
Ask HN: Explain to non-techies what you do: Programmer? Developer? Engineer?  - jayliew
https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dHJJNDg0NnBFQVFwNGdRekw2R1RZeEE6MQ
======
revorad
_Visitors to this country are often surprised to find that Americans like to
begin a conversation by asking "what do you do?" I've never liked this
question. I've rarely had a neat answer to it. But I think I have finally
solved the problem. Now, when someone asks me what I do, I look them straight
in the eye and say "I'm designing a new dialect of Lisp." I recommend this
answer to anyone who doesn't like being asked what they do. The conversation
will turn immediately to other topics._

<http://www.paulgraham.com/desres.html>

~~~
barrkel
The usual opening question in Ireland is "where are you from", and it's
similarly awkward to answer for me (I'm not really from anywhere specific). If
you're a foreigner in Ireland, the follow-up question is often "when are you
going back?" - not intended in a xenophobic sense, but rather an assumption
that one wouldn't want to leave one's home area for the rest of your life.

But I'm not sure there really are better ways to start a conversation that
leads into talking about the people, rather than third-party topics. Probably
a better answer to "what do you do", if you don't like the gambit, is to talk
about your hobbies, or make something up that is only tangentially,
allegorically or metaphorically about what you do.

~~~
protomyth
I grew up around reservations in the northern plain states of the US. The
opening question tends to be some variant of "Who are your relatives?". It can
be quite uncomfortable if there is / was some dispute between relatives of
theirs and yours.

------
PaulJoslin
I always say 'Software Developer'.

If you say, 'Computer Programmer' then they picture someone tinkering with
computers, if you say 'Developer' or 'Engineer' they don't know it's anything
to do with computers or software.

What really annoys me, is when people respond with 'Oh right, I.T.' or 'I have
a friend who does I.T. too, yeah he fixes computers at... '

\- I personally see being a 'Software Developer' as a far higher position than
someone doing 1st line support in I.T.

~~~
mryall
> What really annoys me, is when people respond with 'Oh right, I.T.' or 'I
> have a friend who does I.T. too, yeah he fixes computers at... '

You shouldn't let this get to you. These people are just trying to relate to
you based on this new information.

To someone outside an industry, most people in it can appear to do the same
thing. Just think: how many types of airplane mechanics/portrait
artists/theoretical physicists can you identify? To people in these and many
other industries, I'm sure there's an incredible variety of roles and job
descriptions.

~~~
PaulJoslin
I understand this. I just smile when they make the comparison, after all at
least they are caring enough to ask and listen.

\- On a similar note, the word 'Hacker' on this forum, generally refers to
someone who lives and breathes code. However, outside of this community many
refer to the term 'Hacker' as being a malicious person.

Therefore, whenever I have mentioned the 'Hacker News' community to anyone in
my profession they usually look at me as if I've just admitted to partaking in
criminal activities. Perhaps it's just a British thing?

~~~
derefr
Perhaps localize the name to "Boffin News"?

~~~
Zev
Innocuous News!

(see: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=575815>)

------
mahmud
By the time the career question comes up I have already asked them about
theirs, shared with them what I know about it, and "thought out loud" about
what I think is most difficult/interesting/new about their industry, that they
think I am a peer or an insider.

We all know _something_ about every industry and every line of work, or at
least have the interest to inquire about it (if not for anything else, because
we're completely ignorant of it.)

Share what you know, show interest, and shut up.

Allow people to see you under their own favorite lights. If you can hold a
conversation with a scientist just fine, no need to tell him you're an
entrepreneur. And if a business man likes your management acumen and eye for
the market, no need to call yourself a code-monkey. You're all of the above,
but keep the conversation at their pace, ask questions from most general to
more specific, and let them categorize you through the course of a mutually
comforting conversation.

This is why you don't jump into an elevator pitch with everyone you meet, just
because you got an idea and a GoDaddy domain.

~~~
derefr
What do you do when you meet someone who preempts you with the same approach?

~~~
mahmud
"Like everyone else, I hunch over a laptop and send emails all day :-) We're
slaves to the machine, my friend, and I have done my part to enable them."

Really, I don't do anything in particular, I just project my inner paradoxical
mix of shame and pride in my short, eventful but otherwise checkered career as
a jack of all trades.

------
paulbaumgart
"You know this metal rectangle full of little lights? I spend most of my life
pressing buttons to make the pattern of lights change however I want."

<http://xkcd.com/722/> (of course)

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ohyes
I sit in a a beige cubicle at a computer, and I type. Mostly I write computer
code. In the afternoon I drink a lot of coffee to keep me from nodding off.
Sometimes I talk on the phone or answer e-mails, other times I train people to
use the software that we make.

When I am asked at a party, I put more emphasis on what the software that I
work on does than what I do at work.

Programmers are literally minded, we often assume that we must actually answer
the questions that people ask us. This is not correct. When someone engages
you in smalltalk, they are asking you to tell a story. It doesn't even have to
be a true story... (although outright lying is probably ill advised.)

Giving a job title or generic description is painfully dull.

~~~
derefr
Well, the problem here is that there are two types of people you'll make
smalltalk with—those who you will eventually form a working relationship with
(1%), and those you won't—and the two groups have separate "best solutions,"
but are hard to differentiate beforehand.

You _can_ outright lie to the 99%, if you think that will help—but whatever
you tell the 1%, they'll go on believing when you work with them.

------
Zev
Depends who I'm talking to.

If its someone at college (say, at a party), I say that I play with my iPhone
all day. If they ask for clarification, that I make iPhone applications.
Usually at this point, whoever I'm talking to will say something like "So you
write stuff on the computer for the iPhone?" and I nod.

The alternative is usually "Software Engineer" or "iPhone Developer",
depending on where I am and how specific I need to be -- general description
of what I do vs what my current job entails.

Or, if I really don't feel like talking, "student" shuts most people up pretty
quickly.

~~~
psadauskas
Whenever I mention I work on iPhone apps, the person I talk to always has an
amazing idea for an app, and thinks I should write it for them.

~~~
Zev
I get that too. I ask what the idea is, and then find some innocent-sounding
reason to point out why I wouldn't be a good person to make it, rather than
saying I'm not interested or I don't have the time. If the app exists, I'll
tell them about it.

Either way, people are happy that they had the chance to talk about their idea
and I'm not stuck doing something that I don't want to do.

------
jey
"I write software" or simply "computer shit".

------
protomyth
Sometimes it might be wise not to let people know exactly what you do. As a
warning, I was golfing with my father and group of people who have the same
profession. I had been doing contract work with a Big Company as a report
writer (yes, I know, but the money was really good). It so happens one of the
reports was a customer facing document (receipt of sorts) and it was specified
by people who dealt with other Big Companies and not regular customers. This
caused said report to be pages long. The professionals in the golfing group
all had dealings with Big Company and had received many pages worth of this
report. My Dad mentioned, by way of explanation on what his oldest kid did,
that I had contracted to Big Company and had written said report.

...errr...

I found out, for the next 13 holes, how much they disliked said report with
detailed explanations. I was no longer contracting with Big Company, so no
feedback was passed on. Dad now understands why I give a very short non-
specific answer.

------
ciupicri
Programmer. Works every time. No one has ever asked me to explain what it
means.

~~~
jayliew
My biggest pet peeve, which perhaps is my own bias is that when someone says
"programmer", I take it that they pretty much know how to use an if statement,
loops, call functions, but that's it. You can hire people on Rentacoder and
elance with that skillset for < US $10 an hour.

I guess "programmer" doesn't capture the bulk of the value of someone with a
computer science background. But maybe there's my problem. Non-techies
probably equate CS with just programming anyways.

~~~
mquander
My bias is exactly the opposite; I assume that anyone calling themselves a
"software developer" or a "software engineer" is probably more interested in
implementing a design pattern than writing good code, and probably knows about
as much about computer science as he read on Coding Horror.

I think both of our biases are dumb.

~~~
jayliew
There's something to be said about purposely inflating one's title to sound
cooler (there's certainly bad people graduating with CS degrees), but let's
set that point aside for a moment.

Sounds to me like you saying that implementing a design pattern != good code?

An example of my bias is more towards something like this:

(1) someone with a CS background is more likely to notice and inefficient
algorithm _and_ know how to optimize it

(2) someone who just knows how to code in a language may not be aware of the
presence of a suboptimal algorithm, much less know how to optimize it

How do you explain to a non-technical person the difference and importance
between (1) and (2)? I guess it's going to be difficult, but I was curious if
anyone was able to easily convey (1) or (2) in a quick short introductory
pitch.

~~~
mquander
Well, the stereotype I was shooting for was someone who overarchitects things
and who is really shackled to some particular set of concepts, methodologies,
and tools; the sort of person who will go on implementing "factories" and
"strategies" in languages and situations where they don't apply.

Personally, if I were tasked to explain that distinction, I would shorten (1)
to "a good programmer" and shorten (2) to "a bad programmer."

------
twp
I'm a computer geek.

That's it.

I usually get a short, puzzelled stare, followed either by either a "what,
exactly?" if they wanna talk about it or a "oh, change of subject..." if they
don't. However they answer, go with the flow.

BTW, I'm currently a sysadmin, but I'm a coder at heart.

~~~
berntb
That is one of my answers. The other is to grin broadly and say "Code monkey".

People get a bit of dissonance when they see me saying that, since I'm a bit
old for using a keyboard full time. But programming is one of few things I've
found that I love [Edit: and people will pay me doing], so I went back.

------
kevinburke
A related question I struggle with - how to explain to other people how
qualified you are? You and I could both say we "know" Java but there's
probably a big difference there. It's really hard without showing them your
work.

~~~
MichaelGG
When non-techies ask what you do, they are probably not trying to determine if
you're qualified to build a CRM system for them.

~~~
jayliew
and if they are non-techies, they by definition don't know how to tell a
qualified vs unqualified techie anyways :/

------
scott_s
"I make computers go fast."

(About to get my PhD, doing research in systems and high performance
computing.)

------
frou_dh
Software Developer, because calling myself an Engineer doesn't make me one.

------
barrkel
What I do: I write the software that lets other software developers get their
job done; and in a circular way, I use the software I write to write the same
software. If someone is technical, I can explain that I work on compilers.

But when I want to explain to non-techies what it actually entails: I say I
sit in front of a text editor which contains precise instructions telling the
computer what to do; and I edit it, slowly and experimentally, trying to get
it right. It's almost like a poetry epic: low-level rhythm and rhyme, but
high-level story.

------
TamDenholm
I'm a PHP Dev, but to non-tech's i say Web Developer, they often come back
with "Oh so you design websites?", to which i say no, since i cant design for
shit.

I always explain it as, theres a pretty part of the website that everyone sees
and the clever bit of the website that no one sees, i do the clever bit. Which
usually satisfies their curiosity, since they then probably think its very
boring, which i suppose it is to them.

Without fail though, pretty much everyone assumes i can fix their printer
etc...

------
pmorici
I always say "Computer Scientist", I also think the term engineer is alright.
I hate any phrasing that uses the word "programmer" because that is generally
used to describe jobs involving wrangling Excel spreadsheets programming Word
macros and other low rent IT jobs.

Of course I've read before that by time you get around to the topic of what
you do for a living you should have so captured your audiences attention that
you could say janitor and they wouldn't care.

------
endtime
CTO: I talk to my CEO and work out how technology can improve our business.
Then I design what we're going to build, build it, and set it up to run on our
servers.

~~~
DougWebb
If you're a CTO, do you actually do the things you claim in your second
sentence, or do you tell others to do those things? I would expect the latter
unless you're in a very small company, in which case "CTO" is probably an
exaggerated title. (Eg: it really means "the tech guy" but you're incorporated
so CTO is technically accurate.)

One of my pet peeves has always been managers describing what they do in terms
of the work done by their reports rather than what they actually do
themselves. It's not like managing isn't a lot of work, at least not for good
managers. Why do managers take credit for others work instead of saying that
they manage a team who accomplished X, Y, and Z?

~~~
endtime
I actually do all those things. I've had interns but I'm the only full time
tech guy. The company is 4-6 people right now, depending on how you count. You
can call my title exaggerated if you like, but I don't know what else I would
call my job.

Also, I'm 24 and I have a master's in CS...I'm not a "manager" in the sense I
think you're thinking.

~~~
DougWebb
I would call your title exaggerated yet accurate. It's the nature of a small
group of people forming a Corporation; you get titles that sound big when
they're really not, at least not yet. There's a huge difference between being
a CTO of company with hundreds or thousands of employees vs being a CTO of a
company with six employees.

Now I've never been a CTO at all, so I'm not trying to disparage you. I hope
your company grows and you get the chance to grow into the title. Good luck!

------
DrStalker
"I'm an infrastucture engineer. I keep all the underlying stuff working so
that people who build software and websites have a place to put it."

------
RiderOfGiraffes
I make systems that help people stop ships from banging into each other.
Essentially, I write computer stuff that lets people play "video games" with
real life 80,000 tonne tankers, the idea being to help them go efficiently
while keeping them out of places they shouldn't go, and keeping them apart.

Oh, and we help find the bad guys too.

------
dreaming
I build jobs to pull stuff out of databases, transform it, then dump it in
others. Also I deal with a kinda slow, proprietary GUI tool with a little bit
of immediate power, followed by a deeper lack of ability to make changes to
the 'visual code' in batch, amongst other complaints. I'd rather be in vim...

Short answer: "I'm in IT"

------
jayliew
Results are in:

Top result: Programmer

Second result: Software Developer

Third result: Software Engineer

Honorary mention: Developer (almost as frequent as “Software Engineer”)

[http://times.jayliew.com/2010/10/06/how-do-you-describe-
your...](http://times.jayliew.com/2010/10/06/how-do-you-describe-yourself-
programmer-software-engineer-developer-coder-computer-scientist/)

------
iuguy
I break stuff and I kick people out of places where they've broken stuff.

Or

I break into banks and investigate bank break-ins. (I don't just do banks but
it paints a picture of a fathomable scenario in the non-techie mind).

------
arikb
To most people I say I sell software. This is what I primarily do today. If I
write something, it's in the realm of hacking and to the right crowd I say I'm
a hacker.

------
Detrus
These stick for programmers: do computers, startup, make money on the
internet, websites, make iPhone apps.

For designers: websites, logos, posters, ads.

Lowest common denominator though.

------
sahillavingia
"I build things people like to use."

~~~
novum
I build things that people click on.

------
chops
"I run a business that sells websites to videogame players"

------
jmspring
I make things go.

------
dzlobin
So how about seeing the results?

------
klync
"I make sure websites work."

------
WalterBright
I tell them I'm a nerd.

------
aaronbrethorst
"I create products."

