What people do for a living takes up about half of their waking life (and they probably dream about it too), so it will tell you so much about the person. Personally I love my job and what I do, so I really want to talk about matters at least related to it because my life does revolve around it indeed. So establishing some common ground with the other person can really help to start the conversation.
But of course the conversation doesn't have to specifically be about either job through progression.
But only if you know the person well enough to have the context of it. What a person's job says about them is very different, for example, if they love their job vs hating their job.
Love or hate the job, knowing what it is gives you insights/guesses into skillsets, education level, economic level, possibly the type of people they mingle with, etc, etc.
When I did my PhD I hated it when (most) people asked about my research. It's not because I wasn't interested, it's because I'm really interested and was (still am) bad at giving concise summaries, so I felt like people who really didn't care and wouldn't listen to the answer were asking me to embark on a long explanation that required a bunch of preamble etc, just in order to make conversation.
Anyway, I feel largely the same about work. I love talking about what I do, but not with people who aren't listening and who are just asking to form an opinion of my social status. So 9 times out of 10 I just sort of mumble something and talk about something else, just like in grad school.
You can really just give your title and a little flavor. I generally say “Oh, I’m a software developer for an educational company. I work on a reading app.” and that’s usually all there is to that unless they ask follow-up questions; I would say that’s less than a third of the time.
Every once in a while you get the hyper-interested person who asks a ton of follow-ups but they’re at least usually actually listening.
That doesn't work if your field is super weird and niche. You end up giving the same elevator pitch over, and over, and over... I suppose it's a "nice problem to have".
I'd be very curious to hear an example that couldn't be summarized as "I am a <blank> doing <blank>".
Of people I know, the most niche I can think of is doing work with programming mitochondrial DNA and my answer for her job would simply be "I'm a scientist studying cells for <insert-medical-company>."
Being able to summarize is one thing, conveying any information is another. There are definitely jobs where giving even a remote sense of what you do takes more than a pithy statement. People either come up with a technically correct bromide like you suggest or some silly pithy "I help teams collaborate better" thing that sounds silly. Unless you're like a doctor or a fireman, it's not so easy to convey real information.
Here's the stumbling block - people aren't looking for "real information" when they ask what you do at a party, they're just looking to get a rough idea of who you are so they can find common ground to continue the conversation.
I try play a game when i meet a new person: see how long i can go without discussing work with them. The best new connections tend to take the longest to reach work, it’s often a signal of a lazy conversation starter and like you said just an attempt to size up our social status.
> it’s often a signal of a lazy conversation starter
But this is fine, no? If it helps start a more enjoyable discussion afterwards. When you don't know the ones you are speaking with at all.
Though I indeed avoid focusing on work when starting a conversation. I usually try to phrase the question as "What do you do in your life?", which is more general and allows answering hobbies. I'm more interested in what people like than what they are possibly forced to do to fund it, or their opinions. Usually people will answer their what they do for a living but they will get another, more explicit question. I'm interested in knowing whether they will indeed answer by what they do for a living though.
And if they do something meaningful or enjoying for their living, it's actually interesting.
I don't see a point of any questions like that, and somehow I always find things to talk about in a social setting. Stuff they do, place they were born etc can always enter a conversation if relevant, or not if they don't want to talk about that.
Asking these is always intrusive, you might not think so if you are fully comfortable talking about what you do or where you're from etc, but that's not all people.
it's a discussion starter. The point is to start the discussion. It often works.
> Asking these is always intrusive, you might not think so if you are fully comfortable talking about what you do or where you're from etc, but that's not all people.
Ok, that's another argument than "it's lazy". I can see it, especially when people are unemployed, they often feel ashamed.
On the other hand, isn't it a risk with any personal question? Aren't people used to handle these questions anyway?
(I otherwise agree that asking about the job is not the best thing to do anyway)
Anything can be a discussion starter, even "weather is nice", and a lot of it is less privileged/entitled/profiling/inquisitive sounding.
Actually, "what do you do" is as often a non-starter for me if the person tells me about something I am not interested in and it sucks to have to feign interest. It's much better to ask something pertaining to a shared interest. If you actually pay attention you may notice things around the person that reflect their interests, ask about that.
> On the other hand, isn't it a risk with any personal question?
Nah, only those that concern social status, something you cannot change about yourself (origin) or something that could put you in danger (where you live). In a casual setting I don't see any point of those questions except to assert oneself. If you don't expect it you would be uncomfortable but would have to suck it up and reply or be confrontational and reveal insecurity. Sure sometimes it's fun to think of creative ways of answering this questions without answering them but who are you to put me on the spot to do it in real time while watching me? We are all just trying to have a good time.
I think the reason i say it’s lazy is because I often end up feeling like they didn’t care, they just asked to fill the void. I’d love to have a real conversation about anything really. Ask me about my favourite place to eat, what my opinion is on a new product on the market, tell me about a book you’re reading and why it’s interesting…all works for me. The what do you do thing, it’s loaded with other elements; who makes more, who do you know, should i respect you. I could brag pretty hard if that’s the game we are playing, but honestly for new authentic connections, I’d like to stay away from that stuff at least for a while. It’s unavoidable, it’ll come up, but i love trying hard to delay it.
I have some anxiety so I recognize it as people looking for a safe topic in hopes of striking some common ground. It is still lazy conversation skills and boring for everyone involved. I wish I wasn't like that, but inferring from past events I won't change any time soon.
I can't hold conversations about drinking in a pub discussing girls for very long. They seem insignificant.
However I did make lifelong friends by accidentally talking about Europe's energy policy, satellites and also the MySpace effect on youth.
Sizing social status is painful - I totally agree but when people are genuinely interested in going into depth of topics which highly resonate it produces an amazing effect.
I play a variant of this: how long until a stranger asks me "what do you do?"
Over the last decade or so, I've found that I'm asked this question far lass than I used to be. I don't know if the times have changed, or if it's that I'm older and so generally am meeting older people now.
I was at a dinner party and asked someone what they do. They ran a research lab, and I was really interested, and asked questions. He was surprised I actually liked chemistry and was interested in his research. He said normally people just joke about how they hated chemistry in high school, so he normally avoided talking about it. He said people don't realize it's really rude to basically tell someone that their life's work is boring and they hated it when they were 16. I'm now much more careful about how I respond to what people do for a living, even if it's not something that I'm interested in.
> people don't realize it's really rude to basically tell someone that their life's work is boring and they hated it when they were 16
They generally do, but when you drop something like "I'm a research chemist" on them, they freeze up. In most jobs, there's a certain commonality of experiences. Oh, tell me about your craziest customer stories, or the worst meeting you ever flew across the country for, or whatever. When you have a job that doesn't fall into an "office work" category... that isn't going to work out. Since most people aren't great or even good conversationalists, they're going to fire off a lame joke and hope it's not a total disaster.
I'm an anesthesiologist. If I never hear another family member say "you're going to need a really big hammer to knock him/her out", I'll join the church of whatever god made that happen. In purely social situations, though, I know it's a conversation-killer, because most doctors don't know much about what I do, let alone laymen. So I have a small repertoire of ways to redirect the conversation back to "let's get to know each other a bit" topics. I think anyone in an unusual (but not, on its face, fascinating) job does.
This seems like something you could work on instead of implying it's other people's fault for asking you about a topic that they don't know they aren't interested in yet.
If you have a punchy 20 second description, and then ask what they do, you'll have pivoted away unless they want to bring it back.
To be fair, I think the parent commenter is aware this is not the fault of the one who asked.
Though when doing a PhD, it's a worthy goal to be able do give a quick description. It also forces you to think about the goal / meaning of your work. Some topics are more easily summarized, but still.
We do science for people, it's only fair to be able to present them your work more or less roughly.
I had something for people not into computers, like: "I work on a method to find and understand computer bugs quicker and better." (Familiar with bugs? you don't like them? So you know it's useful!)
And then I could develop for the curious.
"Programs are written with code that tells the computer what to do, step by step. Like a cooking recipe. There are tools to see programs do things step by step so you can notice some step is wrong. On big programs this gets tedious. My approach helps starting this step by step investigation closer to the problematic step."
If still curious: "How? There's another method that looks at the step that looks at these steps and check they are correct with respect to some given rule. For instance, if you have a bag of objects, no step should try to remove an object if the bag is empty. This technique usually tells you something is wrong but does not tell you why it happen. I combine the first method with the second one: when some rule is broken, you are left exploring the program step by step at the point the rule broke, which is way better than doing it from the beginning". And go further / present the caveats if I feel whoever is listening is still curious.
For the people who already actually interacted with some code, I would also drop the technical words that are probably familiar to them. If you don't know whether they already actually know some stuff, they usually say the technical words themselves, to clarify.
For people who asked politely, they would receive the one sentence summary but often they want to know more if you piqued their curiosity. I had something like a progressive image of the thing that gets more and more precise to stop at the right time.
By the way you probably started skipping paragraphs in my comment at the point yours was satisfied. I made several paragraphs to allow you to do so.
I worked on combining Interactive Debugging with Runtime Verification (and we called it Interactive Runtime Verification).
Interactive debugging is the usual step by step debugging you know, offered by your standard IDE or debugger like GDB.
Runtime Verification evaluates properties from a stream of events, the program execution being usually seen as a sequence of events (there are ways to represent concurrency / parallel executions too, a bit more complicated than a mere sequence in this case).
GDB offers a comprehensive Python interface [1] that lets you add breakpoints, watchpoints and catchpoints to inspect what's going on during the execution, and you decide whether to suspend the execution on conditions you evaluate. In our cases, the conditions are the runtime verification properties. See this like conditional breakpoints on steroids.
For instance, take a program that manipulates a queue. One property you don't want to break is "the program never remove an element from an empty list". Another one is "the program never pushes elements to an already full list". To evaluate these properties, you describe the property in terms of parameterized calls to functions new_list(n), push() and pop().
In a C program, the calls could "succeed", the execution continues but with a memory corruption. Which could be hard to detect. So instead, you have this runtime verification stop the execution for you at the point where the bug happens, instead of the likely crash.
So we implemented this idea, with features like checkpointing (thanks to the (limited) native experimental GDB checkpointing feature, or CRIU (Checkpoint and Restore in Userspace - the thing behind Docker container checkpointing and migration) [2], which does this very well) as a Python extension to GDB. This implementation theoretically supported any language supported by GDB, including C and C++.
Building on this implementation, we made a second version that supported distributed programs, and also supported Java programs. The debugging capabilities of the JVM are awesome / endless.
These implementations allowed benchmarking. Unfortunately, we focused on benchmarking the performance of the instrumentation, but what would have been very useful is to validate the method itself with human studies. This PhD should have been at the edge between computer science and human studies. It's not. Instead, it's very theoretical, with some formalism trying to define an interactively verified execution, and doing proofs that the instrumentation does not affect the execution.
Sounds amazing? What's the catch? Finding actual properties that relate to day to day bugs is hard. When developing a program, specifications are not given as LTL properties by the client, it's more like "I need this, be creative", and it's team work, and more often than not bugs are created by misunderstandings, moving targets, not having the full context when making changes, unforeseen interaction between more or less complex, more or less supposedly unrelated stuff, etc. Those can probably be seen as formal property violations but that's probably a bit far fetched. I guess a bunch of researchers loving formalism or performance evaluation having no clue about software development were not going to go very far in this. Still, it's a topic probably worth researching nonetheless.
See:
- the git repository of the implementation (it's free software) [3]
- the first "serious" paper presenting the idea [4]
- the PhD manuscript if you like verbosity. It's also the only place where we speak about the distributed version, I could not manage to publish this part [5]
Yeah, when someone asks about you research as a casual conversation they're only looking for extremely high level summaries. Something like "I research plant metabolism."
I could see how a conversation could go very sideways if you're responding to "oh what do you research?" with details that are "in the weeds."
Yes, if you do a monologue, it's likely just plain boring even to someone curious anyway. The same info given in a interactive manner is likely more enjoyable to everyone involved.
This reminds me of a time when I asked someone where they lived and they started giving me detailed directions to their house. The context of the conversation and our relationship made me expect a town name or maybe neighborhood. The unexpected over-sharing made me get really uncomfortable and I thought of a reason to end the conversation immediately.
I'm familiar with the idea of a punchy 20 second summary. I worked on consulting where everyone had something like that to introduce themselves with in a meeting. I haven't been able to bring myself do do it, even if I understand why people do and what the advantages are.
This is also good practice for when you need to find a job, which often requires interfacing with people that have little familiarity with your PhD topic but have access to those that do (e.g., recruiters, business owners).
So what? I lose opportunities to gain "valuable skills" all the time. There are better ways to acquire those skills than this, especially since it's a huge mood drain
I enjoy talking shop a great deal -- but I absolutely hate it when I've been going on about something that has caught my fancy and then notice that I've been boring the person I'm talking to to tears.
So I mostly don't talk about my work unless I'm just with other software people.
So if I have this right, its bad to tell people what you do for a living, but its OK to tell people to stop telling people what they do for a living?
What I find especially annoying is that the fact that 'what do you do' is being asked by someone else - so it follows that if they were not interested in that topic, they would ask another question. Which means it's not the social responsibility of the person answering.
But wait, also, there's nothing cringey about someone having a hard time relaxing and talking more broadly. Everyone has a hard time in SOME social setting, and its not a big deal. This article reads like a designer clothes ad - making you feel bad to make you buy (or do) something.
Now I'm done whining, I think a much more constructive framing would be a title/topic like "Asking what people do for work isn't always best. Here are some alternative icebreakers". Or "Fit the mood - making smalltalk without work". That would have been a much better article.
Secret life hack: you don't have to answer "what do you do?" by talking about your job. You can talk about literally anything else that you do, preferably something that seems relevant to the person in front of you, and turn it into a more interesting two-sided conversation.
My wife and I’s favorite game when meeting new people is to try and go as long as possible without talking about our work or asking about theirs. It makes it so much more interesting when careers / jobs finally enter the dialog.
Around a decade ago, I stopped asking people the basic questions, like what they do, where they're from, how old they are, or their gender and pronouns when that is unclear. I find that it's irrelevant and will bias the relationship for no good reason.
I had a good friend with whom I mostly kept in touch over the phone and online for many years, and I didn't know their name until they died and I got a call from their relatives. I still don't know what their profession was.
Just connect and engage with people, and have fun. It's a lot easier to make friends when you drop these arbitrary filters of age, profession, place of origin, gender, and so on. And in some ways, in the time I've spent not trying to get those details anymore, they have become irrelevant to me.
How did you manage to have a phone friend without knowing their name? You’re gonna have to tell that story.
I absolutely agree btw, people are more than just their job. And most hate, or are disinterested, in their work. I’m interested them _them_, not their occupation.
But it’s no secret that many, especially here, make their occupation a fundamental aspect of themselves.
Nickname? There's one guy in my friends group and everyone calls him by his LARP character name. He probably mentioned his real name years ago, but why bother remembering it?
For a few years I had a random number that would text me on major holidays to wish me a happy whatever. I'd return the sentiment and sometimes we'd talk more, a few times we ended up in long back and forth text threads that lasted a couple days. At some point I admitted that I didn't know who they were and asked their name, it turned out they thought I was someone else and they had the wrong number. After that I stopped hearing from them. I tried reaching out on a couple more holidays but they just ghosted me.
One of my good friends and I clicked immediately, but I think we went a week or three before we thought “oh, what’s this guy’s name?” It could even have been my wife asking me, and me not knowing that triggered finding out.
Every class together, bike trails, considerable conversation.
Never came up, neither of us thought to ask. We laugh about it now. We both are better at it now, but it is probably a great example of social inept people finding one another and being just fine.
As many are guessing, I only knew their online handle and they only knew mine. That was fine, it didn't impact our friendship in any kind of negative way.
I've talked with endless amount of people, people I know since before and people I don't know since before, and I don't think anyone (unless relevant to the discussion at hand) has asked me how much money I make, or who I'm sleeping with.
Maybe it's because I'm not 16 years old, or maybe it's because I don't frequent night clubs in hot metropolitan areas anymore, but that strikes me as very odd that most of the people you end up talking with bring up those two subjects.
The most interesting of 'genuine interest to know what people do for a living' converstations I have had are with parents of late teen parents ... who want to guide their children towards careers or advice about careers (almost always includes - "there is good money in that" so the same rule applies all the same).
Is it though? The people I’ve met in construction across all spans of life are generally friendlier, healthier and happier than those working the desk jobs and earning more money.
In my experience, yeah. My friends who are pushing 50 and worked a life in construction (physical labor, not managers or working in a office) have really annoying pains in one place or another. I agree that they're generally friendly and perhaps happier, as their job doesn't seem to bleed into their life as much as for my friends who works in offices, but I'm pretty sure their bodies have taken a lot more pain over the years and it's coming back to haunt them as they grow older.
Incredibly bizarre - I literally have zero idea what any of my friends or acquaintances parents did for work when I was a teenager. Parental occupation is simply not a topic of conversation among teenagers. Full stop.
Hmm...maybe it's generational? When I was a teenager (mid-80's) I knew what my friend's parents did for a living. It's not like we sat around and discussed it, but I could have told you what the majority of my friend's parents did for a living (including what company they worked for).
I was a teenager in the late 90s. I don't know how the subject of your parents jobs would come up in teenager conversation.
My dad is too lazy for work and I don't even know what job my mom did for a living before she retired. I mean, I knew the company she worked for, and that it was an office, but I don't know her job title or responsibilities. Why would I? Who the fuck talks to their kids about their work?
Oh ffs! No they're not! These questions are attempts to establish a connection to you - maybe you work in a similar field to them (or one that they find interesting), or grew up near to them, or have kids the same age.
They are making small talk by asking anodyne questions.
If a stranger asks you “are you married and do you have kids?” and you respond by telling them about your sex life, they will end the conversation with you.
Well, no, they are asking about what your life looks life and what fills it. It’s also subjects which open easy way to relate to someone: “we both have kids”, “we work in related fields/they work in the same field that someone I know”, “we both like this sport”, “we have been around/travelled to the same place”. That offers a wide breadth of conversation starters.
Not at all. Those are valid questions. In some parts of Asia, those are the first questions you'll get, including your salary. You might as well get that out of the way from the start.
> Most of the time people steer the conversation right back to the two big hitters - how much money do you make and who are you sleeping with.
This is probably the segue I hate the most and consider a deal breaker for any future interaction. A lot of people DO ask directly how much money do you make.
Yup, this is what I do when asked that question, I just start talking about my hobbies instead of what I get paid by others to do. Then I ask them what their passion is, which tends to be much more interesting than what they spend their work-days on.
When I used to get asked: "What do you do?" quite often, I would reply: "I plant flowers". Funny thing is, I still do - but now that I am not in prime "rat race" age, I have slipped away from that answer and usually just answer Med Tech developer" or such.
To 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 conversation over there.
It definitely is part of the conversation in (parts of) Europe, but not very central. I see it as part of finding common ground to continue the conversation.
I do notice a difference between north and south of Europe (more likely to be asked in the north) but it always felt more like "do you do an interesting job?" more than "can you be useful for my next startup?" :P
Certainly. Very few people ask about your job to see if they can get something out of it. It's small-talk at the level of "do you have children" or "what's the name of your dog".
It depends on who you're talking to in San Francisco, and everywhere, really. In my part of San Francisco, we don't ask the question what do you do, because that automatically slots you into one class or the other in the hierarchy, and so we intentionally avoid that in order to be able to interact without prejudice. Different scenes, same (tiny) city.
One day at farmers market i was buying tomatoes and the guy asked me what was my job (swe) and he started saying that he was only there to help his brother and that he works for a company that sells firewalls to other companies and tried to sell me the product, while putting tomatoes in a paper bag.
I think that depends on the city. In very international cities like London or Brussels you usually start the conversation with "so what brought you hear?" knowing that most of the time is the job. So you try to understand what someone is doing. I find that a very common opener with someone you're just meating.
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.
Agreed that non-work stuff is usually better for casual discussion, but I really dislike this position of "work? surely you can talk about something more interesting!" because for some people that is all they want to talk about, and everyone's definition of "work" is different. It's more important to listen to people than criticize their general topic of conversation, imo. Based on personal experience this is probably nicer in theory than practice, but it's still what I tend to work toward these days.
Instead of "So what do you do" you can always ask "So what do you like doing" ... that might give the person the chance to still talk about work if he/she/they/it/es want to :)
I don't think the biggest problem is leading with the "what do you do?" question, or even being a person that somewhat defines their life around their work or career. I think the bigger problem is a lot of people are inherently selfish.
"What do you do" or even "what do you do for fun" tends to be a leading question because you want to talk about yourself, what you do, what you like or understand what you can get out of it.
I don't think there's anything wrong with being at a conference, say, where we're all somewhat defined by a subject or interest and someone asks what you do. It's just very dull when it feels like they're aching for you to finish so they can explain how great they are. Or they're immediately angling for the opportunity to pitch to you, or make money from you, or tell you how further ahead in life they are.
IMO, by all means lead with a question about someone's work. But take a genuine interest in their job and their life. Ask questions. See if you can go for ten minutes without mentioning yourself. If they're not a fan of their role and you're genuinely taking an interest in them, it's incredibly easy to pivot into "what do you do when you're not studying gorillas in the Congo?!"
Very often those people just wait until you finish talking to start talking about themselves. Once I attended a party with my brother's group of friends. I decided to do a little experiment. I asked people about them and I listened to get to know them, but i talked about myself only when asked directly. For two days no one bothered to ask me what I do for a living or what are my hobbies.
Telling 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.
I love talking to people and asking about their jobs. But I suppose I’m the rare person that isn’t asking cuz I care about status, but to find out about different worlds or common ones.
If I met an accountant I’d ask them if they saw the Monty Python skit [1] or Accountant humor, or any number of things. I am too curious about everything to skip this question.
I seriously doubt that's the case. I think the vas majority of people are stuck in jobs they don't especially enjoy or care about all that much and would gladly do something different if they could but life often doesn't allow for such changes.
So for them, telling about their jobs is kinda meaningless. There's a million other things you can say about yourself that would tell me a lot more about you than the job you do.
I feel like it’s everything but the title. That always sounds so weird. Your job isn’t director or whatever, it’s doing things. And even if you’re signalling, there have to be better ways of getting across you’re a neophyte or a big shot.
I press square tiles arranged on a sort of grid on a flat rectangular horizontal object in a careful sequence to manipulate lights on another vertical viewing rectangle placed perpendicular to the tile-pressing rectangle.
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.
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.
Sure, I do too when meeting someone with a non-standard job or a job that could be interesting from some peculiar point of view, but most jobs are definitely not that interesting, most are really just an exchange of time for money.
I don't know, I cannot think of a lot of jobs that would be completely uninteresting to me. What would they be?
Even if the job doesn't have a technical angle that interests you, you can always talk about the human aspect of things: frustration with their management / the funny things that happened to them / stories they heard from their customers / something in their job they are passionate about / how they feel about their job / the things they have learnt while working in their domain.
I think I am using those conversations to try to imagine what my life might have been if software engineer didn't exist. It is pretty much the only thing I was really good at. I am insecure about how much harder my life might have been without it.
I work with computers, but telling people what I do has always been very tricky. They won't understand it anyway.
As another comment said - in Europe it's not that common to ask what people work with. It's definitely not the first thing people ask. It comes much later, if at all. Fortunately. I got so fed up of trying to explain what I did that I started to reply "I'm a carpenter", if anyone asked.
People don't asks questions on what's a carpenter doing because the very abstract notion of the job they have is enough for them, whereas they have actually no idea how the jobs is done, and certainly none of its technical aspects.
Strip down any technical aspect of your daily job to figure out its actual social function. It has one. Whatever it is it'll help you figure out how telling what's your job to people, and even maybe to yourself.
But it’s an honest answer. And if the honest answer about someone’s own job makes them uncomfortable, it’s time to consider looking for something different.
On the one hand, I feel like most people just do a job because, like me, they have to so they can have food, shelter, and medical care and it has nothing to do with their passions because only a privileged few ever get to align those things.
On the other hand, if someone tells me they work in marketing I instantly know that they are completely untrustworthy and only value enriching themselves at huge cost to society.
On the gripping hand, I don't really like meeting new people anyway, largely because of tedious bullshit conversational maneuvering wherein someone is trying to suss out how best to sell me something, get something from me, or if I'm open to participating in their echo chamber bullshit.
Probably with Doctor. An actual scientist might come above Lawyer/Doctor (and below Artist/Designer), but this is a rather recent upwards move, as it became cooler to be smart (note this does not apply to engineers, who are looked down upon by scientists anyway)
Sadly, it is in fact very real. The difference in how you are treated as an architect vs an engineer [in the UK] is really quite astonishing.
And also perhaps with good reason, as an architect you are keeper of the magic and mystery of the 'queen of the arts', whereas as an engineer you are just there to fix the tv/computer/iphone/whatever. As an architect you are part of polite conversation about what the world is/was/could be, whereas as an engineer you would not even get an invite. As an architect your life is (supposedly) parties and beautiful people, as an engineer board game nights and trappist beer (steady now!).
Of course the tech boom has upended things somewhat, but, in the the UK at least, we have been managing to keep a lid on that particular nonsense.
> whereas as an engineer you are just there to fix the tv/computer/iphone/whatever.
I find it interesting because it reveals so much about a society (and why the UK simply couldn't grow a real tech sector). Here in America some sneer at the terms architects or engineer being used to refer to people in tech, but nobody would consider computers and iPhones to be beneath buildings. Then again, it was all engineered right here; an All American creation.
From an art/design history point of view, computers and iPhones really aren't that interesting, and soon converge on the obvious solution as a simple rectangle of glass.
Most people in design fields would not disagree that the lion's share of design innovation in the past couple decades has been in software UI/UX. The way we interact with our devices is just so radically different than 20 years ago to the point that it shapes our cognition and way about the world. And this will only continue with AI interfaces.
Indeed the architecture profession has been in crisis since as long as anyone can remember. Unfortunately it became trendy just as we (in the west) ran out of things to build, leading to an excess of trained architects.
As for soulless office buildings, yes quite agree - but often this is due to clients' lack of money, taste and ambition. Nevertheless there are still truly inspiring projects out there, worthy of the term 'art'.
I think you're mistaken. It's perhaps tounge-in-cheek to some extent - but it does hit at some home-truths for a reasonably large segment of the population.
Kind of makes me smile. I've been a Software Engineer in the US long enough to see it go from where you placed it in the list to closer to the top. At least where I live now, everyone wants to be a Software Engineer. I suspect that will change in the next couple years during dotcom 2.0 - back to waiter level.
The actual rankings from that list from high prestige to low (there's no software engineer listed, just computer programmer or computer systems analyst):
Doctor
Lawyer
Software Engineer (if you mean "Computer Systems Analysts and Scientists")
Teacher (Postsecondary school)
Architect
Engineer
Executive
Teacher (Elementary or Secondary Scool)
Software Engineer (if you mean "Computer Programmers")
Teacher (Kindergarten)
Manager
Designer
Artist
Driver
Waiter
Bartender
Cleaner
Which gives a clue why you should never call yourself a computer programmer.
Unfortunately the heroic age of engineering (Brunel, Bazalgette) is behind us. As it grew in complexity, engineering by necessity became corporatized and de-individualised. It was no longer the place for dashing adventurers and gentlemen intellectuals. Instead it has become associated with 'technicianship', the rather boring (but essential) trade of knowing which button to push to make things start working again.
Furthermore, it is one of the last professions to resist gender re-balancing, so social events etc are going to be somewhat barren.
There are many other professions which have similar gender gaps. They’re not talked about because the professions aren’t growing as fast and don’t make as much money for such relatively low time investment.
A lot of people in the comments are suggesting alternative small talk, like "tell me what you did this weekend" or "tell me what you're about (?!)". I don't understand the need for any of that. You're meeting in some social environment: talk about that. If it's a dinner, talk about the food, or the host. If someone has just given a speech, talk about that. If you're at a sporting event, or a mediaeval reenactment event, talk about that. In extremis, talk about the weather. There's no need to either deliver or request an elevator pitch of any sort, on any subject, is there?
I moved from San Francisco, where it was common to ask people "wnat do you do?", to South Carolina, where it's considered a little bit rude. For me, it was a painful transition; I no longer find it easy to get into enjoyable conversations with new people.
I've always found it difficult to talk about, e.g. food. "Isn't this food great?" "Yeah, it's delicious"! Similarly with the weather, or any other conversation where you're basically just repeating what's obvious to both of you.
Of course some people prefer it this way, and genuinely enjoy small talk -- they don't feel a need to be talking "about something". Far be it from me to piss on their parade. But if you don't understand this need, consider yourself lucky.
Generally, small talk serves to get people started: it makes the conversational juices flow. More interesting subjects may well then arise. (Or not, in which case, the brief conversation comes to a natural end, and you talk to someone else.)
Finally, a normal comment. Reading these intricate strategies on how to talk with someone - it’s like being at a recovering social recluse convention sponsored by Social Neurotics Inc.
That’s a pretty invasive question to ask a stranger though. I don’t like to share my thoughts with strangers, as they are much too personal. Someone asks me what I’m thinking lately, and I immediately have to deflect or think of lies to tell in order to not have to say what I’ve been thinking. I don’t want to stand there lying or telling the truth. Much easier to talk about something that isn’t so personal.
I appreciate it's open ended, and one can answer however they please. But faced with this question, I can honestly say I would have to lie. It's like answering the question "How's it going?" with "fine, how about you?" Sure, one can go into how it's really going with a stranger, or they can just respond with pleasantries and small talk.
So if you want to get deep into a conversation with someone about what they've really been thinking about lately, it's not going to happen as a repones to this conversation starter. At best, I think this kind of conversation starter is so open-ended, it's on par with "what's up?"
Is that a vague "I'm in publishing" or more closer to what you do day to day: "I'm a book editor/printer/book publicist/typesetter" etc. - I find the latter is more of interest.
Same. Only people in my field will know the title (and whether they care or not is another story).
If I keep it to the broad job function that layfolks will understand, the topic usually quickly shifts to the next thing if it doesn't strike a chord with the other party. And that's cool. It's all just small talk jumpoffs until something both clicks for the two people in the convo.
Personally I think waste management is one of the coolest things to do. Everyone generates waste, and it is fwcking so much up for us.
An old Indian word for a sweeper (lowest caste sweeping roads with a broom) is Mahader - meaning ’the Greatest’.
I’ve done work at waste water treatment facilities, land fills, incinerators, to name a few horrible places; and as terrible the surroundings may be, it grants a special self esteem, wealth and ‘ordinary’ status will never fully give you.
We spend tons of time at work and it’s where we got a lot of our value in our lives. I recently went to a dinner party where there were lots of people like me who wanted to talk about work and it was refreshing after spending so long talking to people who hate their jobs. Grass is greener and all that.
Think there are large regional differences here. My experience from living two years in Boulder, CO a while back was that the first intro question was always "what did you do in the weekend".
I'm Danish, so it was not until I started discussing plans for moving to one of the coasts that I realized that I should expect another life there.
You can learn social skills. This will allow you to scale your response to the general tone of the conversation. Let me pick three examples from my own job:
"So what do you do?"
1 - "I work for the fire brigade, in the technical bit, I'm not a firefighter. It's good fun though, you get to go and play in the fire station every day!"
2 - "I work on communications equipment for the fire brigade, all the radios, phones, networking stuff, that kind of thing"
3 - "I look after all the paging, radios, phones, networking, control rooms and anything else with a network connection for the third biggest Fire and Rescue Service in the world. It's pretty involved, with a lot of responsibility."
After over a year and a half in Europe, traveling through quite a few countries, East and West alike, I can say that I have not had one single instance when - unlike the US, from where I was coming - anyone would ask me this type of question, especially at the beginning of a conversation, and unless necessary for some prior discussion justifiable reasons. In fact, in the first few months, lacking this American way of introduction, I was inadvertently delivering a professional "elevator speech", myself, just to embarrassingly realize how out of place such topic was, if not purposely asked for.
A 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?”
Be a little careful with this one. I asked a similarly worded question at an event over Easter got the answer "Burying my husband."
Thankfully the lady was good natured about it and we managed to pull the conversation around, but for a minute or two I thought I'd stepped on a landmine.
I think in future I might lead with, "what do you enjoy doing?"
Couldn't agree more. I absolutely hate being asked what I do for a living. I spend a large part of my life doing it, I don't want to spend my free time talking about it, or trying to explain it. It doesn't define me. It doesn't mean anything, I do it to get paid. The end.
I always make a point of never asking people what they do for the same reason. Indeed there are people I have now known for years and I have no idea what they do for a living.
I don't mean to be antagonistic, but could this just be due to poor job satisfaction on your side. There is nothing wrong with not loving your job. Maybe you use it as a means to an end but I personally really enjoy talking about what I do for a job because I love my job
I write software. The end. Its boring, even to other people that write software.
At previous employers I was more specific about what I do for a living: walk around a park, go to phone meetings, stare out a window. In those cases I generally only wrote software as a personal hobby.
A little more context can make it interesting to others though. I used to struggle to explain embedded software to non-technical people (and even to technical ones!), so instead I started saying "I write software that controls mailing machines" or "I write software for medical instruments." Having a real-world "anchor" that they can relate to helps others understand what you do and if they want to continue a conversation along those lines.
I 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 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.
To me, asking for a story would come off as being asked to entertain you. If you asked, "Anything interesting going on?" It sounds like that would accomplish what you're seeking and still be open-ended.
I don’t tell everyone but I still ask the question. Often, it’s a good signal if we’re going to get along.
Also, as someone who is in the dating market - it’s one of the first questions I ask because outside of physical attraction, how much money they make is the easiest dealbreaker to filter on. If they’re not even remotely close in my socioeconomic bracket - there’s no point in pursuing anything romantic and I’ll make sure to push the interaction into a more friendly area when that comes up.
I’m a man btw. Money matters when you’re buying $3m homes.
I wish people would talk about their work more. There's so much to learn about how different industries function that's invisible to outsiders.
I don't want to hear about office politics, but I want to hear about your suppliers and customers, how do you decide what to sell, what to buy vs build, what weird regulations or norms exist in your industry, who are the experts in your industry and how did they become experts.
The productive part of our days are at least as interesting as the leisure parts.
IIRC, the first season of Undercover Boss was more about what workers did behind the scenes, but then it devolved into emotional stories (which office politics would probably fall under).
The crowds don't want to be enlightened, they want to be entertained.
I hate people asking what I do for a living, especially women, because it's code for "If you're rich, I'll pretend to like you." To reveal the real character of a person, there are 3 ways: go to war with them, let them believe they have an untouchable advantage, or alcohol.
5 years after my mom had a stroke, he moved out and served her papers while she was visiting her dying mother. Shortly after and during the pandemic, his mother was dying and he stole roughly $1m USD from his family. I blame myself for not being more suspicious of him and allowing my mom to rush into retirement and cohabitation out of the area.
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I'm also annoyed by the assumption that I must work for someone other than myself: it's orthodoxy of the meek who play it safe while handing piles of treasure over to others.
Outside of work, who really wants to be reminded of or talk about it? It's one of the problems of attempting to socialize with coworkers: they can't leave the office at the office. When I'm not working, I don't want homework.
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PS: Never get involved with investors, cofounders, or spouses you don't completely trust and know for years. It's marriage. Keep liabilities away at arm's reach at least.
It’s actually a craft… the Brits are masters of it… small talk to fill a moment, small talk to sniff your status, small talk to gauge how tolerant you are to off colour banter…
Why are you talking to them? Is it to have a pleasant time? I'm going to assume that. This means you both go away feeling slightly positive about your chat.
There's no way of knowing for sure that your question will be one the other party wants to answer so it's always going to be some kind of stab in the dark and you just have to interpret the reply and move the conversation on to other more neutral things (in the UK weather is one) until you find something they like talking about. You encourage them to talk about that a bit and talk a bit yourself.
The main thing is not to persist with a subject that they dismiss - or any subject about yourself too long. Then let other people into the conversation.
If you go into a conversation with someone and you have any prejudicial reaction to their looks or what they say then you'll probably mirror it. If you make yourself internally respect them regardless of what they do or look like (or earn) then it will show in your words. Disrespect will show and screw it all up.
My favorite party game is getting couples to explain what each other does for a living. Not just the title, but the actual day-to-day job. You'd be surprised how many people don't really know what their partner does all day long.
If they can't appreciate my job, I will simply did into their so deep that by the end of the conversation, I have rough idea of what function does their job perform and where are the pain points for them.
I usually weave in some personal job-related stories for them to relate to my job a little bit better. Usually they are left stumped, because nobody ever digs and then gets them. Especially not an Aspie programmer.
It's also easy to find some of their efforts you appreciate and then compliment them on those.
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".
Yep, what you stated is exactly my experience as well! What i have done the last few years (if/when people ask me what my job is), i simply them that I'm a *technologist*. Roughly half of the people begin asking what does that mean exactly...i gather because its not a title or role that they know anyone to actually have...so they get curious and it sparks a nice conversation, less about jobs and more about roles in the world, etc. The other half of the people don't ask what "technologist" means because they really don't care...to clarify they may or may not know what it means, but are actually the least bit interested....so it helps me quickly gauge what direction to take any small talk with them. Funny enough, for people really interested in learning about me, they'll right away ask: "What does that mean as your role?"...and almost always it has been such a nice conversation...while those who don't ask to clarify what my role is, have been less enthusiastic chats - not always of course, but often.
Secondly, when i tell people that i am a technologist, it almost feels like one of those groupings of jobs like "doctor", "architect", "lawyer", etc. Sure, maybe that's more for my ego, but who cares. ;-)
In my experience this is something that pops up where people emigrate for high paying jobs; (Relative to average salary).
It involves stating the type of position someone has, the tier company someone works at, which somehow demonstrates the persons value = (position * tier).
Then because this is the norm people this is how people befriend each other, or how they attract love interests.
"I approximate high-dimensional continuous probability distributions, and you?"
(which, BTW, is training neutral networks to predict float numbers)
I always thought it's a great question to ask because if someone is doing something for 8 hours a day, I'd assume (or hope?) that they'll at least enjoy parts of it. Or else they would have switched jobs a long time ago - or so I thought.
This is pretty much an American thing, the rest of the world don't build their identity on their profession or their political party affiliation that much.
I've got close friends I've known for 20 years and I don't really know what they do for a living except for a vague idea of the field they're in. I don't care, since that doesn't define who they are.
This is pretty much a European thing, thinking if Americans do it and you don't, the rest of the world doesn't either.
I'm 100% positive, through first hand experience, that both Indian and Chinese society put a heavy emphasis on the type of work one does. To the point where marriage may simply be out of the question for an individual if they don't hold a good enough job.
Fair point. Maybe we could correlate _people caring to prominently mention job in casual conversations_ with _people living in highly competitive environments_ and be done with it.
Or maybe, instead of trying to immediately show off next time one meets some new possibly interesting person, one could just listen first. And punctuate its own silences with smiles, and kind gestures.
A housemate many years ago was laid off from a government agency. He said that it was a sure conversation-killer when someone would ask what he did and he would reply, Nothing.
I don't talk about work--theirs or mine--with my neighbors, yet curiously I know what an awful lot of the adults on my block do for a living.
Instead you should ask what don't you do for a living?
Anything is better than talking about my job at MIT studying the black hole physics of advanced NLP models tasked with designing CRISPR experiments for enhancing woolly mammoth meat.
I also collect rare trinkets and enjoy seeing the sights of different places.
I’m about as evasive as possible when people seem to be transitioning to asking that question. It doesn’t come from a place of genuine interest but from status negotiation. The interlocutor is trying to sort out relative status.
Pretty much every other kind of question is politically loaded. Your love for roasted lamb may be repulsive to a vegan. Your job being a job provided plausible deniability for anything.
If you are someone that tells other people what he does for a living and talk about work when meeting new people, stop doing that and reflect on why it's so hard to come up with something alternative[1]. No, it's not because a good chunk of your time is devoted to work or something about values reflected in the work you do(there is not enough "space" for that at work).
Only insufferable humans cares about your title or the company you work for.
It sounds like you are over generalising from a limited set of experiences.
> reflect on why it's so hard to come up with something alternative
Same with this one. I for one find it easy to talk about things other than my work, but also find it that people enjoy when I tell them about my field and have a ton of questions.
The key is to live an interesting life and be a good story teller. These are both things which can be improved on step by step if that is your desire.
> It sounds like you are over generalising from a limited set of experiences.
Definitely not, having a job where your values can shine is not the norm. And I don't know what your field is but most jobs, especially in the software development space are nothing to write home about or worthy of discussion with people outside the software bubble.
As always, individual experiences could sometimes deviate from the norm but that doesn't change the fact that most jobs are of little interest to other people. And reflect negatively on one's character when used to project status, like a lot of people do.
As a side note WSJ making you agree to their cookie/data collection stuff before you can see the banner saying it's paywalled seems very dark pattern-y
As usual for evo psych, this is clearly just made up, since not every country asks each other what their job is. (America does, I think China might, but other first world countries don't.)
But of course the conversation doesn't have to specifically be about either job through progression.