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.
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?"
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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 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.
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.
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.
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".
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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. ;-)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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…
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?"
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?
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.
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.)
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[ 0.19 ms ] story [ 211 ms ] threadI’m in the “introduces himself by his field, leaving out his title and firm name” camp. When possible, I leave out the field too.
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.
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.
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?"
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.
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.
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.
"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..."
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.
Much like software I suppose - there's not much to say about yet another simple CRUD app with nothing more to it.
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.
1: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JrsB1RfksEA
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.
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.
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.
Given how commonplace virtual "meet"ings are these days, I rather like the idea of a new homophonic homonym for in person "meat"ings.
(Yes.)
Only insufferable humans cares about your title or the company you work for.
[1] I tried, it's hard.
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.
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.
The conversation ends up a lot less awkward than going off script after talking about what you do for a living.
However I know some people with whom this opener would really light a spark.
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'd just chalk it up to human nature.
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.
I think it's better to state the field you're in rather than your job title. For example, if you work for a bank, say "finance".
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. ;-)
Haven't asked anybody an open-ended "So what do you do" in the five years since, and it feels refreshing.
What do they talk about instead?
"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?!"
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.
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.
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.
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.
Source please.
I don't use it very often, but when I do I always get a great response.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
It's one thing to advise people what to avoid, and a completely different thing to give ideas what they could talk about to break the ice instead.
Otherwise it's like: "So, do you like coffee?" "No." "Ah. ... [tumbleweed] ... so, what do you do for a living?"
To those that dont - you are truly the people I actually want to have a conversation 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.
> 16 years old
Back then they asked what your parents did for a living
I always find interesting how people try to tell how their jobs are interesting but in the end we all know it is boring as hell.
It's amazing how we are willing to do shit stuff so we can be able to pay our bills.
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?
No one I ever knew asked or cared about those types of questions.
- what do you do?
- where do you live?
- are you married?
- have any kids?
They're asking about your money and your sex life.
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.
How, exactly, is asking what your salary is not asking what your salary is?
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.
Are you talking about romantic partners?
http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/smalltalkq
> [T]he question is extremely open-ended. The answer could be a book, a movie, a relationship, a class, a job, a hobby, etc.
Notice how “job” is in there. You can still give a non personal answer if you wish.
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?"
"What have you been thinking about lately?"
"Eh. Not much, you?"
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.
* Damn, she made these biscuits big as hell. Love these biscuits.
* Not sure what 36 is doing on the sideline like that.
* Hey man, that hat looks baller.
* Yeah, last weekend I saw a dude in stilts
To me, that is not small talk. It's nothing: it's filler sounds made to break silence.
Small talk would be: "what did you think of the food? I've never had potatoes cooked that way before."
Give the other person something to go on, at least.