What Do You Do For a Living Again?
April 6, 2009
A conversation between GeekDaddy and I last night prompted this post. But I’ll spare you the actual details of the conversation and just sum it up. You’ll get why in a moment.
We were talking about how unless you are speaking to someone who works in Information Technology, you always end up “dumbing down” your job description when someone asks you what you do for a living.
Yes, I know, there are other fields and jobs that also require “dumbing down” for the average person not in that field, but at least there’s usually some level of basic comprehension. For instance, if I said “I’m a medical doctor” or “I’m a lawyer” – the average person would nod and say “oh!! Okay!” and have at least a general idea of what that means. Yes, they might not know the difference between a Litigator and someone who works with Intellectual Property rights – or the difference between a GP and an Oncologist… but there’s no look of utter bafflement.
I attribute this to the fact that those professions have been around for a few centuries – whereas 99% of the jobs in technology field didn’t exist before the past one.
Granted, there are a few jobs in tech that people nod and ‘get’ – programmer, tech support – but they really have no idea what you do unless you care to get deeper into it. Ask any phone support guy how many times he has to deal with a customer who thinks he can “just go right in and change that” or any programmer how many times she’s had to explain to a relative that “no, she doesn’t know what’s wrong with that software, she’s never used it before.” It’s right up there with asking your podiatrist dentistry questions.
So when GeekDaddy recently accepted a Director position at his company – we both laughed at how much easier it would be for our extended families to answer what he does when asked now. Just around the same time that it got much, much harder to describe what I do for a living.
You see, before Buttercup was born, it was easy for friends & family to say that I was a “College Professor” as they didn’t have to really explain what I taught – just say “something to do with computers” and whomever was asking didn’t inquire further.
Today though? My “job description” is pretty much threefold. I’m a Blogger, I’m a Speaker, and I’m a Social Media Strategist.
Now, the odds are pretty good that if you’ve been coming here for any length of time you have a general idea about the first two, and a better understanding of the third one than most people.
But the odds are also pretty good that if your own job title has the phrase “Social Media” in it? You try to figure out ways around that when you’re talking to the average person as well.
Mostly, I find that when someone asks me what I do for a living any more, I usually just try to laugh it off and say “I play on the Internet for a living, and when I’m lucky, I get paid to write about it or to speak about how I do it for others.” This has actually, unfortunately, backfired more often than not and required a much lengthier explanation than if I said “I’m a Social Media Strategist, Blogger and Speaker.”
It turns out that there is no easy way to explain what I do, unless you work in the same field or have had to listen to the long version.* And usually, when I do go so far as to give someone the “long version” it’s met with “but why would anyone pay you to do that?”
It’s usually at that point that I try the old patented “well enough about me… Let’s talk about you. What do you do these days?”
But lately I’ve been thinking about just telling folks that I’m a wizard when asked. I think it’s a bit less mysterious. And maybe they’ll think twice about sitting around for the “long version.”
*trust me when I tell you that my “long version” is the edited version evenso… I could go on for days about Social Media – but it’s only really interesting to someone who works in the field or wants to. And they already get it.
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