Coding Influencers - Coding Blonde

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:00) Today we are talking to Masha, or as she's known on Instagram, Coding Blonde. And this episode is part of a special series where we went out and found the most influential developers on Instagram. And we talk about women in tech, her time working at YouTube, and making complex topics simple. All of this right here, right now on the Modern CTO Podcast. Here we go.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:24) This is the Modern CTO Podcast. So I found you on Instagram.

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:00:38) Mm-hmm.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:39) And you have, like, 21,000 followers, right?

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:00:43) Currently, yes.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:44) Yeah. So I was amazed by that. So then I thought, alright, well that's interesting. I was actually flicking through my feed and I saw bright blonde hair next to programming code.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:54) And I was like, oh, that's cool. So I click on it and I'm like, oh, this girl does programming and she did stuff with Google, and she's interesting. So then I went and looked for some other coding influencers, people that were popular at the hashtags, right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:09) Mm-hmm. Did you know that it's predominantly women?

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:01:14) Yeah, they're amazing at it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:16) Right?

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:01:17) Yeah, yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:18) Yeah, I was blown away by that. So I was really excited because that's, you know, as your YouTube channel says and as a lot of things that I read on your blog, it tends to be predominantly male. But then you go on Instagram and it's predominantly female.

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:01:35) Yeah, yeah. I mean, there are quite a few male coders as well that are big influencers. Well, big in this, I would say, area, in this subgroup. But still, yeah, it's very much female dominated.

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:01:53) Maybe it comes from the use of the platform and who actually uses the platform. Maybe that's the thing. But yeah, it's great. There are more girls coding every day.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:04) Absolutely. Do I want to get a list afterwards of some of the other people? Because I couldn't find them.

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:02:10) Yeah, sure.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:11) I could find that developer and he was great too. He puts out lots of content.

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:02:15) Yeah, there are quite a few girls and they're all collaborating between each other. It's amazing.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:21) Yeah, I saw that. And then same with Steph. You guys are all, like, you all know each other. All the top people know each other.

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:02:28) Basically, yes.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:29) Yeah, and they're all coming on the show, by the way.

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:02:31) Really? Oh, amazing.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:32) Oh yeah, this next week we've got Miss Brandy Morgan, we've got Steph, we've got just a whole list of them.

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:02:39) Amazing, amazing. Yeah, I'm actually doing a live stream with Miss Brandy Morgan an hour after our conversation.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:47) Oh, today? Mm-hmm. Oh, that's awesome. How are you guys doing that?

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:02:51) Via Instagram.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:53) Instagram live streams?

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:02:54) Yes.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:55) You've been doing a lot of those?

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:02:57) I've done a few, but I'm still getting used to the whole idea that it's being transmitted to 21,000 people. It's still a little crazy and then getting bombarded by comments. So I tend to do it more on my YouTube channel because there I can kind of read the comments and scroll through them and talk to the audience much better than what Instagram allows me to do, because right now they disappear and it's just super difficult to keep up to date with what people are saying.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:34) So it's easier to engage with your community on YouTube?

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:03:39) I feel like it is, yes. Maybe other people will have a different experience of it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:45) Is that because of your work at YouTube? Like, were you in charge of that?

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:03:48) Oh no, no, I'm not trying to promote that. No, I was actually working with creators and I was helping them find the right strategies for their content and their businesses.

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:04:01) But yeah, this is definitely something that another team does.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:06) So you did that primarily in Russia. Is that how you got your start?

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:04:10) Yes. Well, I lived in London while doing that, but I was working with the Russian market and traveled to Siberia and all those fun places all the time. It was amazing. During my two years at Google, I've taken—and some of these are for my personal travel—but I've taken 118 flights during two years. It was insane.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:37) Yeah, I believe it too. I was reading through your bio and I was like, wow, this human has been all over the globe. Did your parents travel with, like, take you and travel with you a lot when you were growing up?

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:04:49) Oh yes, definitely. They're the ones who kind of gave me this love for traveling, love for discoveries. Yeah, we did so many amazing family trips.

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:05:01) I've been all over the U.S. actually before I moved here, just, you know, Alaska, Utah, Nevada. Like, all these, you know, not so conventional places. Like, people would like to go to New York as their first place or somewhere in California. We were going hardcore.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:24) And who were you traveling with around the United States?

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:05:27) With my parents and my humongous family.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:31) How big? It's, like, super large?

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:05:34) Well, I have five siblings and then aunts and uncles and, you know.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:40) They all got, like, a bus. You got a bus?

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:05:43) We got a bus.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:45) That's awesome.

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:05:46) Yeah, it was amazing.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:48) So you were doing some work connecting with the creators at YouTube and then you got into coding. You wanted to do some coding stuff. I want to hear about that.

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:05:57) So actually, I started my blog before joining Google. Oh, really? Yeah, it was, I started it probably two months before I got my offer, and it basically comes from my nerdy childhood. I was a very nerdy child.

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:06:17) I actually did some projects with Visual Basic and all that stuff and then kind of forgot about it all and came back to it after doing my masters. And I realized that I need to teach myself how to code and I wanted to document that. So I started my blog. I checked if coding blonde was a domain that I could get.

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:06:42) I could, so I started the blog. And two months later I started working at Google. Actually, a bit later because I'm Russian, so I needed a visa. But once I started working there, my learning process and my learning curve really dropped because of how busy and intense it was, and amazing also. But yeah, now I'm on to my next opportunity and I'm starting it all over again.

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:07:11) But my mission is to help women to understand that tech doesn't have to be intimidating. Those stereotypes, they were kind of created artificially with a PR campaign. And so tech is fun and it doesn't have to be intimidating. That's the main thing, that's the message that I want to send, so that women can explore the different opportunities they have for themselves, because some of them might be amazing at it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:42) I agree. So I was looking at your—I went through your whole YouTube channel, by the way, today before the call. Oh, wow. With our team. I was like, alright, let's go completely consume Masha and figure out who she is as a carbon-based life form.

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:55) So I had lots of thoughts, right? Lots of positive thoughts. One of the things that came into my mind was when you were explaining UI, UX. Mm-hmm. I've seen it explained a variety of ways, right? But often it's explained with, like, a screen capture, right, or something like that. Or it's a person talking in front of a whiteboard and it's very complicated and very detailed. And I really liked the way you presented the content. It's, like, it's not what you said, it's how you said it, you know?

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:08:34) Thank you. Well, that's the whole point, you know? I want to show that it can be fun and doesn't have to be a whiteboard or a computer screen. You can explain these things with examples that we understand, that we can relate to, and I feel like, at least this is how it is for me.

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:08:53) Once I understand something, I can actually apply it much better and I want to learn more about it. So I'm just basically applying the same learning principles as I would like to be using to my audience.

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:11) Have you heard of the Feynman Technique?

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:09:13) No, what is it?

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:15) Yeah, welcome to my world. I just learned about it too. So I wrote a book and when I was talking about the book, I was explaining to the people I was writing it with how I work, how I make things simple, right? Uh-huh. From—and I do it for myself so I can understand, right? And so I'm explaining this to them and they're like, oh, it's like the Feynman Technique. I was like, hold on a second, I gotta go learn about this. So this guy named Richard Feynman, his life's work—I think he's passed away now, but this was back in the '60s—he created this thing called the Feynman Technique, which is how he makes really complicated things simple. And if you read an article or two about it, it just gives you a million new ways of improving how you do that, right? You're already doing it, you're doing it great. It's like you're a great communicator and the way you were explaining stuff is awesome. But thank you. That took me a step farther.

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:10:13) That's awesome. Thank you so much. I will put that on my Amazon list of things to buy.

(Joel Beasley at 00:10:19) Yeah, no, I just read a Medium article. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, it's a Medium article about him. It explains his life's work in, like, 15 minutes.

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:10:27) Oh, okay, then I'm going on Medium.

(Joel Beasley at 00:10:30) Right, even better. So how much time do you spend coding on a daily basis?

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:10:37) I don't really do coding for myself. At this point I am more researching the different resources there are, because my priorities have shifted. At first I wanted to learn how to code myself. Now I want to help others learn how to code, and so I'm researching the different resources and trying them out for myself. So I have very basic skills, but I spend most of my time seeing what's out there, how people can learn how to code.

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:11:11) And in terms of time allocation, it's very varied because I also work at a university right now and it's taking half of my time. So it just depends on the day. Sometimes I'd be working mostly on the university stuff, sometimes I'd be working on Coding Blonde stuff. And of course, content creation takes a lot of time, especially when it comes to video.

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:11:36) I'm sure you know, with sound it's just the same. Audio content, it's just the same. It takes a while to do the research and sometimes to prepare and to do it, and then editing. This is the part that everybody kind of overlooks, but it takes probably the longest before you can actually publish it. So it really depends on the topic and on my week and on the meetings. I don't really have a set timeline that I stick to.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:05) Do you know Gary Vee? Have you heard of him?

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:12:07) Yes, I have.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:09) Have you heard of his Document, Don't Create?

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:12:12) No, actually I haven't read that one.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:15) Yeah, so he's got—I don't think it's a book. If you YouTube it, you know, that phrase, you'll find different clips of him talking about how he does it. But he's basically like, produce lots of content at scale and don't get fancy with it, and don't try to create content as much as you document content. So the way I see that, how I'm doing this with you, is I'm not creating this content right now. I'm just talking with you. This is just you and me having a conversation and content's the byproduct of it, and that's documenting. And that's way easier, so the production is way faster.

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:12:56) I agree, that's definitely scaling it. That's definitely scaling it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:01) Like, we have no post-production right now. We're live streaming. Like, this is it.

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:13:06) That's awesome.

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:07) We post-produce the crap out of it when we go to podcast, uh-huh, because we want high-quality audio.

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:13:13) Of course.

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:14) You know, because it's like a different audience over there. They demand a better quality. So we have Jake and he spends a lot of time. Watching him edit is like watching someone play a video game. It's crazy fast and he's clicking everywhere and it's, I don't even know what's happening.

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:13:29) That's awesome, that's amazing. Yeah, I guess my biggest problem and why I like to do more preparation is because English is not my first language. So sometimes I feel a bit self-conscious, especially when it comes to grammar and just messing up sentences and being like, oh my God, I don't even understand what I said.

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:53) Oh, well please don't worry because I only know one language and I can barely say I know that. You can ask the editor of my book.

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:14:03) Fair enough.

(Joel Beasley at 00:14:03) They do the red editing, you know, so you can see what was changed, and I don't even know how to use a comma, apparently. So I love it. It's just getting it out and communicating and then not holding it up. When we were watching your video, I was telling Jake, I was like, dude, this is cinema-quality editing. She must have spent an insane amount of time editing.

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:14:24) No, actually, it, you know, starts. At first you take a long time and then you get used to it because it's also a learning process, right? I'm not a professional editor and they take a much shorter time to edit stuff. So yeah, it's becoming quicker and quicker, but still it does take time.

(Joel Beasley at 00:14:45) You mentioned that you work at university. Where are you? What are you working on?

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:14:51) Yes, so I'm a Global Entrepreneur in Residence at CU Boulder, and it's an amazing, amazing role, a great challenge after being in a big company. Basically, it's a team within a university that is trying to make the university more innovative and to encourage entrepreneurship on campus. And it works like a startup within the university structure, which is fascinating to me. And I've never thought that I would go and work at a university because, you know, seeing it from a student perspective, you only think that in this ecosystem there are students and then there are professors and it's kind of this relationship between them.

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:15:38) But you don't see the huge bottom of the iceberg that's the research and all that stuff that goes behind the scenes from the student's perspective. And it's amazing to work in that environment. We're working on a lot of different projects and I will be mentoring a lot of entrepreneurs and startups on campus. So I'm very excited about that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:01) What type of startups are they? Like, technology? What are they?

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:16:05) Yes, everything. So I went to—because right now it's kind of been a dead period because everybody was on holiday. But before everybody went on holiday, I managed to attend one event. It was a "get seed funding" where the startups ranged from digital art, digital design. This one girl wanted to create a comic about why smoking is bad.

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:16:36) And then it went to, you know, an alternative application to Slack or, you know, other team collaboration, team communication softwares. And there were so many different startups. And since this is Colorado, there was also, of course, a weed-related startup, which, you know, blew my mind because I was like, what is happening? But yeah, it was crazy.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:11) Yeah. Slack is the best.

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:17:13) Slack is the best. I don't know how those guys are gonna top it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:16) No. Like, they're just—they win. Like, Slack wins.

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:17:21) I know. I know.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:22) We're having some of their product people, like executives, on the show next—this month, next month. Awesome. Yes. We're really excited. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:30) We're going for April Underwood, who is like their main person. Yeah, main female and head of product, I believe, or user experience. And but she's on maternity leave, which is—I was like, oh, we have something to talk about then, because I just—I have a four-month-old daughter.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:45) Oh. So like, I'm going through that right now.

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:17:47) Oh my God. Yeah. I'm sure you will bond on the parenting techniques.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:52) I would sit there—I even sent the, you know, person that's in between, a picture. I was like, oh, look, the daughter is pretty exciting.

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:17:58) That's very, very nice. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:00) So do you engage with your audience about the type of content that you're producing to figure out what they want?

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:18:07) Yeah, definitely. I really make sure that the questions that I'm answering are the right questions. You know? So for example, this month, I'm doing a lot of content around UX.

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:18:22) So I want to go deeper into what UX is, the process from A to Z, the different career paths and the learning paths there are. And I asked my audience what do they want to find out about UX, and they gave me an insane amount of questions which were super helpful. And yeah, they're amazing. So I'm now super excited to answer their questions, and of course, they know I'm going to do that. So it's a very, very amazing process.

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:18:56) It's kind of community building around this subject.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:00) Absolutely. That's what got me excited when I was engaging with your content. It's always interesting when someone's frustrated because they want more. Right? Like, I'll write an article, and it'll be short because I like short, succinct concepts.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:15) Like, here's a concept. Here it is. Enough said. Like, all the focus on that. And I'll post it on like Reddit or Hacker News or something.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:21) I get a bunch of likes and then a bunch of comments saying, "too short." And I'm like, don't get upset, guys. Like, that's what I felt like was needed to cover the topic. Right?

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:19:31) Yeah. Exactly.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:32) So your focus now is more on—yeah, I was thinking, you got me thinking, Masha. You got me thinking with the stereotypes and all the stuff you talk about on your channel and like reading your bio. You got me really thinking about all of that—like, the stereotypes, the sexism, all that good stuff. And then I also thought like some funny thoughts.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:52) Right? I don't think if you walked into any programming pit, you know, like where a bunch of programmers are sitting, and like walk up to them, and let's just say that they're predominantly male. Right? If I walked up to them and I was like, hey, guys, we're gonna have, you know, three blonde—very skilled blonde programmers come in, blonde female programmers.

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:12) Right? Because males can be blonde too. And work with you. Like, I don't know one developer, and I know, you know, hundreds, if not maybe a thousand, that would be like, no.

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:24) Everyone would be like, yes, please. Thank you. Like, we need more girls here. Like, no, I don't know anyone that's like against it.

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:20:33) I agree. Well, I mean, there are debates in the industry, and there was a famous memo that kind of shook the world of tech not that long ago. But I think that the stereotypes are almost predominantly in females' heads because they're the ones who are not going into the computer science classes or they're not pursuing a career there. But that's the thing. They still need to be addressed.

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:21:02) And this is why I'm really trying to create content for women, not for men to be like, oh, women can exist in the same room as you and they can code. No. Women need to be empowered. So that's the whole point. You know?

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:21:17) I want to help to empower these women and show them that these stereotypes, they're just in their heads.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:24) Dude. Wow. Masha, you killed it. That's—or Masha. I'm sorry.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:28) And there's a common name Marsha in our—I know. Okay. So it's just, you know, my human brain.

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:21:35) Put it on my coffee cups all the time.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:39) They forgot the R. We'll put it in there and help her.

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:21:42) Yeah. Exactly. I think she misspells her name. Let me help her.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:48) So I have this thing that I like to call monkey see, monkey do.

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:21:52) Mm-hmm.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:52) Right? You look at a group of people, you see what the monkeys are doing, and then you go do that. Right?

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:21:57) Mm-hmm.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:57) It kind of like is a menu for your options in life. You know? It's like, if I see a guy—let's say I'm a 12-year-old male. Right? And I see a 30-year-old male doing some very specific task, I imagine that I'm like him because we're—humans are anthropomorphic, and that's like something we do.

(Joel Beasley at 00:22:15) Right? So I see that as an option on life. And so it's a fair argument to say that the more imagery that you have of females programming, the more younger women will see that that's an option for them. And then, therefore, there is more likelihood of having more of them in the field. Right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:22:34) Exactly. I think that's the win. I think that's like where all the energy should be placed. I agree that there are some like total dicks out there, like as guys. Like, there's like—well, I think they're rare.

(Joel Beasley at 00:22:46) Right? Because in my experience, they are rare that are like, oh, no, we don't want women or whatever. Right? Like, that's one in a hundred for me to run into.

(Joel Beasley at 00:22:56) But I think that the win would be just constantly putting out there, I'm a female and I'm programming. I'm a female and writing code is cool. I'm a female and this is it. And like, that's the conversation that actually solves the problem, and I love that that's what you're doing.

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:23:12) Definitely. And there are so many, obviously, super talented women who are also doing it and putting it out on Instagram and inspiring the next generation of female programmers.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:25) Oh, yeah. One of my favorite female programmers is Sandi Metz. And to be honest with you, it took me a long time to even know she was female because I was just reading her book.

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:23:35) Oh my God.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:36) Like, because you can't—there's not much, you know, options for sex to come up in a book on testing Ruby.

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:23:43) Exactly. Exactly.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:46) So when you work with the—have you met the other coding influencers, like Brandy or Steph, have you met them in person, or do you just interact with them digitally?

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:23:57) So far it's been digital because I only moved to the US in November, so I was across the Atlantic from them not that long ago. So it was all digital, but I'm really hoping to meet a lot of these people in person because they're amazing, and they inspire me so much.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:16) Yeah. I know that they're all very entrepreneurial, and they all understand. And earlier, when you and I were talking about like, you know, how much are you coding, right, I noticed that the teachers and the figures seem to be the most influential. And, you know, they have a background and they understand how it works and stuff, but it's really the educators that have a lot of the influence.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:37) So you don't necessarily have to be programming, you know, eight hours a day to understand how to communicate programming.

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:24:44) Definitely. Definitely. You just have to—I don't know. You have to be able to interact with the community and understand what their needs are and basically answer those needs, address those needs.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:56) Do you ever have girls that reach out to you that are like against what you're doing, or are they all like a hundred percent for it?

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:25:05) I haven't had any females reach out to me being against what I'm doing. There was one instance when somebody was saying that I shouldn't portray blondes as an inferior group in technology and that I'm capitalizing on the name. And I responded politely saying, hey, I'm sorry you feel that way. But yeah, this is a stereotype or at least, you know, when coming from a country where stereotypes are much, much stronger concept, I want to break those stereotypes because in Russia, we have so many different jokes about blondes and how they're stupid and all that stuff.

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:25:54) I've experienced that discrimination because of my hair color, and I thought that this would be a fun play on words to use.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:05) Well, it's smart branding.

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:26:06) Thank you.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:07) It's really good because it's instantly—it's catchy. You kind of know what's going on. And then, you know, whenever you're doing anything, there's people that hate you. Right?

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:26:15) Oh, definitely.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:16) People hate me right now. They just do. I had to just be okay with that. I put out an article that like 99% of the people agree with, but if I reach 10,000 people, I get a hundred people telling me I'm a moron.

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:26:28) Yeah. Exactly. The moment you reach people who don't agree with you, that's when you know you are putting out content and people are discovering it because otherwise, it might be just your friends. So that's a great sign when somebody doesn't agree with you, and you will always get haters. Haters have way too much time.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:47) Right. It's like all they're doing is sitting around being angry at life, and I'm like, alright. I'm doing something. If I don't do anything, they're commenting, you lazy bum. You're not doing anything.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:56) If I am doing something, they're commenting that, what are you talking about? You know?

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:27:00) Exactly.

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:01) I just kind of—I found I just surround myself with all the positive people and then just like block out the negative people.

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:27:09) I think that's the best strategy.

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:11) It's working well so far. Because like, the fact that you want to come on the show and talk to me, right, and hang out with me and talk about these things is positive. Right?

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:27:20) Definitely. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:20) You're a positive person. You're interesting to talk to. I always have the struggle of there's like things that I want to know, and I'm just not sure how to ask them. And I never want to like have anybody like feel like I'm being offensive or like off-putting. But at the same time, I'm just trying to ask questions so I can understand.

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:27:38) Yeah. Completely. I can completely relate to that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:41) Yeah. That's why when Jake and I, we were preparing for the interview, and I'm like, I don't want to—I don't want to like do too much of this. Like, I've got lots of questions, but I don't want to get in—like, I don't want to bother her. Like, I don't want it to go—like, I want to—I want Masha to love me. Right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:56) It's like we want to high five and like provide the listeners some like great value about what's happening with the coding influencers. Obviously, this stereotype and female thing is a big thing that's happening. People are talking about it. Lots of followers on Instagram, and it's changing. And we had a great productive conversation about, you know, how I believe that the best way to make a change is to show yourself, you know, like doing it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:23) Like, even if you're not programming, I would be taking pictures with like code structures all day. Right?

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:28:28) Definitely.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:29) Because that's the goal. And I—and, you know, I'm a hardcore programmer, and like, I'm saying like, that's cool. I'm gonna get 800 emails after this telling me to screw off because it's not cool. But I want people to pursue their passion. There's like a reason why you're passionate about it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:46) Right?

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:28:47) Exactly. Exactly. And sometimes you just need a little push.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:51) Yeah. You do you. Right? Yes. You push forward, ignore the haters, and if anything ever comes up and you need backup, you need like to build up a team, you've got your influencer team, you also have me.

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:29:02) Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:06) Any—anything—so our audience is primarily CTOs, chief technology officers. And yeah, it's definitely like 99.999% male. And I invite—I intentionally seek out and invite the females on, and we actually have, you know, a handful of them coming on the show. I've asked all of them I could find and to come on, and we have someone coming on. So I'm super excited about that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:29) But anything—any anything that you think would be relevant to them, they all have some sort of marketing department. Some of them are startup CTOs, meaning it's just them and a business partner. Others of them have like 600, a thousand employees. So I guess value would be brought to the smaller and middle-sized companies about their Instagram following or about their social media presence. Do you have any tips or anything that comes to mind that you would share with them?

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:29:56) I would say treat it not as a channel, but as a community. Make sure that you're talking to your followers and you are building that community around your brand, around your business because that is key. And I feel like this is where all social media is heading. It's this community feel.

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:20) Well, did you see Facebook's big announcement?

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:30:23) Which one?

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:24) I think it just happened last night where they're dropping their—their stock price dropped 10% because they put a press release out saying that they're taking the focus of the news feed away from related content and putting it back on meaningful human interactions with each other.

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:30:42) I actually didn't see that, but good for them. Not good for the business, but good for them as a platform to regain that community feel and users back because I feel like users stopped—or at least this is my usage of the platform. I've stopped using it as much because I started getting content that's not super relevant for me. But that's great that they're switching back to human. This is how it all started.

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:31:12) Right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:13) Absolutely. And I was thinking, wow. This is great that their stock price dropped. I'm gonna go buy some. It's on sale right now.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:21) Because all these people, their price is dropping because they're all—they're a bunch of idiots that don't understand the market. Facebook's providing more value to its users. Exactly. They're gonna win longer term. They're gonna win.

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:31:33) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:34) So that's a time to go buy the stock. When a platform starts making the platform better for their people instead of money, that's when you go buy that company. That's when you go purchase and get involved with that.

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:31:48) Exactly. And I'm sure Facebook will be able to capitalize one way or another and build up the stock prices back in quite a short period of time. I think this is amazing because they're getting the user base to be more committed to them. That's great.

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:10) Yeah. And we're not a financial show, but our position is definitely buy Facebook.

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:32:17) Yeah. Definitely. Definitely.

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:19) Where are you going to be in ten years?

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:32:22) Oh, in ten years. Oh my god.

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:23) You're gonna be in VR?

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:32:26) I don't even know. To be honest, my plans don't go as far as that at the moment. I would like to be—I don't even know what country I'll be in. I want to still travel the world and do the whole digital nomad thing, maybe in a year's time or within the next five years. That's a dream of mine, being able to work from anywhere. But I don't know. Maybe VR, maybe more content stuff. I definitely want to write a book, and I want to write a book for children.

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:07) Oh, I have a children's book. Yeah.

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:33:09) Yeah. For, you know, introducing them to coding and all that fun stuff. I actually have ideas that come to me during the night, and I have to make sure I'm writing them down because otherwise they escape really easily. But yeah, that's the plan. Hopefully, we'll write a book. We'll continue to produce content on whatever medium or platform will be the most convenient for users to use and interact with. And I really hope to help more women to get into tech.

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:47) You know, I have a family foundation that I'm the president of.

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:33:52) Mhmm.

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:52) And we make children's books that are related to STEM. Yes. Science, technology, and mathematics. And we have one called The Princess Physicist.

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:34:00) Oh, wow.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:01) And it's this princess who goes up into a tower, but instead of a man coming and saving her, she finds a book on physics under the bed and uses physics to get herself out of the tower.

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:34:11) I love that. That's amazing.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:13) Yeah. And we printed them up, 10,000 of them, and then donated to homeless pregnant women and foster kids and things like that.

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:34:22) That's awesome.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:23) That's just what we did in our spare time. Me and my brother and my sister, I wrote the books. I hired illustrator. We—my mom passed away, so we took her life insurance money, and then that's what we did with it.

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:34:35) That's a great, great cause. Seriously, I'm very impressed.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:40) I thought about it because I was having a daughter, and I was like, I want my daughter to know about physics and cool stuff. I wanna know about really cool stuff. So I'll—after the show, we'll get your—I'll have Jenny get your information, and we'll send you a copy of each of the books.

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:34:54) Oh, that would be amazing. Thank you so much.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:56) And when you go to write your children's books, you call me up, you send me a message, whatever you want. I'll give you access to all my resources, my editors, my designers, and you could just talk to them directly. They're all, you know, they're all freelance. So I'll just put you in contact with them. That way, you can see the book that came out. Right? I'll send it to you 100% free. We'll just send it to you. So you'll see the quality of it. I'll tell you the supplier, the manufacturer, who we talk to. You can see the illustrator. You can see the editor of the book. I'll give you all the information about how we did the project. And that way, if you feel so inspired to do that children's book on code, you have a road map. And it was a lot of work figuring it all out.

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:35:33) Thank you so much. I can imagine that would be an invaluable resource. Thank you so much.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:39) Yeah. So we're always here to help. Our whole thing is to give as much value as we possibly can. So anything you ever need us, we're here.

(Masha (coding blonde) at 00:35:46) Thank you. Same goes to you. And if you ever wanna talk about social media or Instagram, yeah, I'm ready.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:53) Done. Thank you so much for listening to the Modern CTO podcast. Share this. Get the word out. Thank you guys so much. I couldn't do without you. I appreciate it. You guys are the absolute best.