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Comment by cbg0 | Hacker News Reader

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.

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"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.

There's a lot of mundane accounting to do (and being done) in the world too.

Much like software I suppose - there's not much to say about yet another simple CRUD app with nothing more to it.

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.

1: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JrsB1RfksEA

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.

> more than just telling them your job title

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 am a Founder / CEO / Serial Entrepreneur

Hard pass.

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.

Put this way it's way more mysterious and interesting.

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.

> No it's not, no one cares about your job.

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.

Well you can always use the answer to tell people how you dissociate yourself from your job too.

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.

"I make a billionaire richer" isn't a very fun answer for most people in FAANG, though.

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.

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