The Robots are Taking Your Job

Let’s talk about a very taboo subject.

It’s taboo enough that this is legitimately the only topic that any of my coworkers have talked in hushed whispers to me about.

Yes, I’m serious – people have gotten real quiet and cagey with me when I start talking about job automation.

Like it or not, it’s real – and though Tesla’s working to get robots to drive trucks, nobody in game audio is 100% free from the eventual madness either.

Adobe Research has been working on 100% computer generated sound effects for years now by using physics systems to help the process.

Other companies are generating speech for performance as well – bye bye performance dialougue.

And let’s not get started on bedroom composers training their laptops to replicate Bach and Mozart back in 2017.

(For those of you people only implementing sounds – you’re not free either. Middleware houses a data set, and those structures can be machine-learned too)

It’s all both cool and pretty scary, right?

It’s definitely fascinating, and at times, is enough to make you completely panic and wonder if you’re doing the right thing with your life and career!

What Does One Do?!

Here’s where I take all your fear and anxiety and pop the bubble a bit.

You don’t need to worry right now. In fact – while it’s possible that I’m entirely wrong and you lose your job in 2 years – I think you probably don’t have anything to worry about for a while.

All you older folks designing sounds or in Director/Lead roles, the robots are not your concern, I swear. They will do you more good than harm in the immediate upcoming years.

Even you younger folks just starting out! While machine learning has made awesome strides in the last few years and you should 100% keep up on what craziness is possible – I wouldn’t at all panic that you’re about to lose your job.

It’s also my belief that before there’s any discussion of fully automated entertainment – these machines and systems are likely to help reduce the redundancy in your existing work long before they “take it over”.

So all of those redundant mouse clicks and hotkeys that you wish could just go away, very possibly could.

Instead of worrying about audio “Skynet” – there’s a very clear and real set of skills in audio that I think you definitely should concern yourself with. But, not in the way that you may think (depending on who you are)

What Should I Worry About?

If there’s any realistic sentiment of fear I’ve heard the past few years – it’s the thought of being “left behind” with the advancement in skills of the entry-level generation of audio creators.

We have new DAWs, new ways to use middleware, and scripting utilities that didn’t exist even 5 years ago.

When you’re not working to become fluent at all of it, then it feels like everyone – especially younger people – are. Therefore, a “logical idea” is that it’s only a matter of time until you’re forced out of the job market, right?

In my opinion – yes and no.

You should be paying attention to all of these advancements – but I don’t believe that you should be concerned about them the way that many people seem to be.

For those just starting or “in the middle” of their careers, skills like programming are a super easy and useful way to drastically stand out amongst the rest of the market.

But, as I said last week – it’s not the skill itself that matters – it’s what you do with it and the story you tell from what you’ve learned to do.

For those of you who have been around a while – it’s actually less important that you learn the technology (ie: the new DAW or the Wwise Authoring API or what have you). What you should be learning is how you can utilize those skills to build better teams.

For example – if you have 3 team members who can create content and understand implementation or can build simple workflow tools – you become indispensible by knowing what problems to aim people will those skills sets towards. You actually learning how to program Wwise is way less valuable than your ability to identify problems and put the right person with the right knowledge in the right place.

But, you still need to understand on a high level what all of these skills are and how they can be utilized in order to make those calls. Get it?

The Machines Can Wait

So, all this being said, there’s no reason to panic and every reason to relax.

While we’re waiting on our machine overlords to eventually get smart enough, take our jobs, and kill us all (kidding!) – I’m happy to train you, so that you can eventually train them!

In the next couple of weeks I’ll be opening presales to my first live training course – WAAPI Live. For a little over a month, I’ll be personally leading you 5 days a week in learning how to read and use the Wwise Authoring API.

This means learning how to do all sorts of wild things – from automating the creation of events and soundbanks, to colorizing your project based on keywords, to replicating hierarchies and copying properties from one set of objects to another. All of it programmatic, all of it repeatable by your future robot overlords.

If you’ve already taken my C# Implementation with Wwise and Unity course – you’re already a fantastic candidate for this one.

If you want to join, I’ll be expecting you to know very basic concepts of C# programming such as “classes”, “loops”, “if statements”, and you should at least have heard of Git and LINQ before. If you have zero C# experience – do not join, this isn’t for you.

For now though, you can sign up for the waiting list. All of those on the waiting list will get the first shot at presales. I’ll be working with only a handful of people (less than 10) – so join that list if you’re interested.

And again, the premium version of C# Implementation with Wwise and Unity sells for ~$150. Because you’ll be working with me live for over a month – WAAPI Live will be more expensive than that. With the skills you’ll learn, I believe you’ll earn it back quickly, but I do want you to be aware of the investment you’ll be making.

And for those of you interested in programming, but not ready for this – don’t worry – I’ll have you covered soon as well.

Until then, relax, and laugh that this robot has been making 100% computer-generated heavy metal since September, non-stop.