This is Tech is a series of interviews with women from all different points in their tech careers.
Alberta is a tech influencer who focuses on tech comedy and AI hot takes. Check her out on social media:
How did you get into engineering/social media? What was your journey like?
I signed up for an Intro Computer Science class in college only halfway sure I was going to stick with it. I had a little coding background (read: making HTML pages on Tumblr and Neopets) but had heard the class was difficult and boring.
It turned out the teaching assistants for the course knew about its reputation and had a tradition of putting on a musical about Object Oriented Programming for the first day of class complete with props, costumes, and original music. As someone with a limited background, I only understood half of what
I’m sure the show succeeded in convincing a lot of kids in the audience that Java inheritance is actually interesting, but what it convinced me of was a lot more simple: I needed to do whatever it took to be in that musical.
Two years later, I was directing that show as a teaching assistant for the class, four years later I graduated with a degree in Computer Science, and nearly a decade later I’m a software engineer who’s still writing skits about coding.
What motivates you?
I love helping people get to that “aha” moment where they’re able to fully understand or contextualize a piece of technology. Sometimes I’m able to do that through a thorough explanation of a topic, but I’ve also found a lot of satisfaction in using comedy to make my point.
When I get a comment on one of my satire videos along the lines of “I can’t believe this is the video that finally made me understand XYZ topic,” it makes it all worth it.
Current tech obsession?
Analyzing my runs and heart rate data on Strava!
What’s shaped Alberta’s career and her advice to early career women
Who or what has significantly influenced your career trajectory, both in engineering and content creation?
In my career — a mentor at my first internship gave me very blunt advice that I needed to become a backend generalist to succeed in the industry.
This guidance is definitely not applicable to everyone – there are a lot of engineers I look up to who are experts in specific technologies. But for me, identifying not with a specific language or part of the stack but instead just trying to grow into a capable engineer who could jump into any technical project gave me a lot of confidence to try new things.
In content — the sharp rise of generative AI created a huge audience of people who were interested in technology. I would scroll through my TikTok feed a couple years ago and see so much hype around a technology that people weren’t fully understanding.
Being able to understand the basics of how generative AI works so that I could not only explain it but also joke about its flaws ended up being a huge factor for the success of my content.
What advice would you offer to individuals looking to merge their technical expertise with creative endeavors like content creation?
Make it really, really simple. And then make it even simpler than that. Communicating technical concepts in any creative endeavor is hard. Generally speaking, you won’t know what background the person who’s watching your video (or reading your writing, or looking at your visual art) will have. They might have no idea what a programming language is or they might have a PhD in Machine Learning.
Of course, if you’re pursuing your creative endeavor purely for yourself this won’t apply. But if you want your work to resonate, my best piece of advice is to ask a few friends who might not be as immersed in the tech world what they think.
If you could fast-forward 10 years, what’s one piece of technology you hope exists (or hope doesn’t exist)?
Please no AI content creators!
AI is a big part of your content—what’s the most mind-blowing or unexpected thing you’ve seen in AI recently?
I’ve seen a couple of really cool demos of physical robots with AI capabilities recently. Unfortunately, I think a lot of them are in the uncanny valley of “Oh wow this thing looks like it is going to attack me in my sleep.” But I’ll definitely be watching closely as the technology and the products themselves start to develop.
Any final thoughts or advice you’d like to share?
I’m looking forward to seeing what the next generation of creative technologists bring to this space!