My grandparents think I don't work at all - because I have no employer (self-employed) and work from home. My parents understand pretty well that I turn websites into apps [0]. Recently someone described it as "Oh you make the big thing (websites on computers) go into the small thing (app on smartphone)". I found that wholesomely funny.

[0] https://webtoapp.design

Tangential: my favorite conversation starter at parties / gatherings is getting people to describe their spouse's job in front of them.

I tell people my wife is a product manager, and when they invariable ask what that means, I say, "I dunno, it's like marketing I think, you know, sales." She used to hit me. Now she just roles her eyes.

When people are told I'm in accounting, one of the most common questions is related to taxes despite that not being my actual line of work. Oh well.

Somehow people learned I was working on my doctorate and I had several relatives/in-laws start telling me about their chronic symptoms, one time I was just sat there patiently at my own wedding dance listening to this guy talk about his droopy balls or whatever for 5 minutes only to inform him I was studying physics. Bunch of clowns the lot of them, maybe they were effin with me.

I would totally do that.

it's an issue caused by gravity

I’m totally stealing this.

In fact, I had to explain to my wife (and mother in law) what my father in law dad and her brother did in their careers.

They claim the guys never explain it but I found that their eyes glaze over!

My spouse used to run technical customer support for ISPs. Then she ran technical customer support for a big CDN. Now she translates software engineering bug fix reports into customer-appropriate release notes for a big process-automation company.

This is by far the best to watch. My wife used to describe "He works for <insert company name> (ecommerce) and makes the systems scale for famous stars flash sales and black friday cyber monday."

That’s a good one, I’m going to use this.

That’s easy for me, they do the same job at the same company I used to work at.

The last time my mother in law visited and I suggested taking the day off, she said "but I thought you protected the internet? Will it be safe without you?"

This is hilarious.

Narrator: "In fact, the Internet is never safe"

"The internet is a little box you can take with you" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDbyYGrswtg (IT Crowd)

This reminds me of a time back in the late 90's when I was doing support for internet access. I had a very old man on the phone trying to connect to the internet using a CD (similar to AOL). I then say to him please close all the windows you have open. He says "one moment" comes back after a minute and says "I closed all windows in the house but it's very hot, what do I do now".

"My son built the thing that helps you find where to order from for [insert regional pizza chain]!"

I've worked on a lot more interesting CRUD, E2E encryption, and projects for industrial manufacturers that easily dwarf the size and scope of that location finder. It's just Google's geocoding API, some KLM files and a CMS I'm sure you've heard of. I think it sticks out because my parents and I are from a small town and we rarely ate out. When we did, that chain was the only place close enough to deliver to us, so they deeply and immediately relate to the value proposition.

EDIT: updated to more accurately reflect language my parents would use

My parents have both passed on but my mother never really believed me when I told her what I did for a living until I was almost 40 years old.

My first job was building custom cars with my father when I went to live with him when I was 14 years old. We worked on a lot of cars for movies and celebrities in Hollywood. My mother lived in Rockford, Il and, honestly, I didn't believe my father either until I moved there to live with him.

Years later when I was in my 30s I started learning how to program and my mother didn't believe I could ever do that until I started a business. And, to make even harder for her I was building web sites and ticketing software for entertainers in Branson, Mo.

She ended up moving here shortly after I did and got to meet a lot of them and she was like a teenage girl when she did, calling all her friends and telling them about it, and bragging about me. She was too cute. It was awesome to see her get so excited.

Starting this off, StevePerkins just wrote on a different thread here:

  STILL, "my son built the Breaking News banner on cnn.com!" is the thing that
  my mom tells her friends. It's the only thing that my wife ever understood
  about what I do for a living.

  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31598324

Without the code formatting:

Breaking News banner on cnn.com!" is the thing that my mom tells her friends. It's the only thing that my wife ever understood about what I do for a living. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31598324

Way back when I was just another IC at Microsoft, my mother was with me at some some party and said to someone who was also at Microsoft and was acting as a jerk to her that her son "is your boss's boss's boss". I think I choked on whatever I was eating at the time. Instant promotion time!

My Mom tells people I "work on the internet".

She's not wrong... but it's kind of like saying construction laborers "work on the earth"

Good chuckle regardless

He “does computers” is basically where we get to.

Amusingly enough, my dad, who has written kernel-level drivers, has basically the same answer for what I do.

Me? I’m a janitor for the internet plumbers.

> Amusingly enough, my dad, who has written kernel-level drivers, has basically the same answer for what I do.

Maybe he's just learned the futility of trying to give more detail.

might also be a generational thing. A lot of older folks in my experience tend to be more plain and just say "I write software for a living" rather than doing the whole I am head of X in the Y division and I'm a code artisan".

yes, i suspect that with age comes a certain zero-fucks-given modesty about what you do. youve got nothing left to prove and you are at peace with what you did. imagine Theo de Raadt aged 60 telling a room full of toddlers "i helped people on one computer do things on another" while all the grasping 25 year olds are claiming to be the Vice President of Interdomain Nodal connectivity (SSH Division 2)

You nailed it.

I've spent 10+ years in SaaS businesses, and I've simplified my job description to: I work for a software company.

It does not say anything about what I do, it could mean engineering or accounting or... And if/when people want to know more, they just ask.

Bring rather vague helps everyone get just what they want. I always show up happy to answer and open for questions but also offer them exit paths regularly.

What sort of work do you do that involves software and accounting? Disclaimer: I work in accounting in industry.

That is a misunderstanding. When I say "I work for a software company", there are a myriad of job positions, not only software. Accounting was just another example, but also legal, HR, sales, etc. It is up to the audience to assume (or ask, resp.) what I specifically do.

I happen to be a software engineer, currently employed to manage an enginering team, since you ask.

> I've spent 10+ years in SaaS businesses, and I've simplified my job description to: I work for a software company. It does not say anything about what I do, it could mean engineering or accounting or..

I see now where I misunderstood. I took that to mean the roles that you performed in the course of your work despite your job title, not that a variety of job roles are available in specific companies such as SaaS. Thank you for clarifying.

I’m a Tech Director for a fintech start up. My mom says “he works for Bitcoin”.

Oh, I've heard of you! CEO of Bitcoin, right?

We get customer service calls from people demanding to "speak to whoever is in charge of the Bitcoins"

While my mom doesn't know the names of any of the libraries or frameworks I use, when I tell her what kinds of products I work on she totally gets it. Like, these days I'm working on an LMS that trains hospital staff on how to use EHR software. Mom knows that doctors and nurses use software all the time, she's heard that it's often hard-to-use software, and the idea that someone is making training software for hospitals makes total sense to her. That's not the only gig I've had, but my mom is pretty good at keeping up with what I do and relaying it to other people.

I know that's not the answer anyone is looking for, but I'd suspect there are a lot of moms like this.

Part of my work mix is aerial photos/videos for tourism. I always liked the moment my then-7yo son said to me "Dad, is your job to make people want to go on holiday?" Yeah, basically.

The other part of my work mix is building websites, since the mid to late-90s. While the web is now common enough that my parents get it, I never found a good way to explain websites to young children.

Websites are like a special kind of book that everyone everywhere can read at the same time, if they want to.

My parents visited USA for the first time when I started working at Amazon a decade ago. They saw an Amazon fresh truck outside my condo building one of the days. That night my Mom told my sister that I work for some company that delivers groceries.

I'm from India and what she really said was "iski company sabzi delivery karti hai". There's a lot of cultural baggage in that statement but they sounded worried about my future :)

My parents are from India as well. They are not the best when it comes to tech and gadgets. My Dad was super excited when he learned to share memes with me on WhatsApp. Before pandemic they were visiting me in US and I invited a very close friend of mine who works for Uber to hangout with us. He stayed for a week and it was fun for me to watch him describe his company to my Dad. My Dad "acha to tumhari company taxi chalte hain.." I meant its not wrong but I laughed so hard.

But isnt that true

"My son is in IT" (FWIW, we're of Indian origin, living in the DC metro area for 30 years)

But I don't know what to tell my parents, saying "he builds software for a living" isn't really that much more specific, and they resort to "My son is in IT"

I got slightly more curiosity with "I build Apps" when I used to build mobile apps. But not with my parents.

Is IT like MIS only not as important? Of course I'm being sarcastic. (from my own experiences of what people say)

Software Developer

Web Developer

Software Engineer

My parents just say "he works for X" where X is the company I work for at the time, or "he has a startup". I've told them what I do, but they don't really grock it. If they get pressed, they say, "he does cloud computing stuff".

This answer also applies to my wife, who knows what I do but doesn't care to explain it to anyone for fear of more questions. :). Also she mostly just cares that the bill get paid.

My 61 year-old Mom is not at all technically savvy, but she does have a surprisingly decent grasp of what I do. When I was working at Oculus, she bought a Quest 2 to try out my work <3

That's really sweet.

My mom knows I'm a software & hardware engineer, but I'm not sure she knows too much beyond that. My dad is also a hardware & software engineer, and I've long been a little disappointed at how little interest my mom has taken in what he does.

I'm also often surprised how often (non-tech-industry) friends have thought I "work for Apple". I do Mac & iOS development but have never worked for Apple. One friend in particular honestly couldn't wrap his head around how I made iOS apps but didn't work for Apple.

As a product manager at the local transport authority, my parents both know that my job has something to do with public transport, but they don't seem to know what exactly my job entails.

My mum seems to think I'm some sort of programmer. My background is in software engineering, so I can certainly code, but it's not something I regularly do in my day job.

My dad hears the word "manager" in my job title and thinks my job is to give orders to other people. Leaving aside the fact that management in general isn't really about giving orders, it's difficult for me to explain in a way that he'll understand that just because my job title includes the word "manager" doesn't mean I'm the boss. Yes, I collaborate with colleagues, but I'm not involved in hiring and firing.

I have a pretty normal job. My partner on the other hand gets extremely agitated if I reveal her actual main income generator as a minecraft youtuber, so its always interesting explaining that she does freelance "work", or hope like crazy she cant overhear and that they don't look up her channel when I spill her "secret". I personally dont know what the big deal is. Its 2022 some people work as content creators now, big deal.

Pardon me if I'm intruding, but do you need to understand in order to respect her wishes about how she segments her personal and professional life?

Both my mom and dad have no idea how to talk about what I do. Mom just tells people I do things with computers at a major bank. My dad tells everyone I work in IT... which drives me up a wall. Not that I don't respect IT, but as a developer I'm about useless when it comes to the hardware side of things.

Technically all computer science and software engineering falls under Information Technology

Which entirely misses the point that most people think of the IT guy at work when they hear "IT". They're different skill sets.

It's analogous to the relationship between mechanical engineers and mechanics or machinists. Yeah, they're both working with 'physical technology' and there's some overlap in skills, but they're ultimately very different roles.

One grandmother died still convinced I was some kind of secretary. "He types for a living."

Mom has a fairly reasonable idea of what I do. Once upon a time, she was the public library director and ran the NOC for country government, because the T1 terminated in the library. (It was a small town.)

Not exactly the same, but when I worked as an _intern_ for a program funded by NASA, my grandmother ("Nana") used to tell her friends I worked for NASA.

You should definitely get her a t-shirt that says NANA in the style of the NASA logo. Surely someone else has already designed it and is selling them online.

Not exactly what you're looking for but closest I can find: https://www.amazon.com/Out-this-World-Mom-Mothers/dp/B07N4ND....

My mom used to say I "worked for Google" (back when that was considered respectable) when I participated in Summer of Code one year.

In that case, I also worked for NASA!

...as an intern for a computational engineering program in Chattanooga, TN, where I changed RAM in servers. We received like $10k in NASA funding.

It's impossible to say Nana shouldn't be in the comments! She is every bit as good as Mom for an HN comment!

When my nephew was little his family repeatedly told him I was a genius scientist who had changed the world. They watched a lot of black&white movies on TV and he asked them "why was the world so drab and gray back when those movies were made?"

His parents told him that was back before Uncle (me) invented color. He bought it.

When I worked in networking, my brother told my mom that I’m a, “telephone repairman,” which has now become a running joke in my family

Not myself, but my brother works for Microsoft on the Azure security team and my mom tells people he's "like a police officer but of the internet".

I can totally see the response:

"Oh! He's the guy that rang the other day letting me know I had something wrong with my computer. He helped me with it after I gave him my password."

Mum: "He does something with computers on the internet. It's all very complicated."

Sister: "He builds websites or something."

Grandparents: "Complicated computer stuff."

What I actually do: Lead-Developer/Team-Leader for a data analytics company.

Nana used to tell people "my grandson is a rocket scientist" lol. I work on ARINC653 OSes, which do sometimes go into rockets, but mostly just aircraft.

That sounds really cool!

What I tell my family: Help making things on the internet

What they think I do: Computer things

What my non-technical co-workers think I do: Make the dashboard better.

What I really do: Talk out loud to the screen and lots of searching

What my cat thinks I do: Not give her enough head scritchies

When I worked at a video game studio, my wonderful grandma would tell her friends I worked at a toy factory.

Nothing. She's a retired clinical manager (and clinician) who worked in a hospital. She's still hardcore confidential about employment and health stuff.

I would like to know what she says as I struggle to say what I do. Especially to people that I do not know what they do for a living or what level of knowledge they have of software, which is often not that much where I live. Which also is what I stereotype to guess who my mother would be speaking to as well.

In the end it does not seem to matter how accurate I have been through my career: Consultant, Solution Architect, Engineering Manager, "integrate banks' systems with other banks", etc, all most people hear is that I work with computers, which always get followed up with a comment about their printer not working.

So I often give up and just say I am a "programmer".

Neither my mom nor my dad fully understands what I'm doing, other than it's something to do with computers. And that's okay. I fully expect to not understand what my hypothetical kids will be up to in the future.

My mom mostly understands what I do although I've never heard her try to explain it. My favorite generation gap is with my immigrant FIL who is fascinated with how much money we make and has no idea what it means (wife works in tech too). When my wife worked for online brokerage, he kept saying E-Trade no matter how many times we said it wasn't that one. Eventually he started confusing it with eBay and told at least a few people she worked there. When I tried to explain remote work he asked if I just put my work in the mail every day. It's adorable.

"He's an internet plumber. He wrestles the big greaseballs clogging up the tubes to make it go faster"

"He's an internet gastroenterologist..."

"He's an internet proctologist." "Oh, so content moderation?"

Wouldn't content moderation be "last one in a human centipede"?

This is basically what I respond with. Though since I do IT for people who plumb the interwebs, I say I’m a janitor for internet plumbers.

I thought my wife understood what I did. But she saw a marketing video about how we were reimagining everything and changing the world and she latched on to that instead. I'll allow it.

I think she says I make apps for influencers.

She is also having a very hard time understanding how I/we work remotely from different countries. I’ve never personally met any of my colleagues and that’s almost inconceivable to her generation.

She has only worked with people micro managing her or her micro managing others (Typical old Korean work culture), so the fact that we work effectively without being in the same room with managers is surprising to her.

"He plays with toys for a living" is the usual answer from my dad and I'm guessing a lot of employee's parents that work for the same company (Danish producer of interlocking toys...guess which one). The thing is, he knows exactly what I do, as he is an engineer himself, but he prefers to say "yea yea, him (me) play with toys all day long"

My mom knows roughly what I’m doing. Maybe not down to the architecture, language or framework but she knows I’m basically a programmer. In fact she used to write (punch) programs for on an IBM machine in her workplace when punched cards were a thing.

She usually says her son is a computer programmer and sometimes, if asked, mentions what the company that I work for does.

Apparently I "sit in my office and talk to robots all day" according to my slightly scathing 10year old son.

I bet his friends are impressed you work with robots! BTW, what do you do?

A mix of stuff. Being coding 40+ years, 30 of those as a job. Currently I do 3 days a week working as a solutions architect, herding cats for a large grocery chain. 2 days a week I work for an R&D team for a company building digital people, doing hands on coding, ML, NLP etc etc... hence the talking to robots :)

Sounds fun! I would love to work for an R&D team that actually produces something. (I only "produce" data pipelines and analysis.) Sounds like I only need 20 more years of coding experience!

I don’t know, but she’s constantly pushing me, throwing me articles about huge companies hiring, about investments, savings, getting a mortgage. She constantly asks me if I got a job in that huge company I was applying to. It’s a lot of pressure.

Often all those questions boil down to “are you happy?” And sometimes parents don’t know how to understand that a child could actually be happy doing things differently than they did.

As a parent with a toddler this is what scares me most.

What I want to do: make them an amazingly capable human being and leave them to make themselves happy.

What I must stop myself doing: intervening ALL the time, advising how to do it better, helicopter etc etc.

It isn't always easy to stand by and watch your kid hurt themselves.

> It isn't always easy to stand by and watch your kid hurt themselves.

It's by far the hardest thing you have to do, but the only consolation is that if you let them push the boundaries early they more quickly learn that they have boundaries.

Of course you limit the maximum harm, but finding things that are "acceptable" is the trick.

A bump on the head now is worth the price of admission to avoid a visit to hospital later, when your offspring are adults..

I read this yesterday, the advice columnist wrecked (thanks Huffington Post) the advice asker: https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2022/05/parent-ch...

You could tell her to butt off, but only if you feel you need to...

I used to do large low voltage installs. My mom would say I "climb in the walls".

Like Neo and pals in the matrix, that is cool.

She always told people I was unemployed, as it was less shameful than having a son running a sniffs distastefully technology company. Every time we met, she’d ask when I’d get a real job, right up until I retired in my early 30’s. I’d also keep getting calls from family acquaintances offering me positions making coffee at their law firm or whatever. She’s always seen computers and technology as a perversion, something for ugly people.

Now she asks for money and I tell her she should get a real job. She’s of course just confused, as she in her view was only trying to help while I “drifted aimlessly”, building a company up and cashing out.

I think she just says that I work with computers- that satisfies 99% of those who ask the question. Heck, I even met a classmate who I haven't seen for like 15 years and even she said: what do you do nowadays, work with computers?

She says I work with computers.

Yup. Same here. Mom is over 70 and tells people 'i do something with computers at various companies'. She's not wrong though :)

My mom took a PHP class with me in college, and she did some database admin stuff after that, but I think the last time I saw her she couldn’t remember what company I was working for or what I was doing.

It was definitely easiest to explain when I worked for Groupon. The funny thing is she would actually email me about Groupons for things she thought I needed… I bought a blender and a vacuum cleaner by her recommendation.

My wife tells people she doesn’t know what I do aside from make money…

My wife tells people that I 'build parts of the internet' which sounds a lot cooler than building ecom, marketing sites, and mobile apps. Most people are pretty happy with that description too.

"lab technician for a biopharmaceutical company"

i distill concentrates for a medical marijuana cultivator in a part of the country where it's still a real cointoss on how ppl her age feel about that

she is unhappy with myself having chosen to be self employed and is ashamed and does not know what to tell people. each time i visit her i have to endure mental abuse when she ridicules my choices and suggests all kinds of useless or pointless alternative career paths which will permanently close the door on everything i’ve worked for for nearly 25 years.

When I started my programming career, my mom didn't like the idea at all. One day we were arguing about it and suddenly she said: "computers have many viruses, imagine they transmit them to you." I laughed a lot but at the same time poor mom, being afraid of computer viruses <3

"Stuff with computers that I don't even understand and she gives us tech support"

Which gets the point across pretty well, honestly.

I gave my mom a primer on Kubernetes and she loves casually dropping buzzwords when she meets another "tech person' :)

I generally describe my job as keeping the hamsters well fed, and their wheels lubricated so the computers don't break.

I don't know. But I recently asked a dad what his son did, and they said they don't know! That's really sad.

Sometimes depending on the context and the person it's just easier to say IDK.

Our industry has lots parents that aren't really equipped in any way to really grock what we do outside of computers, I'd assume taking that limited knowledge and trying to answer with more than 'computers' might be more of a pain in the ass than saying 'IDK'

Wouldn't be to hard on them, there's a lot of valid reasons to say IDK without being a bad parent.

Seems to be more common with dads. My own has asked where I work probably a dozen times and likely couldn’t have named more than one of my friends when I was younger.

My mother has no idea what I do. And she more or less tells people that.

Some days I am not sure what my job is.

If you can’t explain what you do to a grandparent or child, I’m not sure you really know what you do either…

Ok, ELI5, what does Cloud DevOps Engineer do? Or hell, just devops engineer.

Software is like sheet music, and computers are the players and the instruments. Programmers write the sheet music; they're called developers, or devs. Operations staff are conductors.

Now, you know how conductors twitch their batons and give directions to various musicians and sections of musicians? That's a kind of dance. "devops" means talking to the devs and the operators and writing choreography for that dance, to be performed by another computer system. Then you watch the conductor's dance and make sure that the conductor is doing the right moves at the right time and the musicians are properly playing the symphony.

"You know how there are web sites, apps, and internet stuff? Those all work by computers and apps/programs talking with other computers and apps/programs. I make sure that some of those computers and programs keep working right and to make sure someone knows when they don't work right."

Interesting to see so many confused /parents/spouses/etc in this thread. Even though what we work on is highly abstract, my parents have a reasonable non technical interpretation. I would think its the norm that the people you closely care about, or care about you, know roughly what you do, if you have explained it well enough to them in a compelling way. I guess delivering meaningless value for some soulless corporate entity doesn't really spark joy, or is memorable at all.

At least that she’s very proud of me.

Which is at odds with how I’m treated by my immediate coworkers. Like there’s some respect there, but my team are the only hourly employees. Suffice to say, it’s supposed to be a white collar job but I feel and get treated blue collar. I don’t feel much pride.

I feel much the same although my team members are on the same level.

But I look at my desk job and think that even if I am ageist-outed from my job when I am 50 at least I won't have years of physiological damage that actual blue collar workers and tradies can accumulate.

Sure but I’m sick with Covid right now because my blue collar coworker(s) couldn’t be damned to call out. Instead they lied to my face about allergies.

My mom (and most people in my life) usually says something along the lines of "He's a software engineer doing smart stuff I don't really understand". This is despite trying to explain my job (cloud engineering) multiple times.

My parents just said "he works in computers".

My wife still has about the same level of understanding despite more than one long car trip where I explained exactly what I do, she just doesn't understand "cloud".

So she just says "He works in IT".

When did the phrase morph from "the cloud" to "cloud"?

These responses hilarious. They range from insightful, could possibly be used to market oneself or even to explain a product, to fodder for standup comedy.

"yourapostasy is a programmer"

I'll allow it, it is a step up from "...works on computers".

I think she just says "is a programmer for X". She actually is a mainframe architect (banking z/OS) still today, but hasn't really kept up with "client/server", as she puts it, technology.

I work in 'spam mail.' My company name is basically never remembered.

Hah, having worked at SendGrid, that was just about as far as my dad's understanding was

I recently found myself saying, "my son used to write tickets, now he checks other people's tickets".

I am long term IT. Now my son has joined the world of IT I get how people have no real concept of what we do.

"He's making a video game that you can sell used like at GameStop. Or rent like at Blockbuster."

This is the line I tell non-gamers so they can repeat it. Usually people end up reminiscing about Blockbuster .

I used to be a lawyer at a prestigious firm. When I quit to bootstrap a startup, my mom had a hard time explaining it to her friends. She got her pride back when I was interviewed on NPR.

We are either creeps, boring or geniuses. There is little nuance.

Both of my parents just say that I'm a programmer. However, both constantly tell me I don't actually work because I work from home ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ lol

If my kids are nearby and someone asks what I do, all 4 will spontaneously do enthusiastic jazz hands and scat "Daaaaaaaa-taaaaaa."

Feels accurate.

"He works in the Amazon internet department"

"No mom, I don`t know how to fix a printer."

No idea. I do private equity stuff. They understand I look at Excel sheets all day but I don't think much beyond that makes sense to them

My mom has told more people where I work than I have. For her, she's much more concerned with the company vs the day to day.

Everyone, mom included, thinks I am IT support.

My folks think I do on site tech support. Doesn’t matter how I explain my work or correct them they don’t really understand.

He works at X. (Which happens to be the software they use daily)

She didn't get into specifics as they did ask when I bumped into them.

She likes to point to the cardboard cutout or box on the shelf and tell the shop assistant that “my son made that”.

My wife used to say “he does the tappy tappy code code stuffs”

50% joke 50% that’s the best thing she could come up with :)

They don't understand it all and probably tell others that I play all day in my computer.

Apparently I play with computers

It was at this moment, the entire of HN become envious of his job.

My mum still thinks I crawl around under desks with screwdrivers “fixing computers.”

"He makes paper. Really fancy paper."

“My son does computer stuff.”

Probably this.

that's my parents, exactly.

that or "plays with computers" -- 'playing' being assigned regardless of how much cash I earn.

I honestly prefer the simplicity compared to some long drawn out explanation and career title .

He works with computers