How To Explain Your Web 2.0 Job At The Pub | Hacker News Reader

How To Explain Your Web 2.0 Job At The Pub

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24 pointsmikeyur24 comments

If you need 5 steps to explain you job at the pub, then your audience will be having another beer before you reach Step 3.

A pub isn't much different from an elevator, which isn't much different from anyplace else.

The Universal Answer...

People have Problem <X>. My company provides them with Solution <Y>. I do <Z> to help my company do that.

I use a 3 tiered system of responses. I gauge my response against the person I'm talking to and am pleasantly surprised when someone actually wants more detail.

My responses to "What do you do for a living":

"Computers" I use this response when talking to someone at a party who is obviously uninterested, or someone that I think has no idea that this could mean a lot of things. Also, to extended family though it may require an explanation as to why I can't fix their computer.

"Software Engineer" This is the answer I most expect to not get more questions on, unless speaking to another software engineer. This answer almost immediately causes the conversation to shift in another direction. I can see the mild panic behind their eyes that I might, in fact, elaborate.

"UI Developer" When talking to someone in design or the rare individual who asks for more details then "Software Engineer" It is usually accompanied by a more detailed description of my job.

I had this problem for a long time too, and part of it was that as an entrepreneur it might come up that you run your own company, but saying "I'm a CTO" translates from geek to human as "I'm a self-important and probably delusional douchebag."

So my solution is saying "I work with technology startups." I let them tailor the interaction by leaving it open. They are free to say "Oh... cool," or to ask variously detailed questions, which I'm happy to answer. Takes the guess work out of the whole interaction.

Being a poor student who scrapes a living through Rentacoder, Its difficult to explain further without getting lost when someone raises an eyebrow at freelance web design.

Do you mind if I ask how much $$ you make for that and how many projects you can handle at a time?

Given the diverse range of economical backgrounds coders come from for Rentacoder projects, Making being undercut quite a common occurrence, your looking at $15-20USD per hour on a run of the mill job, Providing you have decent enough ratings and offer a decent comment to show your competence and experience.

Personally I prefer to have no more than 3 projects happening at any one time, But its a risky job to have as your primary income, So you take what you get, when you get.

Its definately a great place for making some quick cash on the side. And I've always enjoyed being able to have a bash at new challenges I might not find elsewhere.

This is actually far more interesting than the article. I tried using Rentacoder for a while, but after getting turned down for ~20 jobs, and seeing what someone the winning bids were, I stopped doing that fairly quickly.

The main problem with Rentacoder and like websites, is that you need to find very small projects to work on, and bid some pathetic amount to get some ratings going before you can look at some real money, Or severly undercut yourself, and waste a heap of time for relatively no return.

Some of the best people on oDesk are making 80k USD a year fulltime, or 40k working half-time. That's not bad. Too bad there are only a small handful at that level.

I'm an independent technology consultant myself, and constantly struggle to find leads. I've heard mixed results on guru and oDesk ... at the startup where I'm CTO, we've hired people specializing in niche ecomm packages off of elance _dirt_ cheap ... shamefully cheap. Typically from Malaysia.

It's such a mucky business ...

how would you rate the quality of work from those you hired at dirt cheap rates?

For specialized niche sort of work, it typically took longer than expected, but the quality was reasonable. Not guru-level, beautiful code necessarily, but workable where it counted -- when interfacing with various third party packages, being used by other third parties, without support from us.

"Independent technology professional"

I'm also a college student and web designer myself, but have stayed as far away from Rentacoder as possible (except when outsourcing parts of my own projects). Competing on price with people overseas isn't a place you want to be in.

Get the word out about yourself among people you know, put up some Google AdWords targeting your area, put some SEO focus on "[city] web design", and have a decent portfolio online. I always tell potential they can find a much cheaper way to get online, but that your work is of much higher quality (more attractive design, WordPress or ExpressionEngine so they can update it themselves, SEO to bring them business, etc.).

This isn't just constrained to programmers. I have a friend I met while she was a physics post-doc at MIT and who now is a professor at Cornell and runs a large research group. When asked what work she does at parties she answers "teacher".

Too complicated. When someone asks me what I do, I've found that 'I program computers' works for virtually any development job. If you give anything more specific, they probably don't care and wouldn't know what the difference is anyway. If they want to know more specifics, then they'll ask and you can nerd it up.

I prefer "design" or "build" or "make" software. Saying "write code" or "program" makes me feel dirty because I'm terribly insecure and don't want people thinking I'm a typist.

But, I make two exceptions:

1. When I'm speaking to engineers I prefer to say I "engineer software" just to get a rise out of them.

2. When I'm speaking to the elderly, I've learned "I tell computers what to do" is all they care to hear.

As far as my grandparents know, I run the internet.

I found this post funny because I was in this situation yesterday. I'm trying to explain that I'm an SEO, and then I have to tell them what SEOs do, then they ask for tips, etc.

Next time I'm playing unemployed.

So what does an SEO do other than what should be the normal/standard practice of a website designer? :P

I met a very cute SEO consultant at a bar who explained that all she did were the basics: position keywords prominently, use meta description and keywords, move your site name to the end of the page title because you're going to win search results for that anyway, etc.

Yes, and she can charge a fortune for it. Most people don't understand these concepts (people who hired her, for one).

Standard practice? There are an insane amount of bad web designers then. I have NEVER dealt with a designer that knew anything worthwhile SEO-wise - other than simple stuff like adding meta keywords and descriptions. (the design equivalent would be making sure you have a header, navigation and content area - common knowledge)

"I'm a programmer"

Then I answer questions if they have them. Which they usually don't.

As a SEM professional I usually defer to the catch all "online marketing" response. If the conversation goes much further than that, I usually follow it up with "you know those little ads on Google?", which usually opens up the floodgates for a discussion of how I am ruining the internet for everyone.

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