For those long time IBMrs out there.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
THIS PAGE HAS BEEN INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

What do you do for a living?

This has to be one of the most common questions asked of anyone in life. Apart from, How are you?, Can I buy you a drink? or cringingly, Do you come here often?. Well, this isn't an article about chat up lines or dating gotchas. I am long past all of that.

However, many people can simply reply “I am a plumber” or “Nah, I’m a sparky geezer!” (Electrician), or perhaps they might say "I have my own business selling cars" or "I work for a bank doing banking stuff". The point here is that no matter what they do, their audience will immediately be able to understand what they do and if they need their help or services, they can simply ask.

For the average IT geek, this is always a tricky and preferably avoidable question. We tend to shy away from disclosing our job because we are concerned about the impact of this little snippet of knowledge in the heads of a non IT savvy person.

There is a common phrase in IT that goes something like, 'A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing'. Actually, I guess this is true, in general. DIY being a good example.

As IT professionals we tend to try and answer this question ambiguously.

Mainly because we think that what we do is so very specialist and complicated, we also make allowances for the questioner as we believe that they will switch off. We have a primeval fear that we will not be able to complete communicating the fluffy, pinky greeny codey stuff, about why we love our job.

On this note, I do appreciate that in all professions there are general conversations and then there are the technical jargon and insider acronym riddled low level conversations.

As IT professionals we have invented more TLA's (Three Letter Acronyms) than any other profession, possibly with the exception of airport abbreviation naming committees.

Anyhow, a typical answer would be “Urrrrm, Computers”.

“Arghh, Right!!!” comes the reply, quickly followed by “Can you take a look at my computer?”.

And this is it, the single biggest fear of an IT professional. Your job might be that of a patterns and framework designer for J2EE or you may be a Mainframe performance specialist, but rest assured the simple mention that you work with “Computers” means that you are now their personal technical support helpdesk, for life........

Now, by contrast, our plumber and electrician are both in the home building or renovation trades, but, you never hear me asking them if they can do some plasterboard stopping, tile my roof or fit double glazing.

I guess that over time the general levels of understanding of the different roles within IT will improve. However, until this day has arrived I have learnt the hard way to always reply in a precise and exact manner.

"I specialise in software application modernisation, building and shaping high productivity development teams to meet the demands of developing enterprise business applications. I also provide bespoke consulting and training services and expertise in utilising multi-platform 4GL code generation tools.”

Now, for all but the most technical people out there, I tend to get that ‘lights out’ glare about halfway through that sentence, but, on the plus side, I also no longer get those requests for on the spot computer repairs.

Thanks for reading.
Lee.