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Interface is a podcast where we connect technology and culture through conversation. Interface is brought to you by EMPOWER at PROS. EMPOWER is dedicated to attracting, developing and retaining Black talent at PROS. PROS helps people and companies outperform by enabling smarter selling in the digital economy.
Jenni: [00:00:00] Welcome to Interface, a podcast where we connect technology and culture through Conversation Interface is brought to you by Empower. At Pros, empower is dedicated to attracting, developing, and retaining black talent. At Pros, [00:01:00] pros helps people and companies outperform by enabling smarter selling in the digital economy.
I'm your host, Jennifer Plummer, and I'm joined with Matthew and Sierra. Today our guest is Aaron Walker, a student at the University of Houston. He graduated cum laude and with a Bachelor's of Music and music. Theory and will be getting his bachelor's in computer science later this year. He teaches music, has a YouTube channel and has done some undergraduate research in noise suppression models.
Um, he's up and coming technologist, and we are happy to have him as a guest today on Interface. Welcome.
Siara: Welcome
Aaron Walker: It's, it, it really is an honor to be here. Like I've seen, like all the guests you've had and I've listened to a few episodes. It's a bit, it's a bit crazy. Uh, some distinguished engineers like United Airlines. Uh, I feel a little bit out of place here, but
it's, I mean,
Jenni: you're the next generation. You're the next generation. That's why I'm excited about this. Um,
Siara: Also,
Jenni: we,
Siara: will probably hate me for this, [00:02:00] but come through with intro. I loved it.
Jenni: uh, we met oh, maybe a year ago. Maybe
Aaron Walker: Yeah, just about a year ago,
Jenni: Yeah.
Aaron Walker: almost like, uh, exactly like two months maybe.
Jenni: Yeah, cuz you're teaching piano to, uh, one of our coworkers daughter. So she was like, oh, you gotta meet Erin. She connected us. So, um, I bumped into you at the code red, uh, hackathon at University of Houston. So we keep bumping into each other.
Aaron Walker: Yeah, it was.
Jenni: what, we should have a conversation on interface.
Aaron Walker: Definitely, definitely, definitely. Good, good fortune on my, for me, I, uh, um, to be honest, I'm just still, I'm still impressed. You, you, you actually recognized me like I saw you passing by. I was like, I think that's Jennifer. But she walked it up like, I'm, I'm sitting trying to sign in. I was like, wow, it's [00:03:00] really cool to, to see her here.
I was like, I don't wanna like bother her, like they're setting up or whatever. And she, she actually just like tapped me on the back and she's like, Hey, aren't you Erin Walkers? Like,
Jenni: You
Aaron Walker: like, you shouldn't be saying my name.
Jenni: Yeah. Hey, I'm always playing count the black people wherever I go. So I try, I try to, um, you know, keep, keep tabs on the community, um, for sure. And I'm really excited. You did very well at that hackathon too, right? I
Aaron Walker: Oh
Jenni: placed yes,
Aaron Walker: Yeah. It was a, it was a really cool team. It was, it was definitely big team effort,
but
Siara: you're kind of a big deal, Aaron, which is. You know why
she
Aaron Walker: I'm not sure if.
Mattie: famous now,
Siara: Yes.
Aaron Walker: not, not exactly the words I'd use, but.
Jenni: Yeah. So let's go back. So you definitely have a music background, but you know, we'd like you to tell us your story of kind of how you got into the things that you're into now.
Aaron Walker: Yeah, I think with, I guess with just about everybody, it starts with a really good [00:04:00] teacher. It was in high school. It was just a random elective. I, I saw, I was like, Hey, you can take computer science. And I had no idea what that meant, but I just needed an extra elective. So I signed up for the class and we had the, this ridiculously relaxed dude, Mr.
U. I remember the entire time I thought we were being complete like slack offs cuz he, he would give us, we learned job at first, he'd give us really, it was a textbook with exercises in it. And he would just give us labs, do the lab. And then when you're, whenever you're done, you know, your kids with computers just hang out.
Like Daniel was like reading Monger or something. And me and Caleb were playing chess or booking on Showdown after the labs. But then, uh, well what happened is he had two semesters. It was two years. It was computer science one, computer science two. And we got through all the labs that he usually assigns people and we were still seniors.
And he is like, well I don't, I don't even know what to do with you guys. I know you wanna sign up so I'm just gonna make a computer science three. And I thought he was joking cuz he is like, Hey, there's like five extra computers I can have during the computer science one class. You can just sit in with the computer science one [00:05:00] class kids.
I'll just give you some assignments to do and you guys can hang out. And that's. That's what we did. And uh, it turned out into really, really cool, cool things because, uh, over the course we've gone through like recursion, we did like sorting algorithms and visualizing them. We did graphics, we did like abstract classes.
We did a ton of stuff so that when I walked into college, I tested out at some of the classes. And then the ones that I did have to take is like, wait, I've seen all of this before. Some of those things, like even projects I see people are using on their portfolio is like, Hey, I like I, I knew how to do that in high school.
There's like still projects I keep on my, like from my flash drive all the way from high school that are like, I mean, there's still still cool things that I learned that are great examples of really important fundamentals and I don't know how he, he, like, he was the type of teacher that could teach you the entire concept in like 30 minutes or 15 minutes and you decide the rest of the time to just hang out.
It didn't, it didn't feel like I was learning anything, but apparently I learned a lot.
Jenni: Wow. Yeah. Teachers are so important and it sounds like he was an exceptional [00:06:00] teacher. What, what did you like about computer science?
Aaron Walker: I like, I, I just like problem solving and kind of realizing as well. Slowly, uh, the more I liked it was the more I realized there's actually different solutions to the same problem. So there is a lot of creativity in it. Uh, I think a lot of people kind of overlook when they think, oh yeah, it's computer science, so it's just like numbers and there's just an answer.
There's a correct answer, but there's, there's things to weigh in terms of like, not only like readability efficiency and then there's time versus face efficiency and stuff like that is. I find it fascinating , but, uh, yeah, I, I just like problem solving. Creative problem solving is fun. It's like puzzles, but you actually do stuff. You finish stuff you build stuff with by solving puzzles.
Mattie: Can you go a little bit more in depth on the problem solving? I, I find like, not being in the technical world of coding, that, you know, when I talk to developers and they say, I like the problem solve and, and this is what I'm doing, it's like, okay, what exactly does that mean? Are, are, [00:07:00] are, are people giving you a math problem and then you solve that in some creative way?
Can you kind of give. A high level view into like what problem solving looks like.
Aaron Walker: Uh, I, I feel like, uh, Memorial, I'll give a more concrete example, I guess. Uh, one of the things I did for it was like a, like I was boarding class and I needed to do, he taught us after classes and I needed something like a problem to solve just to, to exercise it. So I, I was like, how would I make. A chess program.
Cause I'm playing chess with chess with Caleb like all day. I'm like, how would I make a chess problem, chess program? How would that work? Right. So I have the problem of I need pieces and I need them each to move and I need them to move different ways depending on what, what. What the piece is doing, and I need to make some sort of matrix know which piece, which places are occupied and I need to know which ones you can't move to depending on the piece.
And then every time I introduce a new piece, there's new problems of like, okay, how do I make it move diagonal in, forward and backwards? And then how do I make this one exception for the palm on on the first move? And then like the problem with the king, and I have to [00:08:00] consider all the enemies pieces at the same time for.
Like every move and all of a sudden, every, at every step, I'm solving more problems. And that's, that's where it becomes this issue of like, Hey, I could solve this in several ways. Because if I want to, I could just avoid the whole, like, how do I solve occupying by having some extra variable in a different place?
Or I could just have a separate, like matrix for that specific thing.
Jenni: Uh, so where you are. Uh, targeted to, uh, get your computer science degree, um, later this year.
Aaron Walker: Yes.
Jenni: maybe can you go through, um, for, you know, our younger listeners, you know, what is it like to be a computer science student?
Aaron Walker: Oh, uh, okay, that's a good one. Uh, if you're not, it's totally cool if you have absolutely zero computer science experience when you start. There's definitely classes for that. So usually they teach you either like c plus plus or Java or some combination of [00:09:00] both. And it's really simple of how do you, you know, print Hello world, how do you.
H make a function. How do you add and subtract things? For the first couple of classes, um, you have to take math classes. Advanced math classes, they're not too advanced. There was a cal one, Cal two you could test out of that. And then, um, eventually you do engineering statistics. That's the highest math I had to take, at least at, uh, for, um, computer science.
And then the rest of the classes are geared towards actual computer science. So there's computer organization and architecture, which is. I learned a ton because I'm not a hardware person and it's actually explaining like how your Compo theater is built, what are the parts, what do they do and how do they interact with, you know, the code that you're writing.
Then there's operating systems at the higher level and it's what are threads and like how, how does the operating system work, like Linux ideas. It's actually pretty cool cuz you learn a little bit of Linux, even if you haven't. No experience with that as well. And then eventually there's classes for [00:10:00] databases.
Some of these things are elective, some of them are necessary, but databases, I believe is always necessary. So you're able to collect and store data and these things that are made specifically for doing that, and you learn how to query them. And eventually at the very end there's capstones, at least for uh, and you do software engineering or software design.
And the goal for that is to go from very bottom of, Hey, here's this problem. How do you turn it into a concrete code? How do you do the backend? How do you do the front end? How do you connect that to your database? Like going through the process from beginning to end of having a finished project. And that's basically where, where you end, there's some cool electives you can take, like computer vision or, um, machine learning stuff like that is always options alongside it, so,
Jenni: What's, what's your favorite area of software engineering?
Aaron Walker: oh, okay. I, I like, I like backend. I'm not, I'm just not a front end guy. Like I, I did an internship for React. I did like managing a webpage and building a little webpage. I mean, it's. I mean, it's nice. [00:11:00] It's just not my, my, my thing. I, I like the problem solving it. The, the, the back ends where that's at. So,
Mattie: And for any listeners that might not be familiar with the technical terms, can you explain front, end and backend?
Aaron Walker: The front is usually when you open up your, your phone. Like the, and open up an app. It's what you see, all the buttons, the layout, the, when you open a webpage where the things go, where the text is, where the buttons are, stuff like that.
And then the backend is if you're, let's say you have a, it's a calculator, right? Your calculator, the front end is the numbers and the screen that shows all the buttons that you pressed and all the symbols. And then the backend is, you know, what's actually doing the math and calculating and then spitting out the answer.
And then the front end will just display that answer, if that makes sense.
Mattie: That was good. That was a great example. Why, why then do you prefer the back end versus the front end? I feel like the front end is, is fun and visually appealing and you know, that's what people interact with. That's, I don't know.
Aaron Walker: Okay. That's, that's, that's actually a very fair question. I, I'm, I'm learning to appreciate it. The more, the more I have [00:12:00] to do it, I guess there, there's a lot of room to be, of course, creative cuz it's, it's visual. But, uh, there's, there, there's more, there's more of a puzzle. I have to think. I, I like to, I like to have to think about different challenges as opposed to, oh, why is my.
Know, font not centered when I asked it to be, why is this button not as big as I thought it should be? Why isn't it working on Android but not working on this other platform? Like those questions, I'm not, I'm not as, I don't, it just doesn't satisfy me to solve them as much as, you know, how do I make these, these values grow exponentially while still keeping the CPU U users down like that?
Those are, those are cool problems for me personally. Those are
my favorite problems.
Jenni: like when you work on the front end, you could spend a lot of time talking about pixels and shades of blue and. You're just ki at some point you're just like, just make a decision.
Aaron Walker: Yeah.
Jenni: We're the back end. It's a lot more concrete as far as did I get, I gave this input and the [00:13:00] output, is this solved?
I can move on to the next thing.
Aaron Walker: Yeah.
Siara: the resident non-technical, I'm like, yes, let's talk about shades of blue. button should be bigger and this one should be smaller is end user experience is that's I'm a front end person.
Aaron Walker: Very important. Very important part.
Jenni: So let's talk about your musical background as well, because it sounds like now, um, you're kind of intersecting the, the, the technology with music. So we talked about your computer science studies, let's talk about music, and then let's talk about the combination of that.
Aaron Walker: Yeah, so like this, this is, uh, first of all, it was completely unintentional. Like, uh, both, both the going to school for computer science and going to school for, for music were things I, I didn't plan at all. Like when I was a kid, I wanted to be an animator. Like I wanted to draw comic books and stuff. And, uh, Well, there's another story about behind that, like why I chose my wife.
But the, the music thing [00:14:00] was just, I was, I played saxophone. My, we had a new, like, this stuff just happened, like one after another. We had a new, uh, assistant band director and he had played the soon. Our other bassoon player graduated. So he is like, well, we need somebody to learn bassoon fast. And they just looked at him.
He is like, okay, like here's, here's the bassoon. Figure it out. Like I played it for a year or two. And he was impressed by how fast I learned it. And he's like, Hey, you know, I went to school at uh, and I studied under Elise for bassoon. She's really awesome and I think she'd like you if you auditioned. So I was like, you know, like, why not?
And I auditioned, and again, like I signed up for computer science already. Like that was my, that was my major, but I was like, let me audition for, for, for bassoon and see what happens. And I auditioned. I get in, and now I'm just like a bassoon performance major as well as doing computer science. And I'm, I'm doing like bassoon performance for two years.
And I had this weird like, like there's usually like this weird, weird. Happenstance that, like when I was in elementary school, we, we had these [00:15:00] music performers that would show up, I think it was like once or twice a semester or so many months. And one of the performers, they played Piat Zola, like a, a specific composer like Latin American composer.
And I, for some reason, as a kid, I just remember, I was like, oh, this classical music stuff's kind of cool or whatever. And like, I. Disregard it. And then I just remember like, there's this IDA Go band, other cool stuff. Yeah, whatever. And then in college, like during the music theory classes, they're, they're showing like, uh, different regions besides, you know, just like Germany and stuff.
And they're like, Hey, here's this Latin American composer, and they play the music. And I had this like, like, you know, the movie Rati, like the dude takes a vibe. It was, it was literally that, like I had this weird flashback. I was like, like, oh. And as they're explaining this, so I was like, you know what?
They could, I could, I could write music. Like I could, I could do this stuff. I was, that's the, that's the stuff I really wanna do. This is more interesting than I love playing the instrument. Like, don't get me wrong, but I was like, I could, I could make this stuff. So then I switched to theory and composition and it was, uh, it wasn't, it wasn't easy [00:16:00] again, like this stuff wasn't, didn't come naturally to me.
I'm not like far of a musical family. I just, you know, had to figure it out in the first, the first year of my composition lessons at the end of every single lesson. Dr. White would ask me, he's like, so how's your computer science degree going? You know, this music stuff doesn't always work out for people.
You know, you can do composition on the side if you, if you, you know, if you really want, you know, that's what Charles Ives did. You know, nobody listened to his, he, he just, he was a tax guy. He just didn music on the side. You don't really need to. But the, the thing was, like, I, I always wanted to keep writing.
It didn't need to be the main thing, but if I was gonna do it, I needed to be good at like, I was gonna be good at it. Right. So, I, you know, suffered through that, through that year, I eventually got like better and better and better and I would like talk to them about grad school and then they were taking me seriously.
Like by the end I was like, okay, yeah. I'm like, I, I'm actually, I, I can do the thing now in music. And that's when I was really satisfied. And I graduated 2019, like I did a recital on the bassoon cause I liked performing. I didn't have to, for theory and composition. You just write, I have to write [00:17:00] a thesis for theory.
Then part of the composition degree. I didn't do a composition, but like, because I wanted to do it, I wrote a piece and then I performed that piece on my recital with some other bassoon stuff. And then that was kind of like my goodbye because, uh, I don't have a bassoon. Like they're, they're really expensive.
So that was the last time, that was actually the last time I, I gave like a big performance and now I just, I just write music for fun cuz I don't need to worry about, you know, playing it. And, uh, yeah, that's, that's, that's where this, the music story at least starts.
Jenni: Uhhuh.
Mattie: Yeah. I'm curious if you have learned anything in your music studies that you're able to connect back to your tech life and maybe vice versa.
Aaron Walker: Uh, I, well, I'll actually have to ask you to specify that question. Do you mean like just conceptually or things that I like actually do, like between the two, like things that are concrete, if that makes sense. That I do
with both
Mattie: conceptually
Aaron Walker: cons. Okay.
Mattie: but if you can think of something concrete that
Aaron Walker: Okay.
Mattie: too.
Aaron Walker: Okay. There's a [00:18:00] little bit of both there. So, uh, so there's this idea in music, and it's the, it's what I've found.
I realize now that I have a word to stick to it. It's the thing I care about the most in music is it's counterpoint. And counterpoint is like when there's an in independent melody, two independent melodies, and they play at the same time, and they make sense both on their own and together. Right? And then it's writing counterpoint because you have to think about so many things, the independent voice, how they line up together, and then how the harmony moves from one place to the next, because.
There's different like chronological things that are allowed or not allowed and different vertical things that are allowed or not allowed at certain times. So at each point, every decision I'm making, it's like a little puzzle. It feels like Sudoku, like, I can, because I made this choice over here, I can't do this choice over here.
And then you get faster and faster at it and better and better at it. And that's, it's the same type of like problem solving, like itch that it scratches. And then concretely, like things that I actually use both for is I got into electronic music production. So I guess soon as I [00:19:00] graduated with the, the theory degree and I knew I could, yeah, I can write music on paper, that's cool.
But the music I hear is like electronically produced. How do I do that? And that's something I've been teaching myself. But part of that is, uh, the audio workstation, they're called digital audio workstations, where people do like, Like they play the piano, but it's actually like the synthesizer and they design sounds and put the sounds together, stuff like that.
And mine happens to be like really script friendly. Like there's a, like, uh, a different language that they use specifically for writing, like realtime audio programs and different things for functionality. You can write either in like Python or Lure or whatever you want just to add functionality to the audio workstation.
So that's something I fiddle with a lot. Like I make little programs that either make it faster, like for certain processes or. What I'm working on now is actually like mangling audio, like doing an actual like audio signal DSP thing.
Jenni: Mangling audio. Can you, can you explain that?
Aaron Walker: Okay, so, so there's, so there's, there's several things you [00:20:00] might do, uh, like tally, which is just like, based on the frequencies, maybe I want to make an eq. Like there's, there's tons of them out there. I don't really care to, but it's, it gets really cool in mathy, it's, it's actual like, like d s P stuff and filter design, and you can, like, changing the frequency is something that you usually do when you're making music.
Let's say I have like a. I have a singer, right? But she's like, it sounds like super muffled, right? So there's, I might goose the high frequencies or I might reduce the lower frequencies. And then there's other things I can do. Now it's getting into like ai. It's really hard to make it real time, which is, it's again, like a really fun problem.
But, uh, like even if you wouldn't actually have those high frequencies in the sample given, but you wanna be able to generate them. So there's like saturation and distortion that do that, not necessarily cleanly. There's like compression that will help bring out like lower parts of the signal, so it's balanced or unbalanced depending on what you want.
So there's, there's a, like, it's, there's [00:21:00] a, like a gigantic host of tools for making things either just sound cool or generally sound better, and lots of new ways to do them.
Jenni: yeah, I'm think of like Kanye West is like used to like a speed up audio and,
Aaron Walker: Mm-hmm.
Jenni: sound higher or, um, autotune is a, is an interesting
Netflix.
Mattie: was just talking about this. Do you know in the early two thousands with um,
Aaron Walker: Yeah.
Mattie: T Payne, he figured out how to do that audio and he was the only one that knew how to do it and that's why he was featured in all the songs cuz he was like, if you want this in your song, you have to have
Jenni: Yeah, we, we
Aaron Walker: Ah,
Jenni: same special cuz he, I think he was like, I need to find that frequency or whatever, whatever. So this sounds like that, not genre, but basically that, that that niche of, um, production audio production.
Aaron Walker: yeah. It covers, it covers like a lot of bases. Like you'd be surprised, like, uh, even like somebody's mixing like rocker metal and sometimes they use some of these, these tools you wouldn't really expect [00:22:00] to, to get the sounds they want, which is again, that's part of the creative, just the creative process, I guess.
Jenni: Mm-hmm.
Siara: So Jenny shared with us your YouTube. Um, can you talk to us a little bit about that? I see you have some upcoming things that are
Aaron Walker: yeah.
Siara: be released, so can you talk to us a little bit about that?
Aaron Walker: Okay, so the ones that you can see are about to be released are, there's like music videos. I've been like, I've tried different ways. I've learned Touch Designer, which is a visual, um, it's actually a visual. Program. So people are trying to do like animations and stuff, and it's designed to be very reactive to stuff.
So, and again, it's one of those things that's scripted friendly. You can write Python in it to get like functions for how things behave, but it's like particle. You can do like really cool particle animations and you can make them audio reactive. So I like, I can plug in my audio and then I'll say, It has physics, so I can say it's like the gravity is based on how high my low frequencies are at this given time, and you can see the, like the particles reacted to it and it's, it's really cool.
[00:23:00] So those are some of the experience I'm doing with just like trying to visualize audio and stuff. Some of them are just like, I just throw into this AI app and it, it does like the, it's supposed to be audio reactive music, like video generation. It's not, it's not really there yet, but I'll. It's, it's handy.
And then the ones, the ones you can't see are the, like, I'm having a few people beta tests, some of my, you know, audio mangling experiments. And once I get enough feedback from that and, and do the revisions, then the YouTube is a place where I'm gonna start releasing some, some of those things.
Siara: Very cool.
Jenni: um, since you're kind of at the beginning of your career and you've got lots of interests, what kind of opportunities are you looking for?
Aaron Walker: Oh, okay. I feel like there's a bad answer to this question. Uh, like, I mean, I. Really anything like, uh, again, the, what got me into, uh, what got me into to music and what got me into computer science was [00:24:00] just, you know, by chance I was like, Hey, you should try this. So, I mean, really I'm open to anything. It'd be really cool if it happened to line up perfectly with audio and, um, in computer science.
But if not, like that's not really, I still, I do this stuff anyway, so any, anything would be great.
I feel like that's a real cop out answer, but it's, I mean, it's the honest truth.
Jenni: I think it's fair. And
Aaron Walker: Yeah.
Jenni: earlier in your career, you should be open-minded. Um,
Aaron Walker: Yeah.
Jenni: Um, you know, you got more in the front of you than behind you, so it's kind of like, yeah, I'll try whatever. Um, but yeah, I hope you keep, uh, experimenting cause that stuff's pretty cool. So I wanna ask you, and, and I know you're kind of new to your career, so maybe you don't have a, a, a, a group. Uh, Experienced answer, but you know from the fresh mind that you are, what would you like companies to be doing increase the amount of [00:25:00] black technologists in the
Aaron Walker: Yeah, so that that one is an extremely difficult one to answer from my vantage point. But, uh, if I can offer, you know, a very like, like, uh, small perspective view of that, from what I, something I do know is, uh, is a trend is I know a lot of companies will have really good relationships with certain colleges or certain institutions, and then that company will have a really high percentage of the people employed there from that one or two or three colleges.
And then what I think. Might very often happen if that college, those one or two or three colleges has like 70% of people from X background and 29%. Of people from white background and then 1% of those people are are black, then I mean, you're not going to expect to see a lot of applications from those students, cuz only a fraction of that 1% is even interested in your business.
And I know a lot of recruiters, I mean, they'll hang out at those one or two or three colleges. So I think if they're, if it's a problem, you know, we can't find [00:26:00] like these black technologists that are capable, it's. Maybe you're just looking in the wrong place. But again, that's just, and a lot of assumptions I have to make from what I can see right now.
Mattie: What was your experience in undergrad like? Uh, in terms of the demographic? Did you have a lot of, um, peers that were black? Um,
Aaron Walker: Uh, it was, it's interesting. There were, there were more, um, and I have to specify, like, people that were like first, first or second generation or literally they, they moved here over the past year. I have more, there were more like African students, like people from the Ivory Coast than like black students, which is I find interesting.
Um, and there, yeah, there's, it's not like a, we're not a very large percent of the, the computer science department for whatever reason. And the same goes for women. I, I noticed just generally there's more, a few more women there would be like, than black students, including African students. So I, and I can't, I can't e explain why either, cuz it's not like those people are doing just as well, if not better in the classes.
It's just, it's just [00:27:00] not, not a large part of the demographic at the, at the time.
Jenni: Yeah, it's a conundrum. I was actually, when I was looking for my heat check today, I, I ran a couple, few articles where like, especially women are usually 50 50 in, in, in undergrad classes, but then in industry they end up it, you know, dropping out of the industry for whatever reason. So it's crazy.
Now it's time for the heat check. A heat check is where we are going to share some articles or events that we have recently, perused and share with each other and have a little chat about it.
Um, I have one which is kind of related to what Erin was talking about. Um, lemme find it. I'll go first today.
Uh, this is a New York Times article for lower income students. Big tech internships can be hard to get. and [00:28:00] basically is, it's kind of, it's amazing. I feel like. are way different than when I was a student. But it sounds like, um, if you're a lower income student, maybe you're also having, you know, part-time jobs or things, you know, in your non-educational time that you have to do to make ends meet.
And so to prepare for, um, For interviews, for internships and, and the coding tests that go with some of these. Um, and if you're not going to one of these big tech schools, it's very easy to get overlooked. Um, and one of the suggestions in the article was, right, having, um, companies partnering with, you know, smaller schools or, you know, getting into the community and, and supplementing, you know, supplementing.
I'm having a brain fart. Sorry. Uh, [00:29:00] helping, you know, helping support students that don't have all the resources that. Uh, you do when you go to a big school or when you have a lot of money cuz you have, you know, more free time to be doing it. They, they're talking about students that are applying to 100 s of internships and not getting responses back, which is crazy.
So, definitely wanted to get Aaron's, um, thoughts on that.
Aaron Walker: Yeah. Uh, it's, it's a little bit of a back and forth, uh, and hearing some of these students, uh, I. Sometimes I'm, I like, I talk to other grad students sometimes and it's a, it's an unfortunate, it's become kind of a game. A lot of people will just apply to a hundreds in places, like literally just copy, paste the resume and send them to a hundred places.
Cuz they've already like, actually seriously applied to a few dozen. They're like, okay, I see. It's just a number of games. It's just a game of numbers. So they send it out to a, like dozens and dozens of people. And then I know I already, like, I don't, I don't have to ask. I know the HR people look through those things and they know, it's like, okay, this [00:30:00] person's.
Didn't really look at the job description or care about the job. And now they're, they're definitely going to be browsing through things even faster and faster and faster. And I know there's like applicant tracking system probably because of this. So it, it's, uh, it, it's, it's unfortunate and I, I do understand the part of, uh, a lot of the time sometimes, There's different factors, like maybe a company needs somebody that has familiarity with the software and you apply and you're capable and you're like, Hey, I'm willing to learn the software or whatever, and they're like, yeah, we're, we're looking for people that are willing to learn it.
And then some, some, this one guy in the corner of, of like nowhere says, Hey, I actually know that one already. And then they, they get the job regardless of sometimes even other. Factors. And then things like code camps and stuff are becoming more of a thing where you get certifications really fast or even, not really certification, but you get some amount of like experience and then you get a job very fast.
And now there's like not just the number of people that went to college that are applying to these jobs, but now a lot of other people that are taking [00:31:00] alternate routes. That, and the numbers are getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. So it feels, it feels like, it kind of feels like, especially at the bottom layer, it does feel like kind of fighting over scraps.
So it's, it, it, it does become that game of numbers.
Jenni: And, and the balloon has burst a little bit, right? Because there tech, the number of tech jobs we're growing and growing and now we're kind of seeing that deflate a little bit. So it
Aaron Walker: Yeah.
Jenni: you know, an outcome of that as well. And it'll pick back up again.
Aaron Walker: Hopefully. Yeah.
Jenni: Yeah, hopefully. Um, Matthew Sierra.
Mattie: Yeah, I got one. Um, an Advent Reddit user. I don't know Jenny Sierra. If you use Reddit, Erin, if you use Reddit. You guys know what's going on with Reddit right now? No. Okay. Um,
Jenni: I heard something, but I'll Uh, yeah, go ahead.
Mattie: yeah, about. I don't know [00:32:00] exact date. Um, but about a month or two ago, Reddit announced that they're making their a, they're gonna start charging to use their api.
Um, and what this means is, and we'll have Jenny kind of give us an explanation on what API is, but what this means is, you know, Reddit has their official Reddit app, but then. as a service. They, they allow people to kind of connect to Reddit and make their own Reddit apps, right? And, um, some of these apps are like better than the official Reddit app.
Some of them are, are better accessible, maybe better filtering whatever feature it is, and now Reddit saying they wanna move to profitability. And so they're saying we're gonna start charging for our APIs. And um, right now Reddit is currently a lot of these subreddits, which a subreddit is essentially like, here's the topic I want to talk about and we're only gonna talk, talk about this topic.
And so these, the people that lead those subreddits are saying, Hey, we're gonna just close this subreddit down and you're not gonna be able to, to [00:33:00] talk about any of this stuff because we don't really like this API change. Um, And this was only supposed to last for a couple days. And then there was a leak from the CEO's email about like, ah, this isn't a big deal.
That's not that many, uh, subreddits. And now these moderators are saying like, we're gonna indefinitely, like suspend our subreddits so no one can use them. And the reason for this is because, um, the, the charge for an API isn't the big deal. It was the fact that when they announced it, it was. By the way, we're gonna start charging it in 30 days.
And, um, what this charge comes out to is about 10 million per year, uh, to use the api. And, know, some, some Redditors are saying like, oh, you know, your app isn't that great and we wanna use these other apps and now that we can't use these other apps, we're gonna go somewhere else. And the CEO's like, good luck finding somewhere else.
You know, and that's not sitting right with people. Um, So, [00:34:00] yeah, I'm gonna get your guys' thoughts on kind of what you think about, um, you know, a service saying, you know, you used to have this for free, but now we're gonna charge you it. And I think that's less the problem. And it's more of like, you have 30 days to then like, with this.
Um, yeah. For Jenny, give us an explanation on what API is. Can you.
Jenni: So basically, yeah, I did hear about this. Um, there is a Reddit app and apparently it's not very good and I don't use Reddit, so that's that caveat. So I haven't used any of these apps personally,
Mattie: This is confirmed.
Jenni: but the, the, the, the app that Reddit puts out is not very good, but a lot of people that like to code on the side have used the Reddit APIs and basically API is just a way to, um, It's an interface to call into, um, Reddit system and say, pull this subreddit out, pull this threads out, and all the user information [00:35:00] and, um, just manipulate the data.
Right? Um, they, all the data is in Reddit, and so the APIs let you pull the data out and organize it or whatever. And so people have written their own Reddit apps. Based using those APIs for free, right? They're doing it on a free, on their own time. It's not like they have an income to supplement this. So once Reddit starts charging for the api, they're like, well, obviously I can't do that.
So that's a big problem. So, I think if Reddit was smart, maybe they would buy one of the better apps and improve theirs. Um, that's what I would do if I was Reddit. Maybe that would solve everybody's problem. But, um, I, I'm guessing they're charging because it's the same thing as everybody else, as everyone's scraping pennies right now.
Right? And so this is their way to generate some more income, but, um, people are making some tough decisions right now. Those are my thoughts.
Siara: I am also not a Reddit user, but I feel like the CEO is a little disengaged [00:36:00] from the market because even though I'm not a Reddit user, I've heard that the subreddits is where all the action happens. So e o is probably not very engaged and what's going on with his own or platform or
Jenni: I feel like disengaged CEOs has been the theme of Twitter and.
Siara: Yeah, and this also
feels like,
Mattie: a new ceo.
Jenni: did.
Mattie: Yeah.
Jenni: Oh
Siara: I haven't been following
Jenni: yeah.
Mattie: so much happening
Siara: But it feels like Reddit is also having, um, this feels like sort of a temper tantrum type thing. It could also be a financial but also it's like we're gonna stick it you, but it's not working because the people who are actually using your platform is like, but what you're putting out is actually Not great anyway, so I [00:37:00] will go elsewhere. Uh, very reminiscent of the Twitter. We're gonna pay, you're gonna have to pay for your blue check. And
Jenni: Yeah.
Siara: I'm not, not interested. Why would I do that? And it costs the company billions of dollars who also should not have been for what they were selling anyway, but I digress.
Jenni: Aaron, what do you think?
Mattie: Yeah.
Aaron Walker: Like it's a, it, it's like a exciting, but it's kind of a scary trend. I'm like, I'm wondering when the peak of this, like everything's open source and it's beautiful, this like wonderland. It feels like eventually it's, it's gonna have to curve down and things are gonna close up. Like I'm thinking about chat g v two too, cuz people are like, they're letting people use it as like an API to chat gvt and they're using it in their, their own apps and stuff.
And I know like just the, the, the power and the, the, just like the physical amount of resources it takes to, to make and then like, hold up something like chat vt. I'm like, there's no way it's gonna stay like a hundred percent free forever. So like [00:38:00] everything that's big and especially when now because things are getting into ai, everything's.
Data is the most valuable thing. I can't imagine that everything's gonna keep saying like, super, super open and that this is, this is just like, uh, a shadow of that, I guess.
Jenni: I think, I think as long as they have a plan, right? Like, um, when iPhones first came out, they were only available on ATT at and t and everyone knew, I can't remember if it was a year or three years or whatever it was. Everyone knew it was gonna expand after that. And there was kind of like a plan and people knew how to get engaged with that.
Um, think it's just. These, what to the public seem like rash decisions to get like a 30 day notice is
Aaron Walker: Yes.
Jenni: the unreasonable part.
Aaron Walker: Mm-hmm.
Jenni: Sierra.
Siara: So my heat check is more culturally, uh, specific. So I just wanna say happy Juneteenth to, um, to all of [00:39:00] America. Yeah. Um, so for those of you who don't know, uh, Juneteenth is a holiday commemorating the end of slavery in the United States. States, it is also called Emancipation Day, or Juneteenth Independence Day.
Um, the day was first recognized as a federal holiday in two. Um, 2021. and so I am very excited that it is a prose company holiday. So we will have the day off to celebrate with our loved ones and friends. Um, and also Happy Father's Day. We're recording this, the, the Friday before Father's Day.
So I just wanna shout out to all the wonderful. Fathers, um, especially black fathers who are out there doing their thing and loving on their kids and taking care of their families. Um, so it's gonna be an exciting weekend. So, happy Juneteenth. we've got celebrations set up here at pros that I'm excited about, uh, [00:40:00] coming next week, and I hope that our community goes out and, and celebrates this day.
Jenni: Yep. Very excited about that. I think, um, we're, I'm definitely looking forward to this, uh, long weekend and just kind of reflecting on everything. And June Juneteenth is definitely, I'm, an eighties kid, so.
Aaron Walker: Huh?
Jenni: think, or, you know, generation X is kind of like the ambivalent generation, but definitely enjoying that.
We're, um, able to, um, acknowledge,
uh,
Aaron Walker: yeah.
Jenni: Erin.
Siara: In the.
Mattie: up. I gotta follow. So what's the like, you know, I feel like MLK Day has, is starting to shift towards like, uh, instead of like, oh, we have this day off. It's like a day of service. Do you foresee like the juneteenth shifting into something where, um, it's more community [00:41:00] driven rather than like, oh, we have Monday off, or, oh, we have like this day off to not work.
How, how, like, how would you think that like, as a, you know, a society, America, that we've, you know, we reflect on our past and we move forward together. How, how do you, how, how would you, like, in a perfect world, how do you see, like this day evolving?
Aaron Walker: Hmm.
Jenni: I definitely want it to be a day to remember history because I, I feel like people think that, oh, all that happened a long time ago and. We're way past that now. I think we at least should be kind of remembering that, um, you know, people were, were enslaved, oppressed, and, you know, enslaved past the, you know, emancipation.
Um, and so to remember that, uh, that we need to. Make sure that we don't repeat the past mistakes. Um, does that mean now? Now how would we celebrate it? Or what would be kind of, you [00:42:00] know, like Christmas, there's Christmas trees and lights, and what do we do for Juneteenth? Um, I would like to see like community involvement or something like that.
Is community service or something like that?
Aaron Walker: Yeah.
Jenni: you guys think?
Aaron Walker: Um, of the same persuasion. Like I like, uh, at least when I was younger, especially, I remember a lot of, like, there were like parades and stuff for MLK Day. Stuff like that is actually, I feel like it's, it's actually important and, and relevant. It's easy to, to kind of like, forget, forget stuff and forget what these things are for.
It's. I think as I've gotten older, and I don't know if that's just like, like who I'm around, but it, it definitely feels like MLK Day has slowly become more of just like, yeah, it's just a day off. So I'd like to see the opposite trend with, with Juneteenth.
Siara: I would say that I would like to see Juneteenth as widely celebrated as July 4th. Um, is. A second Independence Day, very specific to [00:43:00] people, my ancestors. Um, and it's a day that I think we own as black people, but also it needs to be, um, a constant reminder that we were not all. The land of the free, um, all at the same time.
And it takes those hard conversations and, you know, putting it on the front line to, uh, other people to acknowledge that this is a thing that happened. It's not something to forget. Um, and it's a celebration for all of us.
Mattie: Yeah, I, I like that. I, I think where I would go a, a little step. Further is like turning that my, to like an us a we right, we all as a society, as an American [00:44:00] society, experience that to some extent, like whether you're on one side or the other. Um, and, and like I feel like the day represents like there are no sides, so that everybody should come to the table and have conversations and it's, it's no longer like pointing the finger.
It's just like, Things have happened. What can, like Jenny said, what can we learn from that and, and how do we move forward together? And just constantly having those conversations of like, how do we move forward together and how do we have conversations? Cuz ultimately, everything I say this, everything is arbitrary and it's, it doesn't really matter.
It's more about like, can you have a conversation about it? Can you move forward together? And if you can't, if you can't even talk about it, then I think that's more the issue. And, and I think that stems from like, Creating divisions between like them, me, us, and it should just be us, right? It should like if, if it's a celebration and it is, is as Bo big as 4th of July, which I think would be [00:45:00] great.
It needs to be about us yeah.
Siara: I agree. We have, you know, the United States of America has two independents. Days that all Americans should be, uh, celebrating and remembering, um, is what I would like to see going forward. You know, there's even an argument of, you know, as black society, we kind of, we wanna keep Juneteenth for us to have something that we don't have to share.
But I think in the future I would like to see the nation as a whole be able to celebrate both days. So,
Jenni: I love that.
Aaron Walker: Yeah.
Jenni: Aaron, do you happen to have a heat, heat check?
Aaron Walker: Uh, I mean, I mean there, there's, there's a, I I'm interested in like, there's doing, of course naturally, like they did like text to image. They're trying to do text to, to music, to audio. For some reason they're [00:46:00] for, for a number of reasons, a little bit more difficult because there's like the, there's the time aspect of it, and so there's, there's networks designed for that,
but Oh
Mattie: ai?
Aaron Walker: generative, like AI for, for audio and the.
The, the initial problem to somebody that's saying is like, okay, I'm doing like in, in ai, like a neural network. I'm doing a project for this. The first thing they see is, okay, there's the time aspect and then there's the size aspect because of the time. And then when you think of it just from an audio's perspective, it's almost, it's one thing to describe when you see visually with words.
We do that very often, but it's really extremely difficult to describe music in words. It's like, how do you do text to text to music when you can't even describe it? And what, what happens a lot is there's these like stock music libraries that you might use for like, you're making a video or you know, a podcast and you're like, Hey, I just need music.
And there's libraries. You can select like little tracks from. And when you, um, when you on the other side, like when you put music in, they ask you, it's like tag, like tag this with as many descriptive words as you [00:47:00] can try to describe the genre. And it's like even, even people that do this like on a daily basis, like this is impossible.
Like, how do I, how do I put words to this? Like, this doesn't even fit into a genre or, or whatever. So I I, I find that, I find that interesting. Um, I'm just curious what maybe you guys would think about if, if everything was like, uh, ai, like every time you got music and stuff, it was. Actually just generated at will.
If, if that's a.
Jenni: us come up with our theme music. Remember, we were trying to find our, our theme music. Cause we did go to one of those libraries where we were like, do we want hip hop? Blah, blah, blah. And even my idea of what I wanted versus what the descriptors were, or very different. And, um, yeah, I would, yeah, I, it's a, it's a hard problem to solve.
Aaron Walker: Yes.
Mattie: Yeah, it wa interesting enough, I, um, was just watching the recap. Uh, pros did, hadn't [00:48:00] outperformed. Conference a month or two ago. And, uh, Michael Wu, our chief AI strategist, um, he did a talk on, like explaining chat, G P T and like he was talking about like, some of the use cases for ai. Um, like, like you wouldn't necessarily want an AI to give you like a text chart, right.
To explain a chart via text. Cuz it's like, well that's what the chart's for because that's easier to, to like, and I think like if you like, are trying to explain music in a text form to then generate that music, it might just be easier to like generate the music and not do it via text.
Siara: I don't wanna, I don't wanna lose the human experience of creating music. I think that's
Aaron Walker: Yeah.
Siara: from a avid music lover, that is a very [00:49:00] special thing for a human to create. I don't know that I would want a, a computer generated, computer generated audio. Um,
Jenni: I, I, I can see how I get a track that I kind of like, and I'm like, do this, but with more bass or do this, um, in the style of, you know, one of my favorite artists or something. Or, you know, change the voice to Rihanna's voice or something like this.
Right.
Aaron Walker: Yes.
Jenni: Um,
Mattie: Oh, they're already doing that. I listened to like multiple non Drake songs.
Siara: Wasn't there something that was released with a Drake, song that came out and it was, it sounded like Drake, but it wasn't him
Jenni: It was, yeah. I can't remember, but yeah, I know what you're talking about. I,
Aaron Walker: I, haven't seen that one yet, so.
Jenni: see it. I definitely like the human touch and, and I think it's just another [00:50:00] method for creativity, cuz someone's got to put the idea into
Siara: Yeah.
Jenni: gener ai. Right.
Aaron Walker: Yeah.
Jenni: kind of facilitates getting it done, and hopefully
Aaron Walker: Is this weird? Like, uh, yeah. Yeah, it's, it is weird seeing people, uh, it, I'm still not sure, like it's been a while and people aren't sure if they're like, warming up to like text the image and stuff cuz it like, I mean, it's, it's, some of those images are actually like, really good. They're very perfectly usable and some people are getting good at like prompting what they need to.
And then there's, there's some I've, I've heard talk of, of some models that you can actually kind of a little bit edit more than usual. Like, you, like say, like remove this or whatever. Oh. Uh, Okay, so it was, it was a matter of Facebook. I know they did like their segmentations like just gone like through the charts.
Like they can like look at an image and they can segment things like super perfectly. So I imagine later on in ai, like at least, at least for the visual [00:51:00] aspect, they can actually just like pick out parts. It's like, Hey, take out the flowers in this image that you generated, or make the pop bigger. And it like hopefully will soon be able to do that.
And it's still, it's still weird. Maybe that's just like what artists are gonna be. Instead of like paint, like painting and saying, no, I, I think I need more red and stuff, and they add it themselves. There's like, just add more red to that, that needs to be darker saturation or like, remove the, remove the flowers, make those flowers bigger.
And that's, that's just what an artist is gonna be is that, I, I don't think I, I don't think I like that future, but it, it seems like it might be possible.
Jenni: I'm sure there's a need for that somewhere.
Aaron Walker: Yeah. Maybe.
Siara: It's definitely gonna push the boundaries of
Aaron Walker: Mm.
Siara: we're accustomed to do. When you think about an artist or something like that, I could see a, a future in that, but definitely pushing the boundaries traditionalism.
Jenni: Oh, I had one more quick thing that I wanted [00:52:00] to acknowledge as well. We are, as before this recording started, 991 downloads. So we are really getting close to a thousand. So Erin, you might be, Thousands download for all we know. We'll see. Uh, we're really excited about that. so may maybe by next episode we, we would've hit that.
So we, we'll keep you listeners, uh, uh, we'll let you know what happens. Uh, Aaron, how can people get in touch with you? Um, or can you share, um, your socials with us and our
Aaron Walker: Uh, yeah. I have a YouTube, it's, it's Arrow Audio, so it's like Arrow with two a's a a R r O W audio. And I post music there mostly Now some of the like reaper like modifications I add and hopefully eventually some actual like software, like audio plugins and stuff. Uh, that's probably the best way to see my stuff.
And I, I guess I have [00:53:00] a, I guess I have a Twitter. I don't, I don't use it like in Instagram. I don't, I don't really use those things. So,
Jenni: No worries. Well, we wanna thank you for joining us today and thank you to all of our listeners. If you enjoyed this conversation, share the show with your colleagues, friends and family, and drop us a line at interfacepodcastpros.com or find us on LinkedIn. Your feedback is important to us to keep the show valuable and relevant, so please rate and review us on whatever platform you are listening to. We will meet you here next time from our crew to yours. Have a good one.