I like telling people I’m a programmer. There’s lots of less exciting jobs.
When I tell people that, they assume I'm somewhere on the deeper end of the autism spectrum.
Stop Telling Everyone What You Do for a Living
41–50 of 249 posts
Re: Stop Telling Everyone What You Do for a Living
#42Telling people what you do is more than just telling them your job title, it's also a great opportunity to tell them what motivates you about your job, and thus showing some of your values, which is pretty important when meeting new people and allows you to more easily form bonds with those that share similar values.
No it's not, no one cares about your job. And having a job that reflect your values is not the norm. People want to know about YOU, not talk about what you do to get paid. Your hobbies for example are way more interesting.
Well you can always use the answer to tell people how you dissociate yourself from your job too.
Re: Stop Telling Everyone What You Do for a Living
#43[flagged]
Re: Stop Telling Everyone What You Do for a Living
#44To be honest I have experienced this a lot in San Francisco, where people ask first what do you do, second where do you work and then what's your name...in Europe it really isn't the central part of the conversation and most likely the job doesn't even get mentioned in a dinner or a normal conversation with someone you met in a bar/club/wherever. It always shocked me how "what you do" defines the start of the convers…
I think in europe, it is even worse. Because, where you come from and which language you speak is the most important thing ever. Luckily, we have seen huge progress on LLMs and hopefully get rid of this nonsense.
Re: Stop Telling Everyone What You Do for a Living
#45I stopped asking people what they do, and instead ask ‘what are you about’ - always gets an interesting answer, after the initial perplexity of the question.
I like to say "tell me a story". What kind of story, you ask? Any story. I like true stories, but you can make something up too. The conversation ends up a lot less awkward than going off script after talking about what you do for a living.
I would hate this lol. Something about the way my brain works is that I just can't come up with something when put on the spot like that. I've done all sorts of interesting shit over my lifetime, some of which I think only a very small percentage of the population would have done, my mind is constantly running along tangents and my thoughts straddle the technical, the creative, the dreamlike, the concrete, and everything in between, but if I was asked to come up with a story out of the blue, the wheels would grind to a halt and I'd be a stammering mess.
However I know some people with whom this opener would really light a spark.
Re: Stop Telling Everyone What You Do for a Living
#46"What's the nature of your excellence?"
I don't use it very often, but when I do I always get a great response.
Re: Stop Telling Everyone What You Do for a Living
#47A better way to frame the question of “what do you do for a living” is “what do you for leisure?” Or “how have you been spending your free time lately ?” Or “what have you been up to lately?”
I for one wouldn't enjoy being asked any of those questions.
Re: Stop Telling Everyone What You Do for a Living
#48I like telling people I’m a programmer. There’s lots of less exciting jobs.
In my (at this time very long) experience people don't know what a programmer does, unless they're programmers themselves. In fact, whatever I say about my work ("programmer", "data processing", "computer-based analysis", "(whatever)" they really have no idea anyway. It's much easier to answer "I'm a carpenter".
Re: Stop Telling Everyone What You Do for a Living
#49Telling people what you do is more than just telling them your job title, it's also a great opportunity to tell them what motivates you about your job, and thus showing some of your values, which is pretty important when meeting new people and allows you to more easily form bonds with those that share similar values.
"So you're an accountant, huh? Tell me, what motivates you? You just like numbers? That's it? Just like working with numbers? Umm... do you have a dog?" "Oh, you're in gambling industry? You build online gambling websites? What makes you passionate about it? What are your values that led you down to this path? Oh, just that the pay is good? Okay man, I can totally see that, yeah..."
Job of an accountant is definitely a lively one. They usually have a lot fun stories to tell, if you appreciate the specific darkness of humor related to people getting into a jail for being greedy, stupid or both. They also love to boast about breaking the rules or clever ways they made sure people observe them.
I have yet to meet a bland accountant.
They are also rather valuable contacts, since other people tend to owe them for solving their little crisis couple years back and such.
Re: Stop Telling Everyone What You Do for a Living
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
No it's not, no one cares about your job. And having a job that reflect your values is not the norm. People want to know about YOU, not talk about what you do to get paid. Your hobbies for example are way more interesting.
> No it's not, no one cares about your job. While I agree with the sentiment of this article, I strongly disagree that no one cares. As a curious person, I often have a ton of questions about someone's occupation. For me, it is fun to hear people talk about their job. I just don't like asking about occupation early-on in the conversation because it sometimes feel like socially categorizing people.
There is nothing worse than being asked about your occupation and then feel being categorized to "just another ..." and for the conversation to go elsewhere.