,422 --> 00:45:36,267 You say something like, hey, Ryan, I noticed that you made 728 00:45:36,267 --> 00:45:40,935 a strong statement about Black Lives Matter as a company. 729 00:45:40,935 --> 00:45:43,751 That's amazing, thank you for leading like that. 730 00:45:43,751 --> 00:45:45,915 Something, a genuine compliment, right? 731 00:45:45,915 --> 00:45:50,627 I'm much more likely to see that LinkedIn connection and click accept, right? 732 00:45:50,627 --> 00:45:53,035 So come up with a genuine compliment. 733 00:45:53,035 --> 00:45:55,620 If they're not on LinkedIn, do that on Twitter, not on Twitter, 734 00:45:55,620 --> 00:45:56,739 do it on Instagram, right? 735 00:45:56,739 --> 00:45:58,994 So find a way to get on their radar. 736 00:45:58,994 --> 00:46:00,738 They may or may not reply. 737 00:46:00,738 --> 00:46:01,888 They may or may not answer. 738 00:46:01,888 --> 00:46:04,597 Then step two, what you do is contact them on 739 00:46:04,597 --> 00:46:08,574 a different channel with another genuine compliment, right? 740 00:46:08,574 --> 00:46:15,222 And you're just being non stop about getting on their radar. 741 00:46:15,222 --> 00:46:18,396 And then what you have to do is accept, probably, 742 00:46:18,396 --> 00:46:21,812 one out of three of them will end up replying, right? 743 00:46:21,812 --> 00:46:26,736 So that 500 people, you end up getting 33% of them to reply, right? 744 00:46:26,736 --> 00:46:28,241 And then they've replied, and 745 00:46:28,241 --> 00:46:31,990 then you keep building that relationship using mirroring like I talked about. 746 00:46:31,990 --> 00:46:36,607 So you could say something like you seem really passionate about this topic so 747 00:46:36,607 --> 00:46:39,038 can you tell me more about that, right? 748 00:46:39,038 --> 00:46:43,727 You're just trying to get them to engage by giving them genuine compliments and 749 00:46:43,727 --> 00:46:46,531 then you will get maybe 10% of them to reply. 750 00:46:46,531 --> 00:46:48,162 So it's a funnel and 751 00:46:48,162 --> 00:46:53,261 you end up with an actual friend at a company you wanna work for. 752 00:46:53,261 --> 00:46:56,607 And then you say to them, you know what, I'm probably gonna apply for 753 00:46:56,607 --> 00:46:58,329 a job at some point at your company. 754 00:46:58,329 --> 00:47:00,297 I just wanna give you a heads up. 755 00:47:00,297 --> 00:47:04,263 And then most likely, they'll say, I like you, this is awesome. 756 00:47:04,263 --> 00:47:07,069 Let me know when you apply and I'll tell the hiring manager. 757 00:47:07,069 --> 00:47:12,172 And that's how you use the system to get the job, not by applying cold. 758 00:47:12,172 --> 00:47:14,557 So it's a process. 759 00:47:14,557 --> 00:47:16,780 It's super hard work. 760 00:47:16,780 --> 00:47:20,804 It'll take you six months to a year to find that job. 761 00:47:20,804 --> 00:47:23,303 You'll have 100 companies on your list and 762 00:47:23,303 --> 00:47:25,814 you'll end up working at one of them, right? 763 00:47:25,814 --> 00:47:30,948 So prepare yourself that 99% of the companies you wanna work for 764 00:47:30,948 --> 00:47:33,616 say no, and that one of them will. 765 00:47:33,616 --> 00:47:35,105 So that's it. 766 00:47:35,105 --> 00:47:39,076 Samantha was kind of talking about that as long as you don't quit and 767 00:47:39,076 --> 00:47:41,523 you run that process, you will get a job. 768 00:47:41,523 --> 00:47:45,779 You just have to not give up and give yourself enough time to do it. 769 00:47:45,779 --> 00:47:50,052 Okay, we've got time for a few more. 770 00:47:50,052 --> 00:47:52,195 Sip this amazing water. 771 00:47:52,195 --> 00:47:58,198 Okay, all right. 772 00:47:58,198 --> 00:48:01,970 Tim said do you think Treehouse will start a CS fundamentals course, 773 00:48:01,970 --> 00:48:06,459 computer science fundamentals course, or an interview prep course that focuses 774 00:48:06,459 --> 00:48:09,925 on things like algorithms, Big O, and interview questions? 775 00:48:09,925 --> 00:48:12,453 Maybe, stay tuned. 776 00:48:12,453 --> 00:48:16,038 We know that this is a very important thing to specifically cover. 777 00:48:16,038 --> 00:48:19,414 We do have a couple computer science fundamentals courses, by the way, but 778 00:48:19,414 --> 00:48:22,338 we are definitely thinking about digging in and doing even more. 779 00:48:22,338 --> 00:48:23,457 So stay tuned. 780 00:48:23,457 --> 00:48:27,597 No promises yet but it's something that I believe strongly in. 781 00:48:27,597 --> 00:48:29,859 Computer science fundamentals is important. 782 00:48:29,859 --> 00:48:32,104 You don't need a computer science degree. 783 00:48:32,104 --> 00:48:36,597 But understanding the basics of computer science is very important, and 784 00:48:36,597 --> 00:48:39,361 I would recommend that you start digging in. 785 00:48:39,361 --> 00:48:42,024 There is a CS50 course that's free, right? 786 00:48:42,024 --> 00:48:44,701 So Harvard offers CS50. 787 00:48:44,701 --> 00:48:49,163 You can take it on edX, I definitely recommend you enroll in that as well. 788 00:48:49,163 --> 00:48:53,259 Question from Adasuwa, besides cost, 789 00:48:53,259 --> 00:48:59,290 what benefits does Treehouse have over coding boot camps? 790 00:48:59,290 --> 00:49:03,931 The amazing thing about the tech degree is that it is self paced, and 791 00:49:03,931 --> 00:49:08,665 you can pause at anytime and it is a fraction of the cost of a boot camp. 792 00:49:08,665 --> 00:49:14,669 The tech degree costs $199 a month, and most people finish in 6 to 12 months. 793 00:49:14,669 --> 00:49:19,873 So you're talking about $2,400 over 12 months compared 794 00:49:19,873 --> 00:49:24,425 to $14-15, 20,000 for a lot of boot camps. 795 00:49:24,425 --> 00:49:29,328 And I believe our curriculum is actually more effective. 796 00:49:29,328 --> 00:49:31,458 We've taught 650,000 people. 797 00:49:31,458 --> 00:49:33,520 We've been doing this for a decade. 798 00:49:33,520 --> 00:49:36,601 This is the one thing I brag about, we're really good at teaching, right? 799 00:49:36,601 --> 00:49:41,611 So I think you're getting a boot camp education for a fraction of the cost from 800 00:49:41,611 --> 00:49:46,643 home that's self paced that you can pause anytime or you can cancel, right? 801 00:49:46,643 --> 00:49:50,605 So we're not gonna lock you in to some sort of long contract. 802 00:49:50,605 --> 00:49:52,524 Thanks for asking that. 803 00:49:52,524 --> 00:49:56,605 All right, a question from Ryan. 804 00:49:56,605 --> 00:49:58,012 Hey, Ryan. 805 00:49:58,012 --> 00:50:02,501 What is the growth plan for Treehouse's curriculum over the next five years as we 806 00:50:02,501 --> 00:50:07,202 move into a more data driven intensive environment online data science analytics? 807 00:50:07,202 --> 00:50:09,244 I- I have exciting news. 808 00:50:09,244 --> 00:50:14,199 We are building a data analytics tech degree. 809 00:50:14,199 --> 00:50:18,555 So we absolutely believe that data analysis, machine learning, 810 00:50:18,555 --> 00:50:21,443 data science, etc., is very important. 811 00:50:21,443 --> 00:50:26,251 And we are excited that we're working on that, we're gonna be releasing that. 812 00:50:26,251 --> 00:50:29,978 Our curriculum plan is to teach where the jobs are, right? 813 00:50:29,978 --> 00:50:33,529 So we're gonna continue to go where that is. 814 00:50:34,923 --> 00:50:39,076 All right, I can see that Tony's out trying, thank you. 815 00:50:39,076 --> 00:50:41,632 How did you do marketing for Treehouse? 816 00:50:41,632 --> 00:50:43,364 A question from Thomas. 817 00:50:43,364 --> 00:50:48,070 So as I explained, we launched initially doing in-person classes. 818 00:50:48,070 --> 00:50:52,125 We use think vitamin.com as a content marketing platform. 819 00:50:52,125 --> 00:50:56,235 And then we launched Treehouse, which was called think about 820 00:50:56,235 --> 00:51:00,044 a membership on top of that, to tell everybody about it. 821 00:51:00,044 --> 00:51:03,732 Bo in the marketing team at Treehouse really 822 00:51:03,732 --> 00:51:07,930 strongly believes in providing value to people. 823 00:51:07,930 --> 00:51:10,959 And that's how marketing is best done. 824 00:51:10,959 --> 00:51:17,550 So we do a lot of content marketing trying to offer as much value as we can. 825 00:51:17,550 --> 00:51:22,196 All right, Cecil asked, will Treehouse ever expand on its design coursework, 826 00:51:22,196 --> 00:51:23,300 such as a UX track? 827 00:51:23,300 --> 00:51:25,979 Well, we have a UX tech degree. 828 00:51:25,979 --> 00:51:29,320 So please check that UX tech degree out. 829 00:51:29,320 --> 00:51:30,839 We also have a UX track so 830 00:51:30,839 --> 00:51:34,492 make sure to check that out if you're a courses student. 831 00:51:34,492 --> 00:51:38,864 Thanks for asking that. 832 00:51:38,864 --> 00:51:41,136 Another question, how did you make Treehouse so 833 00:51:41,136 --> 00:51:44,418 successful since it's hard to get websites started and get popular? 834 00:51:44,418 --> 00:51:48,012 Well, we've been doing this for 10 years, [LAUGH] so it hasn't been quick, 835 00:51:48,012 --> 00:51:49,055 it hasn't been easy. 836 00:51:49,055 --> 00:51:54,655 I think the way we become successful is by offering something that's valuable, truly 837 00:51:54,655 --> 00:51:59,737 working our guts out to serve you all students and then just not quitting, so. 838 00:52:01,793 --> 00:52:05,179 A question from Jim, does Treehouse have a tech degree scholarship fund set up where 839 00:52:05,179 --> 00:52:05,999 alumni can donate? 840 00:52:05,999 --> 00:52:08,558 Wow, that's an amazing idea, Jim. 841 00:52:08,558 --> 00:52:10,933 We don't, and I love that idea. 842 00:52:10,933 --> 00:52:14,883 Gosh, so please email me, ryan@teamtreehouse.com and 843 00:52:14,883 --> 00:52:16,467 we can talk about that. 844 00:52:16,467 --> 00:52:19,108 Thank you so much for having that idea. 845 00:52:19,108 --> 00:52:23,631 So we have I think about seven minutes left. 846 00:52:23,631 --> 00:52:29,046 And so I will take some more questions and then we'll wind this down. 847 00:52:29,046 --> 00:52:31,324 Okay, question from Pac. 848 00:52:31,324 --> 00:52:34,248 Hey Ryan, does Treehouse offer career support for 849 00:52:34,248 --> 00:52:38,067 companies outside of USA particularly in Hong Kong or Singapore? 850 00:52:38,067 --> 00:52:41,024 We don't, I wish that we could do everything and 851 00:52:41,024 --> 00:52:42,983 support everybody in that way. 852 00:52:42,983 --> 00:52:46,457 Unfortunately, just don't have enough people to do that well. 853 00:52:46,457 --> 00:52:49,530 However, if you take the tech degree or courses and 854 00:52:49,530 --> 00:52:52,390 you follow that framework that I just laid out, 855 00:52:52,390 --> 00:52:56,341 you will have a lot of the tools that you need to get that first job. 856 00:52:56,341 --> 00:53:01,044 So please just follow that playbook and don't quit, 857 00:53:01,044 --> 00:53:05,863 and that will set you apart from the majority of folks. 858 00:53:05,863 --> 00:53:10,345 Question from Devin, does Team Treehouse have any good courses or 859 00:53:10,345 --> 00:53:13,158 programs for more advanced developers? 860 00:53:13,158 --> 00:53:16,088 We don't, we focus on beginners. 861 00:53:16,088 --> 00:53:19,993 We really care about empowering people to learn how to code and 862 00:53:19,993 --> 00:53:21,804 then get into the industry. 863 00:53:21,804 --> 00:53:25,805 Our belief is that most mid to senior level engineers are just gonna be 864 00:53:25,805 --> 00:53:26,498 googling. 865 00:53:26,498 --> 00:53:30,313 [LAUGH] So, the most effective way once you 866 00:53:30,313 --> 00:53:35,118 are an engineer is to Google, go to Stack Overflow. 867 00:53:35,118 --> 00:53:38,422 And that's the way you'll learn. 868 00:53:38,422 --> 00:53:39,582 That's our strategy. 869 00:53:42,223 --> 00:53:45,768 Question, what is Treehouse doing to implement diverse hiring practices? 870 00:53:45,768 --> 00:53:50,248 A lot and I wanna give props to my team for working so hard on this. 871 00:53:50,248 --> 00:53:54,272 We have a strategy that is a two-pronged approach. 872 00:53:54,272 --> 00:53:57,874 So number one, we embrace apprenticeship whenever we can, right? 873 00:53:57,874 --> 00:54:02,119 We wanna create new talent and onboard that talent onto the team. 874 00:54:02,119 --> 00:54:06,630 And we source talent from communities that have been traditionally boxed out of tech. 875 00:54:06,630 --> 00:54:07,983 That's one thing we do. 876 00:54:07,983 --> 00:54:14,621 [COUGH] The second thing we do is focus a lot on building an inclusive culture. 877 00:54:14,621 --> 00:54:18,418 So as soon as people come into the company, we wanna make sure they stay, 878 00:54:18,418 --> 00:54:20,806 that they feel included, that they belong. 879 00:54:20,806 --> 00:54:24,010 And we work very hard at training our team, 880 00:54:24,010 --> 00:54:28,815 measuring our inclusivity and ensuring that we do everything we 881 00:54:28,815 --> 00:54:32,821 can to retain amazing talent once that talent stays. 882 00:54:32,821 --> 00:54:37,756 A third thing that we're always doing is if we are advertising for 883 00:54:37,756 --> 00:54:42,330 a role that is mid to senior, then what we do is we proactively 884 00:54:42,330 --> 00:54:47,203 recruit from communities where we have under representation. 885 00:54:47,203 --> 00:54:51,981 So if we know of this team, we don't have enough people from this community. 886 00:54:51,981 --> 00:54:56,616 We specifically go to that community and try to get as many applications as 887 00:54:56,616 --> 00:55:01,580 we can from that community to give us a better chance of hiring from that group. 888 00:55:01,580 --> 00:55:06,863 We do not make decisions based on people's protected classes clearly, 889 00:55:06,863 --> 00:55:09,121 cuz that is illegal and wrong. 890 00:55:09,121 --> 00:55:14,031 But we're doing everything we can to proactively diversify our team. 891 00:55:14,031 --> 00:55:18,946 We're not perfect, but we're making great progress. 892 00:55:18,946 --> 00:55:20,833 So more questions, okay. 893 00:55:22,748 --> 00:55:27,357 [LAUGH] Oliver says Black Sabbath or Led Zeppelin? 894 00:55:27,357 --> 00:55:28,925 Just gonna have to say Black Sabbath. 895 00:55:28,925 --> 00:55:34,535 So there you go, hence the shirt, which is really thanks to Kenny's friend Dave. 896 00:55:34,535 --> 00:55:36,140 So thanks Dave if you're watching. 897 00:55:36,140 --> 00:55:39,390 [LAUGH] Al right, question from Laney. 898 00:55:39,390 --> 00:55:44,262 Do you have students who start just taking courses, the $25 a month plan to get 899 00:55:44,262 --> 00:55:48,574 a feel, find out if it's enjoyable and then move on to the tech degree. 900 00:55:48,574 --> 00:55:52,489 Would that student move through the tech degree faster due to in place knowledge 901 00:55:52,489 --> 00:55:54,428 obtained through Treehouse already? 902 00:55:54,428 --> 00:55:58,801 Absolutely, this is a wonderful way to put your feet in the water and 903 00:55:58,801 --> 00:56:00,892 see if this is what you wanna do. 904 00:56:00,892 --> 00:56:05,790 Start out on our $25 a month product, take some of the courses, get a feel for 905 00:56:05,790 --> 00:56:07,998 it and then upgrade to tech degree. 906 00:56:07,998 --> 00:56:10,996 You will already have completed those courses in tech degree so 907 00:56:10,996 --> 00:56:12,591 you can move a little bit faster. 908 00:56:12,591 --> 00:56:15,260 And then you have all the all the slack support, 909 00:56:15,260 --> 00:56:19,015 you have projects that are graded, you have additional courses. 910 00:56:19,015 --> 00:56:24,159 So that's a really great way to see if the tech degree is right for you. 911 00:56:24,159 --> 00:56:30,081 We do everything we can not to lock you into something that you don't want. 912 00:56:30,081 --> 00:56:30,900 Question from Kenny. 913 00:56:30,900 --> 00:56:34,564 Do you still have time to play video games just like in your childhood? 914 00:56:34,564 --> 00:56:35,863 No, not at all. 915 00:56:35,863 --> 00:56:39,995 [LAUGH] Between being a dad and being a husband and 916 00:56:39,995 --> 00:56:43,723 being a CEO, I have very little free time. 917 00:56:43,723 --> 00:56:45,622 But I miss games a lot. 918 00:56:45,622 --> 00:56:48,174 My kids play a lot of games so 919 00:56:48,174 --> 00:56:53,506 any Sea of Thieves fans out there, my kids will love you. 920 00:56:53,506 --> 00:56:57,322 Cavlin said I learned about Treehouse to Code Louisville boot camp. 921 00:56:57,322 --> 00:57:00,448 You still partner with boot camps around the country? 922 00:57:00,448 --> 00:57:02,571 Code Louisville has been amazing. 923 00:57:02,571 --> 00:57:06,502 I wanna give major props to Emily who really makes that program happen at 924 00:57:06,502 --> 00:57:10,837 Treehouse and for all of you students that have come through Code Louisville. 925 00:57:10,837 --> 00:57:13,845 I can't make any promises if we're gonna have more programs like that. 926 00:57:13,845 --> 00:57:16,069 I would love us to. 927 00:57:16,069 --> 00:57:21,438 But at the moment, Code Lou is one of our amazing partners and 928 00:57:21,438 --> 00:57:24,927 we hope that relationship continues. 929 00:57:24,927 --> 00:57:27,271 Got probably time for one more. 930 00:57:30,821 --> 00:57:35,230 Question from Hannah, will Treehouse be doing more tech festivals? 931 00:57:35,230 --> 00:57:36,197 I hope so. 932 00:57:36,197 --> 00:57:38,869 This has been so much fun. 933 00:57:38,869 --> 00:57:42,612 I just can't believe how energy giving it is for 934 00:57:42,612 --> 00:57:46,825 us at Treehouse to see you all, to interact with you, 935 00:57:46,825 --> 00:57:52,363 to hear your stories and also give you encouragement and empower you. 936 00:57:52,363 --> 00:57:55,958 This has been a blast for me and the team. 937 00:57:55,958 --> 00:58:00,169 And I really hope that we can do more of these. 938 00:58:00,169 --> 00:58:02,517 We don't know yet cuz this is our first one. 939 00:58:02,517 --> 00:58:06,438 But we're blown away that over 7000 of you signed up and and 940 00:58:06,438 --> 00:58:08,590 have been attending the session. 941 00:58:08,590 --> 00:58:12,053 So I really hope so. 942 00:58:12,053 --> 00:58:16,946 With that, I think we actually got through all your questions so that was amazing. 943 00:58:16,946 --> 00:58:19,923 And thanks to you, Patrick, for the water, appreciate that. 944 00:58:19,923 --> 00:58:23,848 So I think with that, I'm gonna end this session and 945 00:58:23,848 --> 00:58:29,574 just I wanna thank you from the bottom of my heart for being with us this week. 946 00:58:29,574 --> 00:58:33,421 And for all of you that are enrolled in Treehouse, I love you. 947 00:58:33,421 --> 00:58:38,648 I'm thankful for you, all of you that are thinking about enrolling to Treehouse, 948 00:58:38,648 --> 00:58:41,646 we hope to meet you and be a part of your success. 949 00:58:41,646 --> 00:58:45,167 And one last thank you to my amazing team for making this possible. 950 00:58:45,167 --> 00:58:47,419 This has been an absolute joy and 951 00:58:47,419 --> 00:58:51,269 I hope that we can continue to be a part of your journey. 952 00:58:51,269 --> 00:58:54,198 So thank you for coming, and we'll talk to you soon. 953 00:58:54,198 --> 00:58:54,698 Take care.