Do you have trouble explaining your job to people?

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.

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

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

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.

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...

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.

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.

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.

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.

“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.”

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.

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?

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

Nope. I do plumbing, home renovation, small construction jobs and property maintenance.

Unless it requires a permit or special training, I can likely do 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".

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.

No.

I am a clerk in a bakery.

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

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.

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.

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

Automation for mainly the mining industry.

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

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:

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

Ya I'm still lying about being laid off almost 2 years ago, so it's kinda rough

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

No. I do not.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Explaining that I'm a systems and infrastructure admin is actually easier for me than explaining my organization to people lol. Because it's a local government agency that provides services to school districts, and people don't really know we exist if they aren't a district staff member themselves (and even then sometimes they don't know!), and we're a bit niche in our specific services, I usually just end up saying "school ISP" despite that only being a small part of it. 😂

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

Explaining where i work is the harder part.

i build websites

AFTN/AMHS expert at an ANSP so definitely yes.

When people understand that it is about air traffic control and say "Oh so you work in the airport tower" you just answer yes.

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

Yes, sometimes.

I basically move and transform data.

I used to do support for a trading application in an investment bank. My mother didn't understand that this all happened in a reasonably normal office space and used to describe it to people as if I worked on the floor in the New York Stock Exchange, hand gestures and all.

Guess my job: I something like Word for programmers

No. I've long given up to even bother trying.

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

yes

No. Just keep it simple. Nobody wants to see me struggling to explain anything.

Yeah, I work in cyber forensics where everything I do is confidential, so yeah, I can't actually explain my job which makes it difficult to explain my job