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by davidbanham
1634 days ago
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I have a job satisfaction indicator I like to call “the barbecue factor”. You’re at a social event with friends and friends of friends. Someone asks “so what do you do?” and you answer. They either go “huh?”, “ooh neat!” or “oh, gee, yeah isn’t it awful how $industry is $negative_outcome?” Which of those answers you get can have a big bearing on your job satisfaction. It feels like the opinions of others shouldn’t be such a big deal. It turns out they are a pretty big deal for me, though. It sounds like it might be the same for you, and I suspect it’s the same for most humans. We’re tribal animals. Once I figured that out, I started factoring it into my career decisions. I’ve been much happier for it. |
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Outside of the tech industry, "software engineer" alone has negative connotations and stereotypes, so some of my friends - when single - deliberately hand-waive past what they do by saying they're a "consultant" which somehow. In a brief period of trying to be a very different person when meeting girls, I referred to myself as a "professional problem solver". (yuck).
Working at Amazon and Facebook is another one where your audience differs dramatically. Some people are much more impressed if you work at Amazon on the "retail website" because that's the part they know, while others associate that with dehumanizing treatment of warehouse workers. Others are impressed (and won't shame you) if you work on AWS because the cloud doesn't have the same stink of wage slavery, but to others still they understand this so little that they literally have no reference point to react. Working at Facebook gets you a bad rep, but working on Instagram/Whatsapp doesn't, so now everyone gets to say you work at Meta and get told "Oh yes, I did see something about the Metaverse on CBS. Very nice, dear."