That's the wrong way of looking at it. Question why people are like that. Humans aren't infatuated with their work by some corporate conspiracy. Work has always defined the individual. Look at the history and origins of family names.
Governments of the time forced (conspired to force?) people to pick a family name for identification and tax purposes and many simply picked their profession, location, or fathers name. Some families were multigenerational smiths for example but that had more to do with the the way people learned their trades.
Yeah, largely derived from occupation or location [0], at least in the West. They've lost their meaning though. Example: I'm a German-American kid named Scott; as in "from Scotland." This has always bothered me.
I don't think he/she implied that.