Long-time friend of the Internet (and open source) Scott Hanselman talks about his journey as a programmer and a teacher, his approach to TikTok, and more as we talk about living intentionally.
Matt Stauffer:
All right. Hey, and welcome to Things Worth Learning. I'm your host, Matt Stauffer. This is a show where a curious computer programmer, which has me, interviews fascinating people about their passions. My guest today is Scott Hanselman who works with opensource and .net and C sharp at Microsoft. And he's also a long time beloved denizen of the internet or a netizen as you will. We talked about that a little bit earlier. So Scott, can you tell me and the audience a little bit about yourself and your personal life, your professional life, but just, what should we know about you?
Scott Hanselman:
I work out of Portland, Oregon. I've been remote for Microsoft now for 14 years. I've been a programmer for 30. So I've been a remote worker since, before the panini. So everyone came looking for me for advice and how have you been working remotely? Well, working in a quarantine is not the same as working remotely.
Matt Stauffer:
No it's not.
Scott Hanselman:
Have a good camera and a ring light was about all I had for them.
Matt Stauffer:
You're already several steps above everybody else though.
Scott Hanselman:
Yeah. I've since written a bunch of articles about it and stuff like that, but yeah. So remote work is the thing I've been doing for a very, very, very long time. Started out in open source and went to Microsoft to basically open source everything. So I just keep open sourcing stuff until they fire me.
Matt Stauffer:
And go somewhere else to do it all over again.
Scott Hanselman:
But yeah, I was doing open source at a bank 15 plus years ago. And before it was fun and doing, doing extreme programming, which is what they call agile now and extreme programming. And then before that it was, well, there was pair programming and then there was, well, they call it dev ops now. But we called it CICT and build servers. That was almost 20 years ago. So I try to stay on like the rolling edge of stuff.
Matt Stauffer:
Yeah. What's cool now, you were doing 10 years ago, basically.
Scott Hanselman:
I didn't mean it like that.
Matt Stauffer:
I know but I'm saying, I'm just saying you're the hipster of the internet, like it's official now.
Scott Hanselman:
Well, yeah, I can try to explain to my kids, my kids always come to me with some meme or some phrase and it's like, we invented that and their like sure. And they're like, okay old man. Yeah.
Matt Stauffer:
Right. I love it. I love it. And so you have been blogging, you have been teaching, you have been sharing online for ages. And I think you're one of the people who kind of was the beginning of deciding that a lot of what we do as programmers should happen in public. Like you mentioned, having done open source for ages, but you've also been blogging and podcasting for ages. You've been speaking for ages. And you also, I didn't know this until I read your about page with prepping for this. I didn't even know you had been an associate professor for awhile. So you're a sharer, you're a teacher. Is that something you kind of always known about yourself?
Scott Hanselman:
You know those little fellows that wander around the neighborhood and they knock on your door and they want to tell you about their religion or whatever they're excited about. They're kind of like, have you heard the news? I really respect the hustle. Like, good on you for, you're so excited about your thing that you're wandering around the streets talking about it. I really liked that philosophy. So I have been doing that. Have you heard about this? Forever. It's like, whatever the thing is. I'm an oversharer.
Matt Stauffer:
I'm an oversharer too. This is why we get along.
Scott Hanselman:
So right now, my love language is sending TikToks to my family, emailing them, texting them. We've got a WhatsApp group dedicated to me sending you TikToks. So like, that's my whole thing. Or how-tos or links to ifixit.com or whatever, like all of those kinds of things. I love tips and tricks and I've been doing that for my entire life. My dad was a woodworker type person and he's always like, we can fix that. We got a hammer. We can hammer that. So why not do that in public? And then I very, very early on registered my own domain. So I've been, have a domain since the nineties. So I've got a footprint on the internet.
Matt Stauffer:
120 bucks a year and all run through network solutions. Right?
Scott Hanselman:
Right. Exactly. Yeah.
Matt Stauffer:
So you've been doing this. Yeah.
Scott Hanselman:
Why not share, right.
Matt Stauffer:
Yeah. I love that.
Scott Hanselman:
Why not share, but also share it with a URL that you own and support.
Matt Stauffer:
Right. Which is a thing we could have a whole podcast about if we were going to. One other quick question about that, you also mentioned you had been a stand-up comedian and I've found that of my friends who were standup comedians. One of the things that's very common is that they have this very big presence on stage. And in person they're often these extraordinarily humble, caring, and often kind of very quiet people. Have you always been, and I'm saying this to you, you didn't say it about yourself, but have you always kind of had this, like helping people, Mr. Rogers vibe, or is that something that you've kind of more intentionally come into and you previously had been a different way?
Scott Hanselman:
I would say I was in my early twenties. I think people would probably describe me as being intense and somewhat unfocused. I would say this is probably a Scott 3.0 or 4.0 at this point.
Matt Stauffer:
Got it.
Scott Hanselman:
I don't know why, but there's a calmness that comes, hopefully, with age. I think that I had pretty bad like imposter syndrome and I didn't fit and before the word FOMO, fear of missing out, was a thing. I had a lot of FOMO and I spent a lot of time in high school afraid to leave the party because something cool would always happen at 2:00 AM. And then once I figured out that nothing good happens after 2:00 AM, like as a rule, nothing life-changing happens after 2:00 AM. You should leave the Hilton hotel lobby, nothing good is going to come of it.
Matt Stauffer:
At least nothing positively life-changing is going to happen.
Scott Hanselman:
Nothing positive. Absolutely. Prince is not going to come and do a spontaneous "Dude, after you left, Prince, he came. It was amazing." It doesn't happen. Never. You should be studying, you should go back and do it.
Matt Stauffer:
You hear that kids, right? Go study.
Scott Hanselman:
So I would say I have evolved and my volume has turned down from an overly intense 11 to a pretty chill nine.
Matt Stauffer:
Okay. I like it. Transitionally, my first question that I'm trying to ask everybody is, do you have any sort of like a life mantra or a phrase or idea you like to live your life by? And it could be related to what we just said or not, but is there any kind of, I don't know if you've seen Ted Lasso, but you know, he's got his belief, do you have a shtick, like a phrase or a way you try to kind of like gauge new opportunities against or anything like that?
Scott Hanselman:
Yeah. We recently lost a friend.
Matt Stauffer:
I'm sorry,
Scott Hanselman:
Named Abel Wang. And I had, you can go and check out a podcast I did with him just a couple of weeks before he passed. And he said, don't accept the defaults. And he and I actually had been using that phrase simultaneously and didn't even know that we'd both been, that's our thing. And I used to give talks about intentionality. Be intentional is my thing. So when you get that installer on Windows, on Mac you just drag installer into the applications folder, but on a Windows machine, you see next, next, next finish. And somewhere in the middle there as you're skipping past ULAs and not reading anything. There's a button that says custom.
Matt Stauffer:
And you get to change for stuff.
Scott Hanselman:
And you get to change stuff. Windows people are used to going enter, enter, enter, enter. And that just means next, next, next finish. Just install the thing. Except the defaults. Abel says don't accept the default. Always click custom because you never know what's underneath that button that says custom. Could have installed a weird toolbar. You don't want a weird toolbar in your life. And that is like a philosophy. So intentionality is super important. Don't accept the defaults, was Abel's thing and I really appreciate that.
Matt Stauffer:
Honor him with that as well.
Scott Hanselman:
Deliberate practice.
Matt Stauffer:
I love that.
Scott Hanselman:
It's as easy as Ted Lasso's believe.
Matt Stauffer:
Yeah, but I mean, it's pretty simple, like the fact that you actually had a phrase and also just for a note, because I didn't mention this. Not only has Scott been blogging for ages, he has, I think it's three or four podcasts and a YouTube and you're showing this by how easy it is, you're making me to interview you. Because each point you make perfectly transitions to the next question I'm about to ask you. So speaking of that mantra you just gave me, you know this podcast is about one topic you're particularly passionate about right now. So can you tell me kind of what's what's on the docket for us today? What are we going to be talking about?
Scott Hanselman:
Well, so in this not accepting the defaults, it got me thinking about the social feed, we always talk about the algorithm, which is like the black box algorithm that we don't see and that we can't control. You can control it. If you're going to give the big, giant nameless, faceless company, that's destroying democracy your data, you might as well enjoy the ride. So whether it be TikTok or Instagram or Facebook, if you feed the algorithm, the kind of positivity that you want by liking and sharing the things that you want to see more of, you will end up with what's called an FYP, a for you page. That's the feed in TikTok and the things that come onto your FYP, your for you page, will delight you. But if you put asshole-ish, forgive me for swearing. If you could take that out.
Matt Stauffer:
That's fine.
Scott Hanselman:
Stuff out into the world, then that karma's going to come back.The algorithm is truly karma, rolling back on top of you. So if you're liking a bunch of mean videos of people hurting each other or doing the milk crate challenge, you're going to end up with a lot of really, a lot of negativity in your life. I'm really, really enjoying TikTok right now. The problem is, the first three days of anyone on TikTok are arguably offensive.
Matt Stauffer:
Yeah. That was my experience. And I told you before we were on the call, I tried to join it and I couldn't get it. So tell me a little bit about that.
Scott Hanselman:
So what'll happen is you'll go on a TikTok and then you're going to find the fat part of the bell curve. That middle part of the bell curve, which is just people doing dumb stuff and hurting themselves on skateboarding and then text going fail and it's like, oh, we're all going to laugh at people hurting themselves. But if you push through that and just say you long press and you say not interested on the negativity and then you like only the positive things and then go and search for stuff. I have found on my TikTok after having tuned the algorithm over about three days, I'm just looking at mine right now. I've got musicians. I've got, here's someone talking about the linguistics around Simlish, the Sims. There's excited people talking about their PhDs. Here's somebody talking about, they're doing a PhD about a snake.
Scott Hanselman:
I've got indigenous creators talking about bringing back their languages and their dances. Here's some buskers. There's a lot of really great musicians, all popular musicians from now on are going to come off of TikTok. The way that Bieber came from YouTube, TikTok is where these things happen. It's turning into just a wonderful, joyous feed of cool stuff. My wife is a nurse. So I've got nurse TikTok, which is like a sub TikTok of those things where they talk about, when you're on the night shift, dah, dah, dah, and it's like jokes, comedians, impressions. Here's one on clay, molding things with clay, cosplayers 3d printing iron man costumes and stuff like that. And just an awe, like I'm looking at my, just scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. It's just nothing but cool positive stuff. No goofy dancing videos except for the awesome dancers, which are also amazing on TikTok.
Matt Stauffer:
And that's so different from, so you said the fat part of the bell curve, meaning kind of like the most generic applicable to everybody. They're like, well, if you're a person you'll probably, most likely, like this kind of dumb stuff...
Scott Hanselman:
If you're a person.
Matt Stauffer:
Because they have to choose that right? All we know about you is your person right now.
Scott Hanselman:
Right, exactly. All we know is that you're a person, there's this thing that they do on TikTok called stitches, where someone does a video and then you stitch to it, which is you take the video that the person just did, you put it over to the right and then you talk and then another person can stitch yours. So then maybe your two videos will go here and then there'll be a third video. And so they're doing barbershop quartets.
Matt Stauffer:
I was going to say, I saw the ones with the shoe, shoe, shoe, shoe. And I didn't understand that was TikTok. I don't remember what that was called, but it was a guy doing a shanty. That's the word. The sea shanties. So that was, that was all TikTok. Yeah. I was like chanting. It's not chanting.
Scott Hanselman:
Sea shanties, S E A shanties. There's also been some, I think it's called Carnatic Indian, traditional music doing covers of modern pop songs. I'm looking at one right now, which is now seven deep where a guy named Abdellah Alamein is doing old school acapella with six other guys. You know, it's a hugely and then the Ratatouille musical. Did you know about this?
Matt Stauffer:
No. I love the movie. I don't know it was a musical.
Scott Hanselman:
There isn't. Until there was. So on TikTok, this lady did, she's like Ratatouille should have been a musical and she did a song and then a bunch of musical theater nerds, I used to be in musical theater, saw it on TikTok and they're like, oh yeah, that would be the theme for Ratatouille. I'll do costumes, I'll do the set. And then Tituss Burgess from Kimmy Schmidt, who is a huge theater person, decided to get together with a bunch of folks. And they organized a TikTok produced Ratatouille musical, where all of the casting calls are done on TikTok. And they called different people. They got some famous people, some not famous people and they sell tickets and put on a musical and you can go and find Ratatouille, the Musical. And it was done all remotely over TikTok.
Matt Stauffer:
So do you actually watch the final thing over TikTok or is the final thing...
Scott Hanselman:
You watch the final thing. They charge like five bucks and you log into the Actor's Guild or whatever, and watch like a 45 minute Ratatouille musical. No, it was goofy and janky. The music was as good as anything else that you would see.
Matt Stauffer:
That's incredible. And one of my friends was just telling me about Aaron Sorkin and he's like you should've seen all this stuff from Aaron Sorkin. There's this one thing he did during the writer's strike. And it was kind of like things were during the writer's strike. And I had not known this whole concept that during the writers strike, a lot of writers went and did these kind of smaller things because they didn't have the full studio available to them. So it's really interesting to see the parallel with this where it's not that they didn't have the full studio, but the world is very different, both in terms of the limitations of the pandemic, but also the opportunities of collaboration that don't have to go through the traditional forms anymore. Tituss is on TV shows, but this was not through that traditional series. And that's really interesting to see what that opens up for production and collaboration and sharing and even making money in the end.
Scott Hanselman:
Well, if you look at Jason Bateman and the folks that put on the Smartless Podcast, they just sold it for $80 million to Amazon.
Matt Stauffer:
What? I've never even heard of the...
Scott Hanselman:
Sean Hayes, Jason Bateman, and I'm blanking on the gentleman's name, who was the voice of... Will Arnett voice of Batman. And one of the famous voices from... They, smartless.com. They are three actors that call each other and do zoom calls. And they're like, we should just record these. And now it's like the number one podcast. A good friend of mine is an actor who has a very, very popular show on Netflix. But Netflix doesn't pay residuals. They just buy your stuff. So you don't get that, like that Seinfeld check every year. So he's doing a podcast from his apartment.
Matt Stauffer:
Hmm. That's really cool. So, I'm getting all excited about TikTok here with you. And I really appreciate that, but kind of your foundation.
Scott Hanselman:
Sorry. Let's get back.
Matt Stauffer:
No, no, it's good. No pitch here.
Scott Hanselman:
It's about the feed. What are you choosing to let into your brain?
Matt Stauffer:
So some of this is technical. Some of the technical aspects are, you can choose to, you basically, you feed certain input into the algorithm that defines the type of output you get from the algorithm. So you can intentionally shape the experience you have in this particular space. But some of it, I feel like is a little bit more ideological that may go beyond just the feed. And it's this idea of intentionality, which I don't think that you probably only apply to feeds. So I feel like there's a level of agency and control over life. When you're looking at massive multinational corporations that are ruining the world, when you're looking at the state of the US government and a lot of overseas places as well, where you just kind of feel hopeless, I feel like intentionality and shaping your own kind of space year round has an element of hope to it. And I wondered if that, just me having said that, does that kind of lead you in any directions? If not, that's totally fine but...
Scott Hanselman:
Well, some of it comes from... Sometimes to be hopeful is to have privilege, right? There's a lot of messed up stuff right now in the world. So being economically stable, I've got a job and I don't have to worry about food this week. I didn't always have food security, but I have had food security for the last 20 years. There's privilege inherent in that. So I am privileged to be hopeful, but also there's a certain amount of, with helplessness, there's only hope left, right? It's a very difficult world right now. And if you start spiraling down the drain of negativity, then you're going to feel pretty lousy. So I am choosing to be hopeful and kind, and inclusive and positive because what else do we have?
Scott Hanselman:
But I just got this t-shirt recently, not the one I'm wearing now. This one says include everyone in C plus plus, but I've got another one that says work hard and be nice. And I'm getting compliments all over town.
Matt Stauffer:
I love that.
Scott Hanselman:
You just don't see shirts like that. It says work hard, be nice. It's just, life is too short to be so mean. And the amount of energy required to be upset right now and not valid outrage. There's perfectly good reasons to be outraged, but to be so upset about something means that it's probably not about the thing at all. It's in fact probably that someone's in pain. Like when I see someone flipping out in the parking lot and someone filmed it and put it on TikTok or whatever, and it's like, oh, look at this person being an ass in public. It's probably something else going on. There's a pain underneath that. So empathy is my vibe. So when you hop off the stack at the beginning of the question about like intentionality, as well as me changing over the years, it's practiced extreme empathy over time.
Scott Hanselman:
No matter how bad it is, it probably wasn't about you. It's probably about something that they're going through. How did they get there? What was their story? Like, let me ask you this Matt. Do you ever, before the pandemic, you're in a crowd and you just have a moment where you're just utterly overwhelmed by the number of people that are walking by, because you realize that every single one of them has a story. And you just want to pause and have like little pop-ups over their heads with like a bio, a dossier of like, this person just passed me. I'm never going to see them again.
Scott Hanselman:
They're NPCs. Right. They're non-player characters from my perspective. But they have parents or do they, do they have Christmas or maybe another holiday? They get together with their families. They have hopes and dreams and they pass you at universal studios. So when somebody flips out in the parking lot of a Whole Foods, because they didn't get what they wanted or whatever, there's probably an underlying pain there. And what we're missing right now is any kind of empathy right now. Everything's been split into them and us, tribal negativity. So I am trying to do the exact opposite of that.
Matt Stauffer:
Wow. I'm feeling some feelings right now. Yeah. I love that. I wish we had another hour. I'm going to have to have you back on again for sure. But I think I especially feel comfortable having this conversation with you because I know that you care about inclusivity and equity and making our industry and the world a better place, especially for people who've traditionally had a difficult time, because I think sometimes when we do talk about empathy and being considerate of the other person and stuff like that, sometimes it can devolve into a, how dare you say what someone did was wrong. Like they, whatever. And so I think it's really helpful to be able to hold the two things in balance. There are things that are unacceptable.
Matt Stauffer:
You said there are things that are worth being outraged about. And then at the same time, people, no matter what the things they're doing also are still unique individual people who may have different pains behind them and for both of those things to be true is a really difficult tension, I think, to walk. And because I know we're about to close out. I just wanted to see, is there anything you could talk about when it comes to having to know both of those things at the same time, you can't just be nice to everybody and assume everything they've done is good. Or if you're holding them in tension, you also can't just look at what someone's done wrong, and just write them off as horrible people, there's, some balance of having both. Can you talk a little bit about what that balance feels like or how to do it?
Scott Hanselman:
I don't want to say being nice and ignore things that are inappropriate and outrageous. I'm not saying don't march for the things that matter to you. I'm not saying don't hold a vigil or call your congressperson or whatever. I'm talking about. The more kind of like day-to-day background outrage is the opposite of self care.
Scott Hanselman:
Like, my dad once when I was younger and stressed out, said, you need to chill out because you're no good to us dead. And that's a very coarse way of saying it, but you're no good to us dead was his way of saying, hey man, if you chill, you could stick around longer and do all the good works that we need you to do. So when I meet people that are so outraged, I'm worried they're going to burn out and in their early thirties. I'm thinking to myself, I really want you to be here for another seventy years so that you can help. So that you can be successful. So that you can fight. Those conversations are actually what my TikTok, my own personal TikTok because I'm an old man on TikTok, is all about. Telling people to focus, to breathe, to take a nap, take a walk when you need to, so that you might fight another day because you're no good to us dead.
Matt Stauffer:
That's wonderful. Got it. I want to end it there, but I won't because I want to recap for my brain and make sure that I'm hearing you right. Otherwise I would have ended up on that because it was so good.
Scott Hanselman:
I don't know. Maybe it's a little downer.
Matt Stauffer:
No, because your dad didn't say that out of being a jerk to you. He said that out of love for you. He is legitimately concerned for your health. So my kind of, recap you a little bit of that one, I want to hear if I got this right, is you can care for yourself by choosing to maybe kind of have a more hopeful, positive, empathetic perspective on the day-to-day things that will not have to make you therefore be someone who doesn't have the permission. Because now someone has told you to chill out, to care deeply about big, important issues, but rather shifting your day-to-day experience of life.
Matt Stauffer:
Even through changing the algorithm a little bit of what you're consuming or having different perspective on someone, maybe you're at universal studios and that person walked by you, slams into your shoulder a little bit, past them. How are you going to respond to that a little bit. Some of those shifts in your day to day can make a positive benefit in your ability to engage in those big life-changing things that are perfectly valid for you to be involved in. So it's not kind of like, hey, chill out about everything, stop caring, which I think is a lot easier for us to do as white guys, be like, why are you also angry all the time? And that's not the message here. The message is, care about the big things. But our day-to-day perspective...
Scott Hanselman:
This is not tone police.
Matt Stauffer:
Yes. And that's what I think, anybody who knows you already knows that's not what you're doing, but just in case somebody hearing this podcast, doesn't know you online. I want to make sure that that part is clear. We're not talking about, don't go care about the things that matter. So if someone were to take, the first thing they would do coming out of this podcast is go shift their social feeds towards positivity. Liking and seeking out things that will kind of surround them with whatever positivity means for them. It doesn't have to mean, toxic, positive. Oh, go ahead. Go ahead.
Scott Hanselman:
I also want to add one other thing. The feed is also humans.
Matt Stauffer:
Okay. Tell me more about that.
Scott Hanselman:
Humans that text you. Humans that call you. Humans that are negative. If you have a toxic friend or, God help you, parent, or relative, you need to like, or long press and press "not interested". The feed is also the people who bring negativity into your life. So when you're thinking about your inbox and managing your inbox, that's texts and snaps and all that kind of stuff as well. But it's also the people that you allow to affect you. As a content creator, you mentioned at the beginning of the conversation, I put a lot out there. And I get a lot of negativity and I'm not going to let a stranger who doesn't love me ruin my day.
Matt Stauffer:
Come on. I love that.
Scott Hanselman:
Why would I let an internet stranger with a frog for an icon reach out over the internet and slap me and up my day? Sorry man. Block and move on. Water off a duck's back. So that resilience I have based on privilege and age. How can we make the young people, my kids, your kids, the folks that are listening as kids and the kids in their lives, have that sense where the likes do not represent your value and your worth? So cut out the negative people, focus on the thing that you're going to do and be intentional. If you're outraged about 19 things, sort them by impact. What are the things you can be outraged about today? And give yourself permission to turn off your phone for a minute, because airplane mode works on the ground.
Matt Stauffer:
There's a lot of quotables from this one. I like that. I don't know if you're familiar with it, but there's a Instagram account called the net ministry. And it's a woman who's basically just primarily targeting women of color, but just saying like, hey, we all need to rest more in order to do the work we're going to do. And it has really changed my perspective because it's the first time I heard somebody saying rest and self care is foundational to activism. And so it was really cool for me because that was my first time really hearing somebody try to have the tension held there, like we're talking about here. And some of the things that you're saying, really remind me of that. So I'll link that in the show notes, everybody. But yeah, I appreciate what you said, what I was going to say.
Matt Stauffer:
So if somebody were to walk away, first of all, curate their feeds and you've mentioned the feeds, aren't just your social feeds are also the people who around you. Is there a second kind of takeaway? Is there one other thing you would say, if you do this one change today, A, curate your feeds, B, is there any other? And if not, that's fine. We just talked about a lot of stuff, but is there any other kind of like, here's your next step in this journey? If you were to give one.
Scott Hanselman:
I would say try to Google for mindfulness and deliberate practice.
Matt Stauffer:
Amen. Come on.
Scott Hanselman:
Like, can you get your mind quiet? If you can't, what can you do to do that? Can you get therapy, talk to a friend, reach out, kind of build that... I have this thing called life's board of directors. There's a link on my blog. People make companies intentionally. People get married and they write their opening speech that they have to give. But no one ever writes, and people write 12 page business plans, but no one ever writes a 12 page business plan for their marriage, for their relationships. We have CEO's and all these kinds of different people who run our companies, but the real people who run the company, it's a board of directors. And the board of directors, they don't really work for the company. So they're interested, but they don't really care that much.
Scott Hanselman:
So I think you should have life's board of directors. These are friends, but not so friendly that they're going to mess up your life, like friendly colleagues. So you have this board of directors that I go to on WhatsApp and it's like, I'm going to make this life decision. And they're the ones that are like, no girl, do not do that. That is stupid. So who is your board of directors of two or three people who are interested, but they're not your brother-in-law.
Matt Stauffer:
Oh my goodness, I love that. Because the brother-in-law's going to be too invested in...
Scott Hanselman:
Yeah, too invested. They got to be invested, but far enough away.
Matt Stauffer:
I love that.
Scott Hanselman:
Where you can drop in, ask questions and then drop out. So those are people who can help you quiet your mind. You go and say something out loud. We have this thing in programming called rubber duck debugging. Are you familiar with that?
Matt Stauffer:
I have a rubber duck somewhere here. We send one to everybody at the company when they first join.
Scott Hanselman:
Yeah. So rubber duck debugging is you put the rubber duck on your monitor and then when you get stuck, you talk to it. We rubber duck debug programs. But very rarely do we rubber duck debug our lives. You actually do when you call your friend, they just listen. They don't really say anything. And then at the end they say, I think you know what you need to do. And you're like, you're right. Because you've just put it out there in the world. And you said it and it came back. So that level of intentionality and deliberate practice, I try to apply. We didn't write big, long vows for our wedding, we wrote a plan, not a business plan, but like a, this we believe, married 21 years. This is the marriage plan. What do you think? You know, what are you? What's our mission statement? What's our board of directors.
Matt Stauffer:
I love that.
Scott Hanselman:
That level of intentionality you can apply to all aspects of your life. Get a coach. Multiple coaches.
Matt Stauffer:
Yeah. When you said that about the board of directors, the first person I thought about was my executive coach. And I've never had one before. I'm like, man, like fancy Silicon Valley CEOs have executive coaches, but he's the guy I go to with a lot of these things where I'm just like, I just need an outside perspective.
Scott Hanselman:
A lot of people don't think that they deserve that. So you do all of these things we've talked about. You deserve that, again, two, I'm not going to say you're middle aged, but two middle-aged white guys on a podcast here with privilege talking about the things that you deserve. If you can make those things happen. You shouldn't need a lot of money to go and curate your feed. Think about your defaults, have a person that you can talk to and get the negativity out of your life. It will lift a weight off of you.
Matt Stauffer:
That's amazing. I almost feel like I'm cheating the end of that, but I do have this last question and maybe you'll tie this in again as an excellent podcast here. But the last question I always ask everybody before, how can we follow you, is what insight or support did you receive or need when you were younger, that you hope that others who are listening right now will give to others.
Scott Hanselman:
The support that I had was I continually bumped into people who appeared, I think, to want me to win. So don't take advice from anyone who doesn't want you to win.
Matt Stauffer:
Oh my goodness. Yeah.
Scott Hanselman:
So if you find someone like that, they're like, this is a person who's unselfishly giving me advice and they want me to win, as opposed to, they want to put me down or they want to say something negative.
Matt Stauffer:
Or they want something from me.
Scott Hanselman:
Only listen to people that you know genuinely want you to win. And don't be a transactional networker. Where they're giving you something, but they want something in return.
Matt Stauffer:
Right? Yep. I love that. All right. As always, I could talk for like three hours, but I'm going to cut it. So if somebody has never heard of you before, how do we follow you? How do we support you and give you money or support the things you care about? What does it look like to be more involved in Scott Hanselman's life, post this podcast?
Scott Hanselman:
Nothing I do costs money. Everything I do is absolutely free. If you go to hanselman.com in the upper corner, I've got my podcast, I've done over 800 episodes. So I would encourage you to go to the archives and just scroll back. I've got transcripts for all 800 episodes. You can go to my YouTube, I've got a series called computer stuff they didn't teach you in school. A series that I'm very proud of. I've got a TikTok. So all the socials, I'm SHanselman everywhere.
Matt Stauffer:
And all of these will be linked in the show notes. I would mention every once in awhile we do get the chance to pay some money, but it never goes to you. You have some t-shirts at times where we can pay and you're always kind of shifting that money elsewhere. Do you have any of those that are actually open right now?
Scott Hanselman:
Yeah, so I have heyfriends.io. Which goes to Black Girls Code and we've given over $7,000 to them.
Matt Stauffer:
Love it. Awesome. So if you do want to throw some Scott's way, throw it there. Then it goes to Black Girls Code. Scott, I really, really appreciate your time. Everything you shared here. I hope to have you on again soon, but until then, thank you, man. Until next time, y'all be good to each other.