Ask Lemmy

Explaining my job is trivial compared to the insanity I cook up in my spare time.

Oh, so you like gaming? No, I'm actually not playing the game. I'm building a mod for it. Erm, okay, so this is for other players then? No, I'm mostly building it for myself. Ah, so you haven't put a lot of time into it yet? Roughly 12 years. What? So what does the mod do then? It plays the game for me, and publishes in-game metrics to a monitoring application, so that I can see the progress of the game in an abstract form while I'm on the couch, thinking about how to optimize the automation further.

Regular fun stuff.

Yep.

Network engineer here. I can't count the number of times my mom says I'm in programming.

After a few years, my wife figured out the best way to describe my job. Doctor of the internet. This was because I was working in operations at the time and would fix network outages regularly.

I don't have trouble explaining. I keep it high level and generic because 99 times out of 100, people are just making small talk and want to know just enough about you to categorize you.

“I’m a stand-up comic.”

“Ooh! Heckle me!”

“I don’t know anything about you and don’t wanna say anything mean about you. Just enjoy the moment without getting a performer to do free work for you.”

“You’re no fun.”

“Don’t have to be on all the time, let me eat my burger.”

Reading the first several posts... Is everyone here in IT? 🤣🤣

Describing my job? Yeah, sure. I do science.

Explaining my job? Hell no. Nobody is willing to read a 20 page lit review to start to understand the background of what I do

I cast spells that make the runes etched in sand translate the energy of magic stones into dancing light.

Usually I just tell people that I work in IT and leave it at that.

Me: I'm in IT (trying to keep it simple)

Them: OK, but what do you do in IT?

Me: I'm a system administrator (again trying to keep it simple)

Them: I don't know what that means. What does a system administrator do?

Me: I work on servers (again, trying to keep it simple)

Them: What's a server?

Me: I'm in IT...

I'm in DevOps, so anyone not in tech has no idea what I do/what that means. So, I end up just saying "I work in IT".

My new doctor didn't like that answer when we were making small talk and wanted a more detailed answer, so I tell him. He looks at his nurse and says: did any of that make sense?

I recently told a seven year old that I am a wizard. I already have the beard and being a programmer, that is exactly what my customers feel about my work.

Trouble as in I'm in trouble if I do. I'm a formally educated it security engineer running my own incorporated software and infrastructure company. Firstly: people just hear "computer guy" and their second thought is "he can fix my stuff". So I stay near to the truth and simplify it: I'm a theoretical electrical engineer. Boom, instant bored face and they leave as fast as they can. My neighbors love me, but I haven't fixed a single of their computers in decades.

Also pro tip: the wife has the same qualifications as I, so she fixes her family's stuff herself. My job is to lug stuff and the kids around at home.

Yes. I'm a near surface geophysicist. So I don't look for oil or minerals but I do try to figure out what's going on underground without digging. Mostly looking for mine or karst voids under new construction.

I'm a florist. People understand what I do, they usually just don't think it's worth doing or paying me for my labor.

Depends on wether I want them to understand. If I just say we are the ISP for universities and other schools of higher education then they mostly go, "Ah okay", but it seems like no one has any idea what that means. I feel like despite using them daily people don't even know what a network is sometimes.

Nope. I keep the internet working.

People seem happy when I say that. Unless my internet at home craps out and my wife makes a cheeky joke about it.

I'm a software developer. My default explanation to people who don't know what that means is, "I whisper to computers, and sometimes they do what I ask".

Information Security is so hard to explain to old people who don’t know much about technology. My grandparents back then (late 2000s) never understood it no matter how I explained it, and they thought I was a security guard at the bank I worked at. You could also see the disappointment in their faces thinking how someone who took IT in college ended up as a security guard.

Yeah but developed a quick explanation for it: Industrial water treatment tech for HVAC. You know how having a swimming pool or hot tub requires some chemistry? I do that for water in boilers and cooling towers used to heat or cool big buildings

Yes, I do. I'm a devops engineer and even "coding camp devs" have problems understanding what I do for a living.

When I say I’m a school librarian, most people can make a connection and have an understanding. And as long as their next comment isn’t some Fox News bullshit (which was real fun at my grandmother’s funeral), I can usually leave it at that.

But the actual day-to-day complexities of what I do isn’t going to be understood. Most days I am checking out over 400 books to students, which means my volunteers, me, and my para (assistant) are checking in and reshelving over 400 books each morning. That’s over 800 books scanned each day. Then, I am also teaching six 45-minute classes every day and I see each student in our school (over 700) twice a week in those classes. So I am planning and prepping for those classes, teaching those classes, and running the book checkout. Not to mention managing behaviors and helping some of our new students (especially kindergarten) understand the expectations of the library. I am currently planning our book fair happening in a few weeks, getting ready to start my after school club, facilitating a $500 per grade level order for books and supplies, fielding sales phone calls, balancing my ~$10K budget, and being the team lead which involves monthly meetings to attend, twice a month meetings to run, and many additional emails. So yes, I do read to kids and let them take books home, but that’s nowhere near the end of my to-do list.

I am a clerk in a bakery.

I mostly put bread in bags, and those bags on shelves.

Yep. Sometimes I can't even figure out what they pay me for.

Kind of. I am a CEO (that's the easy part) of a small consulting company in healthcare.

The hard part is to explain what we actually do: We do consult organisations about (healthcare related) disaster preparedness/risk management and contingency planning. So you call us if you want to have proper plans in case your hospital catches fire, COVID and monkey pox have baby or if you are a city and need to know how to plan for "the day X". But as we work mainly on a systemic level you can also call us if you need a more intelligence focused plan e.g. "I am going to South Sudan, what do I do if I have an accident?".

Additionally we also consult for ambulance services, e.g. how to plan vehicle allocation, etc.

Mine is usually pretty simple to explain. I do CNC, which is cutting objecting/materials into useful shapes using big machines.

Game Dev here. More specifically, audio director. Used to be tech sound designer and composer. I find it hard to explain even over here, among the geeks like me.

Guess my job based on the following description:

I sell a product to a people who don't believe they have any use for it during what they consider their personal time.

Answer:

My job title is an acronym, inside the company no one seems to agree on what this acronym stands for. So yes, I just say I work in the Automotive industry.