Coffey & Code Interview with Tanner Smith

Ashley Coffey31min

Ashley Coffey

00:00

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Coffey and Code. I'm excited to have a very special guest on the show with me today, Mr. Tanner Smith. Tinder is very well rounded and very fascinated. He has his own business. He has a great story about going from musician to software engineer. And I'm so excited to have him on the show today. So without further ado, welcome to coffee and code. Mr. Tanner Smith. Thank you for having me here. Can I call you Mr. Smith? Sure. Yeah, I just like the matrix. Yeah. I like that. I like that. Um, Tina, tell us a little bit more about yourself. So let's see, I am a classically trained guitarist. I was in a Scot punk band.

Ashley Coffey

00:50

I graduated from the music business degree from Southern Nazarene University here in Bethany. And now I'm software engineer. It's funny how it happens when you graduate with the music business degree and there are no jobs in the field. So then you find a way to make money.

Ashley Coffey

01:05

Yes, you may you forge your own path. But at the same time, you didn't really know what really knew where we were going to be. We were in college, right and like figuring out what our plan is. So it's amazing that you've like kind of found what your passion is, and found a way to intersect those into two areas. So bravo to you, because that's a lot of hard work.

Ashley Coffey

01:28

It was a journey for sure. A lot of it started in sales, where I was like working for startups in Buffalo, New York, when I moved up there. I actually wanted to be a composer for video games. So I took a video game composition course at OCU. Because that was so much fun. It was so much fun. I learned so much chance Thomas, he wrote like music for King Kong and Lord of the Rings Online. He was a great professor of that course. And I actually applied the in order to take that course I had to apply to OCU to get in after I graduate. So I graduated SNU. And I was like, right back in school because I went OCU. And then you know, took this course and he ended up having a His person he taught was actually the lead audio director at Ubisoft Toronto. Wow. So it was like a perfect. I was like, Yeah, I'm planning on going to Toronto, he's like, Well, I'll connect you with rich and yet over at Ubisoft. So I actually got to meet him and go up there. And unfortunately, due to like the nature of my visa wasn't actually able to work for them. But I did get a lot of valuable experience kind of got connected up there. But yeah, moving down to Buffalo after my visa expired, I got involved in some software startups and realized, you know, all the mistakes that we're making them, like, why, like, how are these people getting so much funding? Why are they doing all these things like if they're making these basic mistakes? And I was like, Well, I went from sales, software sales. I was like, I could do this. So that's kind of where I got into that's my first start into thinking about like software and finding a CTO kind of all that stuff. So we can get into that. But that's just yeah, the the whole journey of it. It's just a wild ride.

Ashley Coffey

03:14

So I love that because it's so exciting to hear you talk about that, because I can imagine it was probably a whirlwind all at once going from like the kind of predictable calm ish music industry and we classical, yeah, trained. Guitarist, it's very different. It's a different pace for sure. Yeah. So I'm curious what was like one of the most interesting things that you kind of gleaned from that whole whirlwind?

Ashley Coffey

03:42

Um, well, I mean, everything is not what it seems, you know, you think that there's a lot of jobs in the music industry, because you see people making money in music, it's like, well, these, these people have been in the positions that they're in for decades, potentially. And they're not wanting to leave, you know, so it's kind of an industry that's dominated by a lot of lifers, essentially. And when you try to push your way in, it's either through favors or through some sort of like, weird, roundabout way. There's no direct access, right? You can go live in Nashville for 10 years, I guess, and make your way in that scene and, and do all the things with all the people who knows somebody and network your way into it. But you're still making pennies compared to what the people to compare to where you feel like you what you got your degree for, you know, being working for a record label or doing something like a classic, that classic move. There's not a lot of jobs and record labels, you know, with the the invention of streaming services, and I mean, a really, ideally, it'd be great to go work at Spotify. Yeah. All the way. I think they're in Sweden. It's like, well, not everybody can just pack up. Right? Yeah. So You know, just a lot of we like to think that we know it all. Based on the knowledge, you know, the college know it all. Everybody hears that term thrown around, it is kind of true. I mean, you graduate, you're like, oh, I can go get a degree, I can go get a job. And you kind of get into the reality of things. And you're, you're kind of stuck. So I was kind of, I think that's probably the biggest thing is just realizing that you really don't know anything. So how about especially about the music industry? Wow. So

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