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.
