I Am a Developer, Sorry
When meeting someone, it is common for this question to be asked at some point: "What do you do for a living?"
Depending on your answer when asked this question, you may see a range of reaction. Some occupation will cause awe, others indifference. But for a number of reasons, telling about your occupation may also give you contempt in return. If you have experienced this before, then talking about each other occupations, a usually dull topic of conversation, becomes sensitive. You may even become hesitant discussing it.
I have had awkward reactions and even heard disapproving comments about my job in the past few years. Sure, I do not expect to be praised like a brain surgeon, in fact I though people would not care about me being a web developer. But it seems my field of work, the web or the tech industry more generally, has a bad notoriety in the eyes of most people.
Although my work does not have the biggest beneficial impact on the world, I do not feel like I deserve such reactions. It has come to the point I am thinking about simply lying when asked about my job. Answering with something boring enough to shift the topic of conversation to something else quickly. This would spare me from the hard looks or negative judgment I have had.
Have you also experienced this? How does it go when you answer this question?
20 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 53.7 ms ] threadI usually just tell people I work on a "tech team for a finance company". If they show interest in what kind of tech team, then I'll go into more detail. Usually, the conversation just moves on.
I do C++ programming, not data science, but again that’s not something that the average person cares about.
Applied statistics?
..Thank you!!
I usually just say "I'm a web developer," then immediately shift the conversation to something about them. If they want to know more I'll tell them, but most people don't. I don't think there are any conversation topics more boring than web development.
It also avoids the terribly awkward conversation that starts with, "Oh, you do websites? Awesome! My niece/nephew/cousin/etc. needs one for her candle-making/essential oils/custom dogtag/etc. business. What's your email address?"
[0] Meta, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Netflix
Most people don't seem to understand anything beyond that. They also lump SWEs with all other "computer people" including helpdesk, networking engineers, etc.
Edit: Actually, whenever I visit the SFBA, even non-tech people do seem to understand what a SWE/developer is. However home in NYC, they don't. So hence the "I do computer stuff" answer I give.
Though I've figured out a couple things about it that have be helpful.
First, I realized that most people don't know what a software engineer is, so they are left tongue-tied. Which is easy to misinterpret for rudeness or indifference - but it's usually not. So those "hard looks of negative judgment" could just be hard looks of "I don't know what to say so I won't sound dumb."
Either way I have developed two strategies that usually work to smooth this moment over.
One is to say "I make iPhone apps" (even though I do other things, too). People generally know what that is, are impressed, and say "cool!" and then the conversation can easily move on to other topics ("What do YOU do?" usually lol)
Alternatively I front-load with what my company does. "I work for a company that does smart lighting. I do the software part of it" usually means something to people and they'll respond with whatever they know/have thought about smart lighting ("oh like product x?" "Your company should make a product that does Y") which is, at least, a conversation.
I don't think that this is true in general; it's possible that you're influenced by a small sample or taking people's reactions way too personally. I tell people that I work in software (without any specifics because nobody cares) and I've never gotten a negative reaction least of all contempt like you mentioned. For the most part other people really don't care what you do.
[0]: https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2017/11/burn-th...
It may be related to the products people use. Since 10 years the Software enginerring is going backwards and instead of improving things they only make the user angry. It seems that the last years were only use to improve on the pallete of dark patterns for the user. I have a lot of colleagues which are very good software engineers but when i look at Windows/Office/Teams/Android/KDE/Gnome/Systemd/Pulseaudio i really wonder who pays such people and how much engineering is in their work. Web developers are special. I wonder where they find ideas and if they ever saw a computer interface before (hamburger on the left or on the right ?, very big fonts or very small ?, a lot of wasted space, no way to print a webpage, no way to zoom the page, want to select text ? forget it, no toolbars, toolbars which change shape , toolbars with no begin and end handles because everybody has a touchscreen even on win 10 and so on and so forth).
At first I was annoyed by people like this. Then I realized that they're generally not worth giving a second thought. It's just a bunch of jealous jerks who think anyone who does well in life is a "rich techie asshole" ruining their community. I hear it particularly from folks who consciously chose paths in life with a high probability of failure with no backup plan. Sorry that your dream of being a rock legend didn't pan out, Nick, but don't take it out on me.