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Comment by patio11 | Hacker News Reader

At the risk of unsolicited dating advice: is the reason one is embarassed to mention one's occupation to a woman at the bar caused by tech salaries being too high, or by years of social conditioning telling you that geeks are low status? (Or by learning that the way one signals high status is by constructing a low status outgroup and then explaining how you're unlike them?)

An alternative: just pretend society really likes rich people who make things, and start talking about something more interesting than your work.

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Can't speak for OP, but for me it's much more of the former than the latter.

When I lived in Seattle, and later SF, I loathed to tell someone my job. Firstly because in that city it automatically paints a "has a truckload of cash" target on one's head, regardless of whether or not it's true.

Secondly because the tech folks in the city are blamed for basically all of the city's woes (this is true in both Seattle and SF). It has little to do with how "low status" software work is (because in those places, it's not really).

Now that I'm in NYC I feel much more free about telling people my job. For one thing, the response is generally "oh that's cool, tell me more" instead of "[eyeroll] yet another one", and secondly I'm not the biggest species in the pond anymore. The response to "I'm a software engineer" isn't automatically "you must make a lot of money".

Being blamed for things they self-evidently do not control? Eye rolls? These are classic markers of low status.

It's tricky I think. There are really two orthogonal statuses at play. There's the status conferred by being far wealthier than typical for the area. There's also the status conferred by having a respected/liked job.

In Seattle/SF your wealth status is high, but your interestingness status is low. Dirt low even.

In NYC your wealth status is middling, but your interestingness status is relatively high. I prefer this setup far, far more.

But I'm also not a sociologist - maybe we're defining status differently.

well at least she didn't say "thats nice what sort of cars do you work on" when she found out that he was an engineer

There's been a lot of tech worker backlash in SF lately. Not to speak for Tom, but I've certainly been made uncomfortable after mentioning it to someone who then proceeded to bash "all these Google types" who are forcing out the "true San Franciscans" and "ruining the culture of the city".

"...start talking about something more interesting than your work"

Aaannd herein lies the second-order problem for many: that they aren't involved in anything interesting outside of work. This is, by the way, also a problem for us that have already acqui-hired Ms. Right.

The second, and there's basically no solution for it. Other than lie about your job, I guess. I tend to tell girls I'm a "mathematician", which is sort of true, is about equally nerdy but doesn't instantly cue low-status associations, and doesn't lead to further questions. It works about as well as anything I could say would, but I'm still clearly low-status and it sucks.

What's your proposed solution to dating as a low-status male? If it's the above "pretend society likes makers", well, uh, nice plan if you can convince everyone else to pretend it too, but until then, women will still want to know and shun you once you tell them.

The last time a young lady asked me what I did for a living I did the Old Spice guy impersonation and mentioned I was getting flown abroad to do it for an audience. She married me, so I now have the luxury of not caring anymore what people think of my answers, but they're generally some flavor of "I run a company which does X", where X is one thing I think they'll find interesting. Possible Xes include "helped teach Y00,000 kids to read last year", "gets patients in to see their doctors", or "makes shedloads of money for software companies like Y" if they look like they swing that way.

You'll note the pointed absence of "I am a poor peon working in the Ruby on Rails salt mines." (And heck, even when I was a Japanese salaryman, I got better results with "I am in charge of administration of X university's admissions exam" rather than "I write unit tests and XML files, please tune out of this conversation.")

Sadly, I don't run a company, and I'm not in charge of anything high status or visible. I do performance optimization and design threading infrastructure to dramatically improve the experience of writing high performance system software. I think this is pretty valuable, but there's no way to put it that seems high status to non-computer people.

Should I just quit and start a company selling shit because that'll look better to everyone else?

Can you describe that in terms of an important system, somewhere, which would not exist but for your contributions? If so, more on that story, less on the technical detail. If on the other hand none of your work ever gets used in anything important, then that's a non-BSy reason to change what you're working on. (Believe me -- been there, done that.)

Nothing "wouldn't exist." They'd just cost X% more or run Y% slower, which at our scale runs to $large-number, and I personally think that's valuable.

I do get your point though, and I do wish sometimes I worked on something that wouldn't exist without me.

Maybe you should try talking to technically-inclined women? We do exist and I would probably pepper you with tons of questions about what you do if we met at a party. (Of course, I'm married ...)

Why not say something like "I make computers go harder, better, faster, stronger?" Funny, doesn't make you sound like you're apologizing for what you do, and if someone's really interested ("how does that work?") you can follow up with an explanation. I'd try for some metaphors, too, like "Servers/computers are always juggling tasks, and what I do gives them more arms to juggle with."

I know your last question was rhetorical but if you start doing something that makes you unhappy just to find a partner then you will have a partner who loves you when you're unhappy. Not a great idea.

I don't do this because technically-inclined women are rare and I'm not attractive enough to cut off 95% of the possible partners out there. Or put more bluntly, you wouldn't pepper me with tons of questions at a party, you'd pepper my colleague M, who has a more outsider-visible job and is dashingly handsome. I have to make do with his leftovers, and I can't be picky about them having technical expertise.

Also, women who aren't fascinated by computer simply do not care enough to bother trying to explain things via metaphor. I have a friend who was asked at a party "What do you do?" He replied "I'm an engineer working on--" and before he finished his sentence, she stood up and walked away. FYI, he's the suavest person I know and is _extremely_ successful with women, usually: he's learned to stop trying to explain or even mention his job at all.

I recommend you don't try giving people advice on approaching women and what to say until you've _tried it_ for a few years, which as a presumably-straight women I doubt you've done.

Sorry, I only know what would work on me (and my friends). Didn't think I was that much of an outlier ...

My go to solution to this problem, back when I needed one, was as soon as the girl in question asked "what do you do?" I'd reply directly with "I'm a computer programmer - what do you do?" and should they say they are a musician or whatever I'd jovially reply instantly with "Oh well, I guess we have nothing in common then", and pretend that the conversation was over. They were always very interested to talk then, and the conversation was firmly on a flirtatious footing.

Writing this now, I realise that there is an corner case I hadn't covered in this plan. Solving it is left as an exercise to the reader, but I'd suggest something along the lines of "Emacs or vi?"

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