I don't have trouble explaining. I keep it high level and generic because 99 times out of 100, people are just making small talk and want to know just enough about you to categorize you.

Describing my job? Yeah, sure. I do science.

Explaining my job? Hell no. Nobody is willing to read a 20 page lit review to start to understand the background of what I do

Reading the first several posts... Is everyone here in IT? 🤣🤣

I recently told a seven year old that I am a wizard. I already have the beard and being a programmer, that is exactly what my customers feel about my work.

Me: I'm in IT (trying to keep it simple)

Them: OK, but what do you do in IT?

Me: I'm a system administrator (again trying to keep it simple)

Them: I don't know what that means. What does a system administrator do?

Me: I work on servers (again, trying to keep it simple)

Them: What's a server?

Me: I'm in IT...

Trouble as in I'm in trouble if I do. I'm a formally educated it security engineer running my own incorporated software and infrastructure company. Firstly: people just hear "computer guy" and their second thought is "he can fix my stuff". So I stay near to the truth and simplify it: I'm a theoretical electrical engineer. Boom, instant bored face and they leave as fast as they can. My neighbors love me, but I haven't fixed a single of their computers in decades.

Also pro tip: the wife has the same qualifications as I, so she fixes her family's stuff herself. My job is to lug stuff and the kids around at home.

Nope. I keep the internet working.

People seem happy when I say that. Unless my internet at home craps out and my wife makes a cheeky joke about it.

Yep.

Network engineer here. I can't count the number of times my mom says I'm in programming.

After a few years, my wife figured out the best way to describe my job. Doctor of the internet. This was because I was working in operations at the time and would fix network outages regularly.

Information Security is so hard to explain to old people who don’t know much about technology. My grandparents back then (late 2000s) never understood it no matter how I explained it, and they thought I was a security guard at the bank I worked at. You could also see the disappointment in their faces thinking how someone who took IT in college ended up as a security guard.

“I’m a stand-up comic.”

“Ooh! Heckle me!”

“I don’t know anything about you and don’t wanna say anything mean about you. Just enjoy the moment without getting a performer to do free work for you.”

“You’re no fun.”

“Don’t have to be on all the time, let me eat my burger.”

I cast spells that make the runes etched in sand translate the energy of magic stones into dancing light.

Usually I just tell people that I work in IT and leave it at that.

I'm in DevOps, so anyone not in tech has no idea what I do/what that means. So, I end up just saying "I work in IT".

My new doctor didn't like that answer when we were making small talk and wanted a more detailed answer, so I tell him. He looks at his nurse and says: did any of that make sense?

I'm a florist. People understand what I do, they usually just don't think it's worth doing or paying me for my labor.

When I say I’m a school librarian, most people can make a connection and have an understanding. And as long as their next comment isn’t some Fox News bullshit (which was real fun at my grandmother’s funeral), I can usually leave it at that.

But the actual day-to-day complexities of what I do isn’t going to be understood. Most days I am checking out over 400 books to students, which means my volunteers, me, and my para (assistant) are checking in and reshelving over 400 books each morning. That’s over 800 books scanned each day. Then, I am also teaching six 45-minute classes every day and I see each student in our school (over 700) twice a week in those classes. So I am planning and prepping for those classes, teaching those classes, and running the book checkout. Not to mention managing behaviors and helping some of our new students (especially kindergarten) understand the expectations of the library. I am currently planning our book fair happening in a few weeks, getting ready to start my after school club, facilitating a $500 per grade level order for books and supplies, fielding sales phone calls, balancing my ~$10K budget, and being the team lead which involves monthly meetings to attend, twice a month meetings to run, and many additional emails. So yes, I do read to kids and let them take books home, but that’s nowhere near the end of my to-do list.

I'm a software developer. My default explanation to people who don't know what that means is, "I whisper to computers, and sometimes they do what I ask".

Nope. I do plumbing, home renovation, small construction jobs and property maintenance.

Unless it requires a permit or special training, I can likely do it.

No.

I am a clerk in a bakery.

I mostly put bread in bags, and those bags on shelves.

Yes. I'm a near surface geophysicist. So I don't look for oil or minerals but I do try to figure out what's going on underground without digging. Mostly looking for mine or karst voids under new construction.

Explaining my job is trivial compared to the insanity I cook up in my spare time.

Oh, so you like gaming? No, I'm actually not playing the game. I'm building a mod for it. Erm, okay, so this is for other players then? No, I'm mostly building it for myself. Ah, so you haven't put a lot of time into it yet? Roughly 12 years. What? So what does the mod do then? It plays the game for me, and publishes in-game metrics to a monitoring application, so that I can see the progress of the game in an abstract form while I'm on the couch, thinking about how to optimize the automation further.

Regular fun stuff.

Nope, most people are fine with "I'm a programmer", the few times someone asked me what exactly did I program, I answered with the ELI5 version of what I do and that's always been enough, e.g.

• I make computers see and understand what they're seeing.
• You now site X? I work there
• You know game X? I work in the servers for it

Yep. Sometimes I can't even figure out what they pay me for.

Depends on their level of interest and/or knowledge. My job isn't exciting or prestigious, just niche/specialized. Most of the time when I say what I do, I get a blank stare. If that's the case I'll just say "I babysit computers" and leave it at that. I've had the conversation enough times that I know it's not worth the effort to try explaining it further. "Oh, you work with computers? My brother in law is a programmer, perhaps you've met him?"

Sometimes people will get the gist of it just from the title, and these are usually the most interesting conversations because they've made the (un?)conscious effort to understand something new to them. I am totally down with that.

On very rare occasions someone will actually know what it is that I do. This inevitably leads to trading war stories about redundant alerts to please management, unbalanced power loads, poorly defined environments handed over with little to no explanation, cable curtains, and how even other IT people have no clue what we're on about half the time.

Yeah but developed a quick explanation for it: Industrial water treatment tech for HVAC. You know how having a swimming pool or hot tub requires some chemistry? I do that for water in boilers and cooling towers used to heat or cool big buildings

Nah, like 50% of it is just telling people to restart their computers.

Ya I'm still lying about being laid off almost 2 years ago, so it's kinda rough

Mine is usually pretty simple to explain. I do CNC, which is cutting objecting/materials into useful shapes using big machines.

Guess my job based on the following description:

I sell a product to a people who don't believe they have any use for it during what they consider their personal time.

Answer:

Automation for mainly the mining industry.

Kind of. I am a CEO (that's the easy part) of a small consulting company in healthcare.

The hard part is to explain what we actually do: We do consult organisations about (healthcare related) disaster preparedness/risk management and contingency planning. So you call us if you want to have proper plans in case your hospital catches fire, COVID and monkey pox have baby or if you are a city and need to know how to plan for "the day X". But as we work mainly on a systemic level you can also call us if you need a more intelligence focused plan e.g. "I am going to South Sudan, what do I do if I have an accident?".

Additionally we also consult for ambulance services, e.g. how to plan vehicle allocation, etc.

I don't have a job, so no trouble at all.

My friend had this problem, I knew him for a while and couldn't figure it out. I believe he was a "Transpondster".