BenP (00:02.422)
Hi folks and welcome to the Tech World Human Skills podcast. Can you believe it? It's our first birthday. Wowzers. I started the podcast in March, 2023, released an episode every two weeks and we are at episode 26. Where has time gone? So thanks so much to everybody for listening. It's been an absolute pleasure to have you with us. Now to the matter at hand, today's episode.
We've got a superhero of the tech world today. If you're in the developer space, you will definitely have heard of him. And if you're not in the dev world, there's still a good chance that you'll have heard of him. So here to share his pearls of wisdom with us, please could you welcome to the podcast, Scott Hanselman. Scott, it's lovely to have you with us.
Scott Hanselman (00:50.936)
It's very nice to be here and happy anniversary to you.
BenP (00:54.41)
Now for everybody out there in internet land that may not know you, could you introduce yourself to us?
Scott Hanselman (01:03.112)
My name is Scott Hanselman. I live in Portland, Oregon, and I have been on the internet since near its inception I've been a programmer for 32 years in the last 15 of which I've been at Microsoft and I'm Go ahead
BenP (01:20.822)
Now carry on, I was just saying, right, a little bit of delay there, I think, going across the Atlantic Ocean.
Scott Hanselman (01:26.456)
Oh, sorry. So yeah, I've been at Microsoft for 15 years. I'm currently, I've got a fancy title now. I just happened a couple of months ago. I'm a VP, which is such a funny, funny thing, funny compliment that capitalism pays you when they give you a fancy title. So hopefully that will be a title that I'll be able to use to get fired advocating for customers. I have got a great team and we put together community.
content and events for folks who are programmers. But then on the side, I also have a podcast. I've done 940 episodes every Thursday for the last 19 years. And I blog and podcast. And I'm also an old man on TikTok, which is fun.
BenP (02:05.876)
Wow.
BenP (02:13.974)
Really? So what does an old man on TikTok mean? Does that mean you dress up as an old man or just you've been there for a while too?
Scott Hanselman (02:18.768)
No, I'm simply present. I'm simply present as a 50 year old man on TikTok providing big dad energy for the young people as they navigate this social internet.
BenP (02:32.304)
Excellent, excellent. Now, so I wonder, you know, it's wonderful you got a lovely big title, a big boy title as you alluded to there, like VB. So VP of Community and Development, is it? Or Developer Community, something like that.
Scott Hanselman (02:44.12)
Yeah, developer community, right? Basically I have a great team that makes sure that from the moment that you Google with Bing for I want to learn C sharp all the way to the point where you decide to go and deploy it on Azure. Do you have a great experience? Do you find what you need? Do you find the community? Are you welcomed by the community? Are there? Is there someone to talk to every week? We have weekly live shows we.
Do things like Microsoft build and Microsoft ignite were present on social were on YouTube were on tick tock right we want to make sure that people who are entering the space or who have been in the space for a long time feel welcomed and feel that they get the support that they need to make the software that they want to make.
BenP (03:25.654)
That's really interesting, really interesting. And so, you know, if I think about you and I said, we've not met each other before really, other than just preparing for this. But I knew who you were. I've worked at Microsoft for a long time. So I knew who you were. And so when I think about you, I sort of think, well, he's got a bit of a brand there of having great technical knowledge and knowing lots about the technology. But also you're a VP and you're leading teams, as you just kind of alluded to there. And then you're also doing a lot of community work.
work through your blogs, through your podcasts and that kind of stuff. So it sounds to me like a really great career. What are the key skills that have helped you to be so successful time and time again as you've gone through? Did you say you're 50? Yes, since you've gone through those many years in the tech world.
Scott Hanselman (04:18.328)
I would say it's split right down the middle between a clear and concrete fundamental understanding of the basics. That's 50%. And then the other 50 % would be a focused and deliberate, almost to the point of intensity, empathy for the other person who's experiencing what they're experiencing. So tech ended up being a lot squishier than I expected it would be.
BenP (04:21.78)
Okay.
Scott Hanselman (04:47.896)
I spent the first maybe five or 10 years being somewhat literal and maybe a little bit more type A, we would call it, a little bit more intense. The tech is the tech and why I don't want you to understand this. This is not that hard to in my latter years being a much more, yeah, I can understand why you would feel that way. And let's see how we can help you be successful. It's a...
Tech is way more squishy and way more humans than they told you in school.
BenP (05:18.696)
So what was that pivot point? I guess there's the Scott type A, the tech is the answer, it's easy, different now. What was that pivot point? What sort of helped you realise that you needed to go about things in a different way?
Scott Hanselman (05:34.328)
I don't know. I mean, it's kind of a slow boil. The podcast, you know, certainly like talking to 900 people is a way to really go out and like do, you know, customer visits effectively, right? But that was done to educate myself. Um, I think watching people be unhappy on social media during the rise of social media and see their unhappiness and, and then wonder why.
my experience on social was not an unhappy one caused me to go, gosh, I wish that you were okay. Let's talk about why you're not okay. Oh, well, people are horrible online and they're mean. Okay, well, how can we make that better, right? How can we help people not be horrible? How can we find you a safe space for people to teach, to learn, to whatever. So whether it be...
Discord or YouTube or tik -tok or blogs or comments or you know or telegrams or whatsapp groups like where is a place where someone can What's good if you actually let me pause have you heard the theory of the third place are you familiar with this concept? Okay, so the theory is that for people to exist healthily and comfortably they need three places home work and a third place
BenP (06:41.622)
I'm not in line me.
Scott Hanselman (06:56.216)
The third place historically is church or the pub or both or a user group and there is a theory that people in the Western world are feeling sad because of the decline of society. I'm saying that in quotes if you can hear those quotes for those are listening. Is the decline of the availability of the third place and the malaise, the ennui,
that we have that sense of kind of like after COVID is that all of the third places disappeared and we had only two places. And then when those two places became one place, your home is your work that worked for some people for whom their personalities were aligned to like, oh, this is great. Now I can just be at home and work and be on social. So now you have a situation where your one bedroom apartment is homework and
the place that you go after home and work, like you go online. And there's a theory that that's not healthy for the lizard brain. Now, you can, I have no opinion either way. I don't want to make any declarative statements, but it's an interesting way to frame how to think about moving around space. So I enjoy people until my social battery is depleted. So like going somewhere, hanging out with people, going to conventions, going to...
BenP (08:03.062)
Okay, okay.
Scott Hanselman (08:24.394)
Expos going to flea markets going to the thrift shop These are all third places for me to talk to people and I tend to be a social person I can thank my my dad for that. He is very much got big dad energy and I intentionally thought about like what happiness looks like and why my dad has that big dad energy and I am developing my own Hanselman flavor of like Ted Lasso
BenP (08:40.182)
Right.
Scott Hanselman (08:53.336)
Pleasant happiness, you know to just bring that kind of like joy and in doing that I talked to people in the third place and For those who haven't found their third place my team attempts to make them That's a bit of a long rambly answer, but it gives you a lot of structure to understand how Discovering that can cause me to decide to be a different happier person
BenP (09:05.526)
Okay.
BenP (09:17.462)
Yeah. And it's interesting. I mean, if I've understood you right there, what you're sort of saying is you started going on a bit of this social adventure in terms of podcasting that was forcing to you to meet to people, to ask questions. And actually, just by doing a lot of that, you built a bit of empathy for them. You didn't go there looking to try and build empathy. And you went there to just talk to people and exercise a bit of curiosity. And through exercising that curiosity, you then go, oh, I understand you a little bit more now. And that's then led to a change in your approach.
Scott Hanselman (09:33.944)
Perfect.
Scott Hanselman (09:47.704)
Exactly. It's yeah, I didn't go there like as a journalist or someone with a focus like I shall find empathy It was more of a wow What is this feeling and then following it and I think that also speaks to my other my other thing my other like vibe which is Intentionality and deliberateness a lot of people feel a certain way, but then they don't sit down and think meditate sleep Intentionally say why do I feel this way?
I don't like this feeling. This is not cool. So I have like, uh, my, my buddy JD Meyer has this wonderful website called getting results .com and he has this idea of, uh, Monday vision Friday reflection. So you have an appointment with yourself at 9 AM on Monday and you go, what's my vision for the week? How do I want the week to feel? It is an intentional moment on Monday morning where you go, what does success look like? What, what's going to make me feel awesome this week? Cause a lot of people just.
BenP (10:33.11)
Okay.
Scott Hanselman (10:47.096)
go to work, accept the defaults, and then they go home and they don't know why they feel like crap. And then they do it again, or maybe they work late. And then on Friday at four o 'clock, you have a meeting with yourself to reflect and you go, why did this week work? What didn't work? What meetings, what people, what energy, what tasks made me feel yucky? And then I'm going to change on Monday. I'll forgive myself intentionally and start over again.
You have to reset the next Monday.
BenP (11:18.518)
Okay, okay. So Vision Monday, Reflection Friday. And then how do you, how do you work out what you're gonna be intentional with? I mean, if I just took off all the things that I didn't like and made me feel yucky, sadly, there's some of those things that I really need to do. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So how do you kind of work out what to be intentional about and what is...
Scott Hanselman (11:20.088)
So intentionality.
Scott Hanselman (11:35.)
Yeah, well then you wouldn't work, you'd just hang out and eat food all day, tacos.
BenP (11:44.534)
What is the grind that is valuable grind versus what is grind that, hey, we can sack this off?
Scott Hanselman (11:49.912)
Yeah. Yeah, I love that. What is valuable grind? I have always believed in this is this concept of parallel lists. People make a list. People love their lists, right? And I've actually got over here. I'm holding up a what's called a remarkable. It's a it's an E Ink device. It's effectively a sheet of paper, right? So consider this a yellow yellow tablet, right? Like a yellow legal tablet. And I make a list of the stuff I have to do. And that's not in itself interesting.
BenP (11:58.742)
Okay.
Scott Hanselman (12:18.776)
What people don't do is make a list of the things that they need to do and then sort them, then write the list again parallel next to it and sort it differently. So if you made a list of stuff that you had to do and then sorted by difficulty, like how much work this thing's going to take, and then you write the same list again, except you sort it with impact. Can you find things that are low difficulty, high impact?
BenP (12:30.998)
Okay.
BenP (12:48.822)
Okay.
Scott Hanselman (12:48.824)
And then if you find things that are both high impact and high difficulty, can you muster up the energy by that realization? You go like, wow, this task is going to be really important. I should probably do that. Oh, it's going to take a lot of emotional energy. I'm going to prepare mentally for that. Cool. Now that I've identified a task that is both high impact and high energy, and we're going to acquire that, now I can hype myself up and my team, and we can go and do that.
as well as identifying things that are easy, where I can just do them and get them out of the way. Things that are draining my energy, but need to be done.
BenP (13:27.158)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, really interesting. Yeah, I've never tried that actually sorting the lists on different priorities. I guess maybe I'll sort of try and do it a little bit in my head. But no, I've just got an old fashioned... Yeah.
Scott Hanselman (13:40.344)
People do it in their heads. People like open the to do list and then they click on the little header and they flip back and forth. I'm literally taking the same list twice. You need like 10 items. You can't have a list of 50. Right and then see if you find synergy between these things. Wow, this thing is low. You know low impact but high energy. Why am I doing it at all? Drop it. Don't even do it right. Figure out how to delegate it. Have someone else do it. But this one is going to be.
BenP (13:46.26)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
BenP (13:59.286)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Scott Hanselman (14:08.504)
high impact but maybe medium energy, we should probably do that first.
BenP (14:12.854)
Okay, okay. So we've sort of explored the idea a little bit of empathy and just to come in back to that a little bit, you know, if I think about me, I am not an empathetic person by nature. If I think about my wife and the empathy that my wife has, I would say it's a lot naturally higher than me.
Empathy is something I'm a lot better at now. But it's something that I've had to learn as I've got a bit older. I think I've got better at it. If you were to take 21 year old Ben, there probably wasn't a lot of empathy going on there, if I'm entirely honest. But also a bit like you, it's by talking to people that I've sort of understood about, you know, some of the challenges that other people have had, the perspective of other people. And I think I've built that a little bit and built that muscle.
little bit. So it's interesting I think if anybody's out there's going oh you know I'm not naturally the most empathetic person it seems like there's two examples of here people that have built their empathy not necessarily intentionally but just by exercising a bit of curiosity which has led to it which has then led to a bit of impact.
Scott Hanselman (15:16.632)
Yeah, and I think also one has to think about why they feel a certain way. A lot of people might feel well, why are we here? Right. So if you are empathetic, we are here to help other people and reduce their suffering. That's a pretty simple mission statement. But if you are here to enjoy yourself and you have more back and all be attitude about like I'm here to be awesome and do awesome stuff, then you're more likely to.
do things that only you care about and do fun things and screw those other people. I'm just going to go on YOLO, right? So that's where I think it can be a little bit challenging because if you are inherently trying to be selfish and self -focused and self -centered, then the id is the center of all things. I'm going to do stuff that makes me happy and I'll end up stomping on other people. But if you do the inverse of that and you live to serve and the
point is to help other people and they know not what they do, then you'll have more empathy.
BenP (16:26.486)
wonder if we could start to change tech a little bit because also what you were saying there was you know started off being very techy, purely tech tech tech tech, now you're leading teams. How do you balance that you know?
We work in the tech world that is changing at a hugely rapid pace and it's quite fun and it's quite exciting and all of that kind of stuff. And then there's also this idea of leading teams and being greater than the sum of our parts and achieving. How do you balance being somebody that loves tech and works in tech and being a leader and how do you learn about getting better at both?
Scott Hanselman (17:04.824)
I don't know if I'm a particularly good leader. I do know I have a very good team and they are in particularly what are called my M1s, meaning my direct reports. I'm a manager of managers. So without them, I stand on the shoulders of giants. So putting together a good team is an acknowledgement. The leader is not the best of us. The leader is just the one that's standing on the hill saying that way and giving you a reason to run.
BenP (17:16.63)
Okay. Okay.
BenP (17:34.174)
Yeah.
Scott Hanselman (17:34.328)
So there's the administrative part of leadership that I find to be challenging. I'm more a strategy than tactics, but that's why you have other leaders that work with you, right? Leaders are not alone in what they do. But the same empathy rules apply. I want people to have happy careers. I want them to enjoy their work. Like you have to have a reason to wake up in the morning and say, this is cool stuff. And I like my team.
BenP (18:00.342)
Hmm.
Scott Hanselman (18:03.128)
Plus, if you have a boss that sucks, they will betray you, right? And you will just be sad. So, empathy requires me to not be that boss. Right? I don't want anyone to feel like, oh man, this freaking guy, he sucks. So do the opposite of what that is. You know what mean? I've had some very good bosses. I've been very blessed to have excellent bosses. I want people to feel the same way.
BenP (18:21.27)
Yeah.
BenP (18:30.646)
So was it a conscious decision that you, you know, one day you're there, working very deeply on the technology, and then the next minute you're a manager? Or what was that kind of transition? How did that, how did you get to that sort of space you are now?
Scott Hanselman (18:45.56)
I think that's a Microsoftism, but it's also big tech. So in medium -sized companies, if you want to be a manager, you kind of have to ask for it and then do like manager training. In big tech, usually there's some kind of a reorg and then they go, eh, you have three people, you have four people, you have 30 people. You know, it just happens. So yeah, I actually was previously before Microsoft, I was the chief architect at a finance company and that was a much...
more significant leadership job, even though it was 15 years ago. And I was trying to really be an individual contributor at Microsoft. I didn't want a team. But I was asked to have a team and I have found it to be a better, you know, I'm certainly better together. Because I have a team, we get a lot more done. It's a multiplier. It's like one plus one equals five. Our team is very scrappy.
BenP (19:25.206)
Okay.
Scott Hanselman (19:40.312)
and has no budget, so we get a lot of stuff done. We run it like a startup. So I initially was like, oh, yeah, I don't have a team. But it ended up being awesome, and we get a lot of cool stuff done.
BenP (19:53.814)
So you'd sort of, you built your strategic thinking and your kind of leadership in terms of which direction are we going to head in. And you'd managed to stay as an individual contributor in many roles for a long way into your career. And then the reorgs got you some direct reports.
Scott Hanselman (20:09.464)
Yeah, the reorgs happen. But at the same time though, I want all of my managers that work for me to do cool stuff and feel like they can individually contribute. If management just means that you're just running around asking everyone if they're okay and doing a bunch of meetings, that's probably not really a good example of good management. So I feel like the management overhead should be somewhat minimal and people should be able to do the thing that they're interested in. So my managers are also individual contributors.
BenP (20:39.382)
Yeah well another area I wanted to talk about was about how you influence people and we talked about this a couple of weeks ago when we first met up that the Hanselman factor of you know now you're Scott Hanselman the name.
Scott Hanselman (20:56.248)
You're talking this up. You're this idea of this. I want to push back before you to answer the question. Though, like you've you've developed a brand. No, just being a person like everyone like people want me to do these talks on like how to make a personal brand. No, don't be a personal brand. Just be a person. The brand the brand will follow. And you know, it's like so I guess it's it's far less strategy and far more just simply existing in public as a human. You know what I mean? Like.
BenP (21:01.198)
Okay.
BenP (21:15.734)
Okay, so.
Scott Hanselman (21:26.072)
I'm not like, yes, and now the personal brand. There's far less mustache twisting than I think you're implying.
BenP (21:37.558)
and I didn't mean to imply the good mustache twisting. I guess the way I was going was as you get more seasoned in your career and you've got a bit of experience people might listen to you more and think oh this person, oh I've heard of them, oh you know I'm going to listen to them because I know who they are, because of their reputation, I'm going to listen to them because of their reputation. But there's a lot of people,
Scott Hanselman (21:59.264)
reputation.
Right.
BenP (22:07.638)
that are probably building that reputation, whether that's people earlier in career or career changes or people that that reputation is less known by a broader set of people. So I guess, do you have any advice, and you've already started to give it, I think there, about just being a human, but any advice about, for those people that would like, have got some good ideas and would like people to listen to them more, perhaps, and would like to drive some of those ideas, how do you get folks to listen to take your ideas on board?
Scott Hanselman (22:35.896)
So I am neither a marketeer nor a particularly good salesperson. So I watch like these Gary V types, you know, not a fan. I find that to be insincere. Like it's almost like flip the odometer to the other side. Like it's like, I'm be so sincere that he's flipped over. Now he's not sincere anymore. And the idea of influence is for me, not something that can be detangled from capitalism.
because influencers, they love to call themselves influencers. What are they there for? They're there to sell stuff. Full stop, period. That's every influencer out there, everyone who wants to be an influencer, everyone who's decided, yeah, influencers, that's the next job. So, I don't know if you all have this in England, QVC, it was like a 24 hour sales channel, and they just give you random stuff and they go, hey, this new, you know, and they just.
BenP (23:12.086)
Okay.
BenP (23:27.71)
Shopping Channel. Yeah.
Scott Hanselman (23:33.474)
They don't know. They've never seen it before in their life. They've never used it. And they just make up stories about this thing that they've used. You know, you get one of these, let me tell you about this. That's, that's, that's salespeople. Okay. So influencers are salespeople. So I, I recognize that I work for giant big co, right? So giant big co wants me to sell a thing. However, I am trying to sell best practices piece. I'm trying to sell processes.
such that one can develop software. I happen to be selling it on software that I enjoy using, but I don't ever influence people to buy stuff that I think sucks. Does that make sense? So there have been times, literally yesterday, someone asked me to like have my name on a byline on a blog. And I was like, I don't do blog bylines. I'm not going to have, can we get an executive? Like we'll write the blog post and you put your name on it. That's, I've never done that.
BenP (24:15.126)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Scott Hanselman (24:32.472)
not, I had to, I had to say to the marketeer, like I'm not, I'm sorry, I don't do that. Why not? Well, because I've never heard of your thing before today and you want me to put my name on a thing as if I wrote it and I don't do that. So walking that balance of like working for giant evil corporation while also running a not evil team, you know what I mean? Like, we're not really evil anymore, but we are giant, right? And there's just.
You can inadvertently stomp on people if you tell them to buy stuff that you don't believe in. So I try to look at it differently. I'm a teacher. I am trying to educate people on things that I think are good. And I hope that you bring this knowledge into your life. And then if, if in a side effect, you happen to buy a copy of visual studio or you decide to use .net. Awesome. That's great. Those are tools that I work on for folks that may not be familiar, but the benefit is that I've always been an open source software person.
BenP (25:07.478)
Okay.
Scott Hanselman (25:29.336)
And I came to work at Microsoft to open source software. So other than Azure, which is kind of like a public utility, it's like spinning the meter on your water or your power or your petrol or your gas. I'm not selling anything. Everything I'm selling is free. So I get it. I sneak by the influencer thing. I just want people to like use stuff that I think will make them happy. Like my YouTube videos for the last two days have been, have you heard about this cool free utility? Have you heard about that cool free utility?
So, yeah, I know again, once again, a very long answer. I apologize.
BenP (26:03.306)
No, no, no, no. And it's interesting. Where my mind went when you were starting to answer that was you were starting to answer that with influencers with a capital I, you know, as in, you know, the snake oil sellers, you know, the, you know, I've got this thing, I've been paid a buttload of money and I'm going to tell you it's brilliant. And you answered it seemed to me like influencer with a little I where this is a thing that I compare that I love.
Scott Hanselman (26:13.176)
Yeah. Yeah.
BenP (26:31.24)
and actually I'm just going to be a person and be enthusiastic and tell you about this thing that I love which will actually be influential because your infectious enthusiasm and the fact that it's a good thing that you believe in will shine through.
Scott Hanselman (26:49.4)
So I'll give you an example. We're gonna example. So I held up my remarkable before it's just an E Ink tablet. I like it. Now, you know, have I made a couple hundred bucks over the last five years on like referral links? Yeah. And I marked them. I say, Hey, here's a link. If you want a referral and I'll get 20 bucks if you buy one of these things, you know, and I, and I get walking around money, it's not paying any rent, but you know, it's nice to get a 25 bucks when somebody buys a remarkable, but.
BenP (26:53.878)
Yeah. Yeah.
Scott Hanselman (27:17.656)
That's not why I use it. Like I wanted a thing that wasn't an iPad and I love E Ink because I'm and people know I use my Kindle like every day. I'm a huge fan of E Ink as a concept. You can see I've got my speaking. That's my calendar for the next year where I'm going to speak. It's got a touchscreen like it sells itself. But the idea that I'm like out here with a desk of crap that I don't use trying to get people to buy a much more crap. That's silly.
But I do know that this is my notepad now. It's my paper. I love it because it has no web browser. And this is cool because if you want to like psychologically dissect it, this remarkable E Ink display is on brand for me, isn't it? Because it's about intentionality. It's about deliberateness. It's about Zen. It's about not having a web browser. It doesn't have an ability to get on the internet and look at social crap. So.
That's why someone who is listening might go, I want to check that out. That's kind of what I'm like also. But if someone replies on Twitter and says, well, I can't see Instagram on the remote, well, then don't buy it. Because it's not for you. Does that make sense?
BenP (28:22.902)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
BenP (28:30.294)
It's not for you.
So, you know, no, it does. And so interesting, you know, what you're talking about here is just, it's your authenticity really, I guess, is what we're coming back to is you're just being Scott Hadsallman.
and maybe growing older and wiser, learning a few things along the way, continually exercising some curiosity, it sounds to it. And that's led you to try and, well, not led you to try, but led you to understand a bit more about people's problems. And just because this is the type of chap you are, you think, I'd quite like to help people solve that. And this is a good way to do it. And so it's just who you are sort of coming through.
Scott Hanselman (29:14.2)
That's fair. My wife has accused me of being one of the most utilitarian people that she's ever known, which means that... So you know how the whole joke about like, you know, the men and women are like, those kind of jokes, you know, and this of course covers any and all flavors and genders of mixed couples, but it's like there's one person who has a problem, and then the other person, they go to your partner and you go, hey, this thing sucks. You either say, oh, that must be hard.
BenP (29:20.086)
Right!
Scott Hanselman (29:44.056)
Tell me more. That's the empathetic person. Or there's me, which is like, oh, I have a utility that can fix that. Or, oh, let me get my power drill. I can fix that. And they're like, but I don't want it to be fixed. I want to talk about it. Right? So what I have done in my life and in my career is I've oscillated back and forth between I can fix it and tell me about it. And I now understand both sides, but I do know in myself.
BenP (30:07.862)
Yeah.
Scott Hanselman (30:13.016)
If there's a widget, if you have a problem, Ben, and I can 3D print you a thing to fix it, then, because like the remarkable that I keep picking up, one of the things that you're not seeing, I'm gonna hold this up. This is a 3D printed bracket that I made a couple days ago so that the remarkable might sit on my desk because I was finding it annoying. It's a stand for it to sit at a 45 degree angle because I was putting it.
BenP (30:18.358)
Hahahaha
BenP (30:31.038)
Okay.
A little custom stand, a custom desk stand for your -
Scott Hanselman (30:41.784)
flat on the desk and that was irritating so I solved it. Right? And like I could have called you and said, Ben, my remarkable tablet is sitting flat on my desk and you'd be like, Oh, tell me about it. That must be awful. That must be very painful. But no, I, I fixed it. Right? The problem is now solved. So.
BenP (30:45.556)
Yeah.
BenP (30:54.518)
So now you're looking for the next problem to solve to save you from being bored.
Scott Hanselman (31:04.632)
Now I'm looking for the next problem to solve. But the point being, you have to see both sides. If you simply come with, I will fix it for you. I'll make those feelings that you have go away. That invalidates the feelings that you have. So if someone comes in with a software problem, with a problem with a Microsoft piece of software, my first reaction is, let's get this fixed. But also trying to understand, why do you feel that way? Oh, I see. You feel that way because the design sucks. Or that was not well.
organized or whatever.
BenP (31:37.462)
So I've just glanced at the clock and do you know what? We are running out of time. Time has just vaporized that we've been speaking for almost half an hour now. Yeah, that's awesome. That's awesome. They're always the best ones, aren't they? They're the best ones. So just as we start to wrap up, any, I guess, key takeaways? I've certainly got a few in my mind, but any key takeaways for people that are listening, thinking about wanting to build their career in tech? Any key takeaways that you'd want to leave them with?
Scott Hanselman (31:45.4)
Is that good?
Scott Hanselman (32:06.712)
I'll pop off the stack all the way back to the beginning. So many people are worried about, do I learn AI? Do I learn React? Do I learn this? Do I learn that? Fundamentals. Computers still have memory. Computers still have storage. Computers still have CPUs. Fundamentals. HTTP, TCP, large system design. Nothing has changed in 30 years, right? Like,
collaborative, asynchronous, multi, it's all fundamentals. Oh, virtual machines. No, we were doing that in the 60s in mainframes. Learn your history. Build that base of the pyramid. If you can only copy paste from Stack Overflow, you will eventually have problems. That's thing number one. And thing number two is when someone tells you that something is a problem, maybe believe them.
and rather than trying to solve it, pause for a second and say, tell me more. So listen to what people are saying because you may not agree, but their feelings are still valid.
BenP (33:10.646)
Yeah.
BenP (33:15.702)
Yeah.
No, that's really interesting. The things that I think, as I reflect on our conversation, the things that have really sprung out to me, the first bit was the whole just exercising curiosity. And you know, you've spoken to so many people, understood so many perspectives, and then just, you know, you've really thought, oh, I quite like helping people. How can I help them solve that? So that's really interesting. The other thing that popped out to me was your prioritisation lists and saying, right, OK, here's my list of things. I'm going to sort it this way. I'm going to sort it that way.
what's on the top of both of those lists, right? That's where we're gonna start and that's where we're gonna get the most impact. And then the other thing that's just come out really to me is about it's just you being you really and going these are the things that are exciting to me, this is how I am and now I'm just gonna do that. I'm not gonna try and be this thing, I'm not gonna try and.
influence that and publish this. I'm just going to be me and be enthusiastic about the things that I like and that will be a great foundation to help me be successful.
Scott Hanselman (34:19.832)
for some value of success. Right? And that's the other thing is understand what success means for many people as it should be. Success can be generational wealth or getting out of poverty or my goal was having my bills on auto pay. Greatest privilege of my life was to be able to put my bills on auto pay and not worry about where the next meal was coming from. Right? Like I remember that feeling.
BenP (34:22.)
Yeah!
Scott Hanselman (34:50.232)
and I don't want to feel like that anymore. So that was a goal. Once that was meant, once that was met on Maslov's hierarchy of needs, the, you know, flying business class, those things don't matter because that's just, I'm focused on having my bills on auto pay. So think about why you're doing the thing you're doing and then optimize the things that you're choosing to do to fix that feeling.
BenP (34:58.228)
Yeah.
BenP (35:19.094)
Brilliant. Well, time has escaped us. So I think the last thing for me to say is, thank you so much. It's been wonderful to have you on the show. You're a super busy chap. And so to spend the time with us and the listeners is wonderful. So thank you so much for joining us.
Scott Hanselman (35:34.712)
It was absolutely my pleasure and again, happy anniversary to you and to your listeners that have been now listening for a year, which is fantastic.
BenP (35:41.344)
I know. Can you believe it? Well, take care everybody. Thank you so much, Scott. It's been brilliant to have you with us.
