Hey, everyone, and welcome to Developer Tea. My name is Jonathan Cottrell. And in today's episode, I start my interview with Chris Castiglione. Chris is the co-founder of OneMonth. OneMonth actually happens to have been the very first sponsor of Developer Tea. So we have to thank them for being there with us since the very beginning. This episode is not sponsored by OneMonth, nor is it sponsored by anything that Chris is a part of. So anything you hear is just our opinions on the show today. Thank you so much to Chris. By the way, make sure you thank Chris. If you have a Twitter account, you can reach out to him on Twitter at at Castig. That's at C-A-S-T-I-G. Make sure you reach out to Chris and thank him for being on Developer Tea and let him know what helped you in today's episode. Of course, this is a two-part interview as usual. And in this first part, we're going to be talking a lot about learning. Of course, OneMonth is all about learning and Chris has some interesting insights to the learning process. So I'm really impressed by him. I think you will be as well. Today's episode is sponsored by Rollbar. With Rollbar, you can put errors in their place. We will talk more about what Rollbar does and what they are offering you as a listener of Developer Tea later on in today's episode. But first, I want to jump straight into the interview with Chris Castiglione. Those of you who have listened to the show since the beginning and probably people who have picked up in the middle of the show, even, you've heard me say this over and over and over. And that is that learning is a fundamental skill. It's not only that you're picking up new skills when you're learning, but learning itself is a skill. Really, it's important that you learn how to learn. That's kind of a difficult subject to talk about because science is really split on this in a lot of ways. Not every question has been answered and not enough research has been done really to say there's one specific way that works for everyone. And this is a space that Chris is working in pretty much all the time. Would you say that's accurate, Chris? Yeah, I'm a pretty big geek, for sure. There's a couple of different things, Chris, that you're doing around this space of learning. You have your podcast, which we've already talked about, on books. And then you're creating courses. You, as one of the founders of OneMonth, you still are creating courses. You're also considered the dean, right? Yeah, I am the dean. And then beyond that, you're innovating in the space of how online learning even works. For example, you mentioned, and we'll talk about this later on in the show, but you mentioned the different class sizes. So you're doing what you call live courses coming up at OneMonth. And playing with that format about most online courses, for example, they can scale up to thousands of people and they can all take them at different times. Maybe you're a part of a university where you take classes and there's other people that are going through that same class with you. But this is... You know, live courses is another example of this format being experimented with. And I'm really excited about that for OneMonth because I think that concept is really strong. I think it's a really exciting prospect, especially for people who are looking to learn how to code. Yeah, I'm really excited about it. And when I say live, we actually were using the word, I think we're using the word premium courses here, only because live tends... I use that word because it's live because I'm in the course. But live, people tend to feel like, oh, they have to show up at a certain time and they're restricted to that time. And the thing that I am really excited about is how can the student, how can you listening right now learn at your own pace, right? But also not feel like you're left behind and you're on your own. So this idea of the live courses is that I am there every day. We have a Slack community for each of the courses. And I'm really excited about that. And it's going to be less than 100 students. And every day, not all 100 are showing up. But I'm there as the teacher. I have TAs. And we are there live available at some point, Monday through Friday, to help you with... Well, the first part is motivation. Sometimes just showing up. Huge. Hugely important. It's so... And I've seen that because I've taught for years in person at workshops and universities. And I've seen that firsthand, just showing up and looking around and having, oh, there's other people in this with me, that accountability. And so that's when I say live, that's what I mean is like, yeah, there's live people with you taking this. And there's accountability. We're taking attendance. We're looking at your progress. And there's deadlines. So it's... I think whereas a lot of the people use the word MOOCs to mean the big, the big... Kind of, you take a video, you just put it online, and then it's a little bit of the wild, wild west of quality and accountability. Yeah, you never really know. This was, you know, this is kind of the opposite in a way. It's like, this isn't available for everybody. This is a smaller group of people. And, you know, as far as like the teacher just disappearing, it's like, no, the teacher is going to be there with you. So it's, yeah, I could talk about it for a while. I'm really, really excited to do these. Well, and it's, this is something that obviously, Chris, you are passionate about, because you and I both, we've gone through the things that the people who are going to be joining this course have gone through to some extent. You've gone through some different stuff than I've gone through, obviously, right? Sure. I work in an agency style environment. And you work in a more like a startup product environment, right? There's some specific differences there. But I'd love to kind of take a step back and go back to... Yeah. Before OneMonth existed, before, you know, MOOCs existed, how did you learn what you know today? And more specifically, what were your methods early on to learn how to code? Yeah. So everything I know, like, in my head, everything I feel like I've learned over the years, I always seem to come from a frustration or a problem that I wanted to solve. I never wanted to be a developer. Right. I thought it was so not cool. Like, there was never a point at any point before I was 20 that I was like, I'm going to be a developer one day. Like, I was playing music every day. I was a music major. But I had this problem that I wanted to solve. And it really started to bother me. And it was, how do I share my music online with, you know, a lot of people? And this was, like, maybe 2001, 2002. So, I mean, before SoundCloud and all that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I just felt, like, oh, I need to figure out how to make a website. I need to figure out how to share my music. And I taught myself by just, like, going up against a problem. It made me curious to ask questions and all this stuff. And I'd say that's how I started. And I'd say I had a few different levels of my expertise. I mean, I became a full-time... I worked at an agency for a while. I made websites for Toyota and the Black Eyed Peas. There you go. Yeah. Like, these big campaigns. It's a great place to learn, actually. And you need to figure out a way on the spot a lot, like improv. Like, well, here's what happened. And I found that that was a great skill for learning and kind of talk about some of these programming concepts, that kind of time. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And a lot of the people who are listening to this show right now and those of you who are kind of off into the future, you're thinking about learning how to code or maybe you're going to take a course on one month or maybe you're going to teach yourself or whatever path you take, agency is a very common job space for developers, probably because it really allows you to work with many, many clients, right? And it doesn't revolve around you, for example, getting funding. It's more about you solving an existing problem for someone who already has a business. And the cash flow is just different, right? So agency world is really, really important. And I think it breeds really great programmers, people who are fast on their feet. And it also breeds a lot of really good ideas because you happen to be, you know, talking to business people all the time and they bring you problems all the time that they need solved. And a lot of the time that kind of gives you free ideas for new businesses, whether you're solving that problem for just that client, or maybe you want to solve it kind of for the world. That's what a startup is. A startup is like solving a problem for the world. Yeah. The good ones are. Yeah. And you know, it's funny because, I mean, there's definitely this kind of in the atmosphere of, oh, I need to have a startup. I need to do my own thing. I need to be free and raise capital. It seems like these are very trendy ideas nowadays. Sure. It's fair to say. And I think there is a lot of, there is a lot of power in that. And there is a lot of creative potential in having a startup. But I think the ability to learn at a startup, it's just a different, it's not better or worse, but it's just a different beast. And what I mean by that is oftentimes when I've had in one month or different startups that I've worked with in the past, the teams are a lot smaller. And oftentimes you're on your own. Maybe you're the only developer on a team of, you know, a different marketer and a founder or something like that. Mm-hmm. So the agency for me, because people talk smack about agencies sometimes. Sure. Of course they do. Right? And that's why I'm like defending it. That's where this is coming from in case you're listening and you're like, why? But for me, it was such like a, I feel like I got a lot of my confidence from having to just talk and learn from people who were smarter than me and being around just, you know, dozens of smart people every day. It really, it really, it was monumental, I think. Yeah, I totally agree with that. And you can say something bad about both sides and you can say something good about both sides. Yeah, yeah. That's true for almost anything, right? Like any good job also has its downsides. And that's because you can't do it all. You can't, I mean, some agencies end up doing product creation. That's a lot of the time, that's kind of the end goal for an agency is to get into the product space. But really, I mean, there's positives and negatives on both sides of the fence. Right. And it kind of depends on, you know, what style of learner you want to be and what kind of work you want to do. I've made this comparison in the past. If you're working in an agency environment, then typically you're going to be a little bit wider spread. You're going to be a little bit more of a generalist, most likely, unless your agency is very, very large. And you're going to be kind of like the triathlete, right? Like you can do everything pretty well. You're not like super good at the long jump, but you can do everything pretty well. And if you're working at an agency, maybe you're more like a pole vaulter or something. Like you do one thing really, really well. Yep. Today's episode of Developer Tea is sponsored by Rollbar. With Rollbar, you get the context, insights, and control you need to find and fix bugs faster. You know, the deal is, dealing with errors sucks, right? You rely on users to report the errors to you through some ticketing software. And then you have to look through your logs to try to debug those issues based on their ticket. And then you're emailing back and forth and you're trying to work through Slack to figure out what's going on. Rollbar works with all major languages and frameworks. So you can start tracking production errors and deployments in eight minutes or less. You can integrate Rollbar into existing developers, implement workflows. You can send the alerts to those places where you're already working, like for example, Slack or HipChat, or you can create issues in GitHub or Asana or Pivotal Tracker, and any of these things that you're already using. Now on a recent episode of Developer Tea, we said a large part of the job for a developer is tracking down bugs and knowing what things look like when they're working well. And this is what Rollbar does for you. It helps you understand when things go out of line. It helps you understand when things go out of line. It helps you understand when things go out of line. It helps you understand when things go out of line. The moment they happen. Some of their customers, they include Heroku, Twilio, Kayak, Instacart, Zendesk, Twitch. These are huge, huge customers that are relying on Rollbar. And Rollbar has a very specific and special offer for Developer Tea listeners. And they're offering it to some other spec shows as well. They're a huge sponsor of the network and of Developer Tea. So the offer is the bootstrap plan for free, for 90 days. That's 300,000 errors that you can track for free. 300,000 errors that you can track for free with Rollbar. And the way you get that deal is by going to rollbar.com slash developer tea. Go now if you are looking for something to help you deal with your errors. Thanks again to Rollbar for sponsoring today's episode. Of course, that special link can be found in the show notes at spec.fm. I'm glad that you came from the agency world and went like full swing over to startup world. Yeah. Yeah, it was exciting. And I think, you know, I imagine a lot of your listeners might be earlier in their career. And I think like the one piece of advice, or this is always just something that really helped me out in my career, was I always wanted, once I was going through the agency life, I realized, oh, I really want to go start my own thing. You know, I want to travel. I wanted to work on a laptop in Amsterdam, which I did for a while and, you know, just travel the world. Like that was like a stage of my life that I wanted to reach. And I think the thing that was most monumental toward that was just getting down a few clients in my portfolio. Like literally, like I said, that black eyed peas thing. I mean, it's silly because like I'm not necessarily the biggest fan. But I remember as soon as I put that on my website and I shared it, it was all of a sudden I started getting all this work. And it was like, and I was so surprised because I was like, wait, what? Like, you know, and it was just it was obviously just a WordPress site. You know, that was like it wasn't even like the most, you know what I mean? Like I'd worked on way more challenging, amazing projects before that. But people who don't know code and tech like, you know, like, yeah, they don't they don't care that you're, you know, you're I don't know, you know, all the fancy words that you could drop on your and acronyms that you could drop on your resume. Just having a big client, you know, is is maybe cheap. Is it? As it sounds, it's it can actually be really powerful toward getting you career, career freedom if you're looking to go independent after agency life. Yeah, I've talked about this on the show in the past as well. But the idea that you're above some kind of marketing scheme, you'll quickly realize if you're in if you're in the agency world that there's a feeling like a lot of people have this kind of hang up that you want to kind of be pure, right? Like there's some level of integrity that you don't want to lose by over marketing yourself. And yeah, and that's respect. That's respectable, certainly. Right. But there's also this thing at the end of the day that you have to have. And that's money. Yeah. You're not going to no matter how, you know, respectable you are, if you are turning down the possibility of doing more work in the future, then you're saying that you're your ideal. You're not going to be able to do more work in the future. And that's the thing that's really important. And that's why I think that the skills are strong enough to kill your career. Right. Yes. Yes. Like you're you're you're not flexible enough to find a way to explain to people, hey, I actually did work for a big client. There's nothing particularly wrong with that. But this feeling of purity or maybe it's humility or something that a lot of developers, we share this, right, because we care about, you know, what is really going on. Right. I don't want to look at the veneer. I want to look at the engine. I want to look at what's going on. I want to look at the underneath the hood here. What is happening? What is what is what are you doing that is of real value? I don't want to do things. Don't get paid for it and make their own hours. This is the developer's dream. And then he's like, but to get to that, he had to build up company and sell it to Yahoo. Right. And so I think there's a similar kind of parallel where there's like you have to prove yourself in a way. Yeah. Or figure out how you're going to check off the commerce thing until you get to the art. And I don't know that it's actually so mutually exclusive, like you have to do this and then that. But I think that's always the kind of thing that's it was always been grappling. You're saying it so well because it's like that's been always it's like, I don't want to sell out. I'm not going to do that. Yeah. You know, but that allowed me it was, you know, it was then during that time that I became a developer only for 20 hours a week. And then I went on the other 20 hours. I started teaching storytelling. So like a totally, totally different thing to which I'm still involved in to this day. It allowed me. I'm definitely more of a generalist where I'm just. I'm just interested in so many different things. And so that gave me the freedom, you know, for about about a year and a half to go and spend my other half time and doing some other passions. So it really just depends like what your what your version of success is. You know, there's you have to make your own version, I think, of what's important to you. I totally agree with that. And yeah. And for those of you who are listening, who are still feeling that like urge to not sell out, remember that selling out means something different for everyone. Right. So. So don't don't assume that you have to go and find out like what it means to be of high integrity. There are some things that are universal, like being honest, for example. That's that is kind of a fundamental part of integrity. But being true to yourself about what you want to do in your career, that's important. But sometimes you also have to look a little bit past, you know, what it looks like today or this year or the next five years and look at 10 years. Right. What happens in 10 years? Are you going to be in the same place? Very unlikely. It's very unlikely that you're going to be doing whatever it is that you're doing today in 10 years. Almost impossible, especially if you're in tech. Right. If you're doing something in the tech space, there may be elements of what you're doing today in what you're doing in 10 years, particularly if you're coding in Java. Yeah. But but ultimately, you know, you're probably things are going to change and starting to think. Starting to think more fluidly about your career. That's something that if you start doing it today, you're going to thank yourself pretty much every day into the future that you're willing to be flexible and understand, hey, you know, what I wanted yesterday does not have to be what I also want today. Yeah. And talking about I'm just going to build on that and talking because we were talking about about goals. I mean, about learning and different ways that we kind of each you and I each approach learning. And to me setting goals, I set personal goals. I'm not saying this is the way you have to do it, but this is what works for me for the year for the next three years. And then I break them down per quarter. And it sounds a little bit, I don't know, anal or whatever, but it really just helps me focus on, you know, am I hitting? Am I, you know, am I am I getting closer to the thing and how has it changed? And and also I learned that lesson that you're talking about. I learned that. I learned how things change so quickly from a teacher of mine in college. He he had this assignment where he asked us to write down where we think we'll be in five years. And he collected these these little essays and anyone listening. I mean, give this a try. Write down right now where you think you'll be in five years, location, job, money, all that stuff. And then he took these and five years later he he mailed them out to us. Wow. And it was like, who was so wrong? I mean, so wrong. So wrong. So it was really humbling. And since that lesson, I've been like, no, man, like I got to set goals where they also have to be, you know, malleable enough where it's not it's not going to be what you think it's going to change along the way. There's always a need for a plan B and a plan C and even like a plan Z. Right. Like something that's totally off the wall. But, you know, that is some that you can somehow find a way to be happy in this situation. Yes. Yep. Along those lines. And this is another exercise that you can do right now. If you're listening to this at home, for those of you who are listening to the show, think about the goals that you wrote down on January 1st of this year. Just think about it for a second. If you made resolutions and you haven't looked back at them, we're we are a fourth of the way through the year at the point that we're recording this episode. Yeah. A little bit past a fourth of the way. And you made some goals. Probably if you're like most people, you made some kind of resolutions or some kind of goals. Have you checked back? Have you looked back at those goals at all? And there's a very high possibility that a lot of you have. So I'm not I'm not saying that everybody is really bad at this, but it's it is very typical to set a goal and then totally forget about it and then go down the year and wait until January 1st the next year. To actually do something about those goals that you set last year. And so it's a little bit difficult to get that inspiration. Maybe this episode can actually act as a little bit of inspiration to you since Chris is saying, hey, you know, I plan at the quarter level. I plan at the year level at the three year level. Have you done that planning for your own careers? Right. Or maybe your own personal life. This isn't just about learning how to code, by the way. Right. This is this is like a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution adopted. So episode schedules, for example, it's another, we like to stay at least one week, hopefully two weeks out ahead of ourselves. Right now I'm unfortunately way behind, but the deal is I know the standard, right? Like I know that I'm behind. And so there's a little bit of pressure for me to, to push out a little bit further and get some episodes recorded. Excellent. That's really cool. Yeah. So, and I think companies actually in general are pretty good at, good about this. And in fact, it's, it's actually legally required. This is probably a little known fact for those of you who are, are not owners in a company, it is legally required that you have a, that you have a meeting with the people in, in leadership or in ownership of the company, kind of like the, the board, if you will, and that you take notes at that meeting. So like, this is already something that you have to do if you own a business. It's something that I, I learned since I started developing. You could go to jail if you, or you could at least get like, fine. No, I'm, I'm the person who has to do this. So I know how we had to have a lawyer help me with it the first few times at the board meeting level. It's yeah. This is like no joke. You know what you're talking about? This is no joke. It's real. It sounds silly, but it's real. Yeah. Like some people probably think we're kidding right now and not at all. Like, you can go look at, look this up. I'm sure there's a Wikipedia article on it or something, but yeah, it's, it's a real thing. It's a great, um, there's a great, I think it's a Stanford podcast where they have a lawyer. I could send you the link afterwards if you want to share it, but it goes into depth about like, anyway, maybe it's off topic a little bit, but it's like, yes, not at all goal setting and knowledge. The goal is very important. Sure. Yeah. I mean, if you don't have a goal, then what do you, what are you aiming at? Right. Um, if, if you don't have, even at the daily level, right, we've, again, we talk about this all the time and Chris, I'm going to talk to you specifically about this because I'm incredibly impressed at this, the pace at which you read books. So I'm going to ask you in just a minute to kind of divulge to me how that actually happens physically, because I, I can't seem to find my way through book as fast as you do. So, uh, but if you don't have a goal, if you have a career and you don't have a goal, then what are you working towards? Maybe you're working towards nothing. Maybe you're, you're happy at kind of the same level that you're at. And you're basically just responding to the things that are happening around you. And that's, um, that's okay. Right? Like, don't let me be the one that pressures you out of that comfortability. Okay. There are a lot of people who are listening to this show, who are not comfortable with that idea. And if you're not comfortable with that idea, the first way that, that you can kind of help yourself get out of that situation is start setting a few goals. It sounds really stupid simple because it is set a few goals, even if it's at the daily level and then move up to the weekly level and then move up to the quarterly level and then so forth. Yeah. Yeah. I'm into it. Thanks so much for listening to the first part of my interview with Chris Castiglione. Of course, go and reach out to Chris on Twitter. It's at Castig. That's at C-A-S-T-I-G. You can mention Developer Tea. It's at Developer Tea, or you can mention me directly at Jay Cottrell. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. Of course, the second part of the interview will be in the next episode of Developer Tea on Friday. Make sure you subscribe to the show in whatever podcasting app you use so that you don't miss out on any future episodes, including the second part of my interview with Chris. Thank you so much again to Rollbar for sponsoring today's episode. With Rollbar, you can put any of your questions in the chat box. And I'll see you in the next episode. in their place. Just go to spec.fm for the show notes. Of course, the special link, which is rollbar.com slash developer tea, rollbar.com slash developer tea. That'll get you the bootstrap plan free for 90 days. That's 300,000 errors tracked for free. Thank you so much for listening. Make sure you leave a review for us in iTunes. That is the best way to help other developers just like you find developer tea. Thanks so much for listening until next time. Enjoy your tea.