Ask Lemmy

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.

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.

No.

It's hard to explain a job where I watch YouTube most of the time, and then I do random when I am asked to do some stuff.

My friend had this problem, I knew him for a while and couldn't figure it out. I believe he was a "Transpondster".

Depends on their level of interest and/or knowledge. My job isn't exciting or prestigious, just niche/specialized. Most of the time when I say what I do, I get a blank stare. If that's the case I'll just say "I babysit computers" and leave it at that. I've had the conversation enough times that I know it's not worth the effort to try explaining it further. "Oh, you work with computers? My brother in law is a programmer, perhaps you've met him?"

Sometimes people will get the gist of it just from the title, and these are usually the most interesting conversations because they've made the (un?)conscious effort to understand something new to them. I am totally down with that.

On very rare occasions someone will actually know what it is that I do. This inevitably leads to trading war stories about redundant alerts to please management, unbalanced power loads, poorly defined environments handed over with little to no explanation, cable curtains, and how even other IT people have no clue what we're on about half the time.

Automation for mainly the mining industry.

I'm a public servant, so while it's easy to tell people I work for The Government, it's a lot harder to explain what I do. My job is a mish-mash of like three different roles in one of the least popular departments. When people ask, I say I work for (our version of) the DMV, and that's usually good enough.

Nope, most people are fine with "I'm a programmer", the few times someone asked me what exactly did I program, I answered with the ELI5 version of what I do and that's always been enough, e.g.

• I make computers see and understand what they're seeing.
• You now site X? I work there
• You know game X? I work in the servers for it

I don't have a job, so no trouble at all.

No. I do not.

Nah, like 50% of it is just telling people to restart their computers.

I'm working on making robots do useful things. I think that's fairly easy for most people to understand.

Yes, definitely. It's easier now that I'm part of operational support and can oversimplify it by referring to myself as an IT dude, but back when I was part of the field rotation, when I tried to sum up what "offshore seismic survey technician" is, I was sometimes asked "so, how's it like working on an oil rig?".
I wouldn't know, I've never been on one. I've been on ships around them, but never on the rigs themselves.

yes and no.

I work as an it support in a small software company, so i do lots of stuff:
data integration / migration, fixes in our legacy products & websites, and of course fixing printers.

thats way to complicated explain in detail,
but just saying IT support doesn't do it justice (people just think im the guy that tells people to "turn it of and on again" if i leave it at that)

Instead of telling people directly what i do,
i just tell them i work in IT, this is what my company does, and i work on these products.

i have problems explaining my job to myself. As I sit on the floor, painting a wall or scrubbing the floor or as I'm trying to repair a door... yeah that's not my job description

Not really. I tell them it's like a Black Mirror episode and they give me a sympathetic grimace. Then we talk about something else.

I have two ways of explaining. The first one is just saying “I work with data” followed by some hand waving and shrugging.
The other is where I really go into detail and explain everything. Going gaga over some minute aspect that I find awesome but couldn’t even interest one of my coworkers.
Neither seems to really work, but I don’t get follow up questions which suits me just fine :)

Yes, if they are really interested and don't have IT background. My mother once thought I look up codes in books and type it into the computer.

No.
"I keep the computer systems running at the local newspaper, and prevent it from getting hacked" is pretty straightforward.
It provides enough to latch on to for normie small talk.
And I can dose the tech talk based on what questions I get back.

It's not so much I would say I have trouble explaining it but rather I don't have a single way to explain it since the occupation doesn't have a name, at least in the English language, so I end up having a bajillion equally valid ways of crash coursing about it.

Nope, building prototypes, running experiments and develop stuff is rather easy to explain.

Explaining where i work is the harder part.

Oh yes, I usually end up saying "I work in insurance" because any more specific than that and people look at me with question marks in their faces