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Comment by im_down_w_otp | Hacker News Reader

What I actually do: "I work on safety-critical software for autonomous vehicles."

What I tell people: "I make websites."

Because what I've learned over the years is that there's no faster way to kill a dinner conversation than explain any part of what I actually do.

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During college I got an internship at one institution that is better known for the general public as the provider of weather prediction to my country, although I had colleagues working on that department, I was in a completely different area.

When christmas came, my mother was proud telling my relatives that I was interning on that place, therefore, for a couple days after, all they asked was about the weather.

When I got tired, I started talking about what I really did, math + math + math translated to code, not a single line related to weather, they got bored pretty fast and I was fine with that.

This is why I love the valley; it’s possible to have dinners where people not only understand what the first one means, but are fascinated by it and would love to talk about it.

On the flip side the valley gets annoying because work is all anybody talks about outside of work.

I think most normal folks would be able to understand "I build software to improve the safety of self-driving cars."

You would think so, but still... <crickets />. It was one, admittedly very minor, thing I was kind of excited about when I got into it compared to my prior jobs in various shapes of distributed systems development (FinTech, ML, databases, etc).

I figured, "Well almost everybody has a car, and this kind of thing is in the news a lot these days, and it's pretty sci-fi-y, so unlike everything else I've ever done... surely self-driving cars won't be a thing where I'm at a table surrounded by blank stares... surely."

Sadly, no. "I make websites." works a lot better because then people just start talking about random stuff they do on the Internet and things carry right along.

  > Sadly, no. "I make websites." works a lot better because then people
  > just start talking about random stuff they do on the Internet and things
  > carry right along.

This is the heart of conversational wisdom which is that in group conversations people don't usually want to know the details of one person. Rather, in group conversations each member of the group wants a chance to contribute something to the conversation and offering someting about yourself in terms that each member of the group can relate to is to advance the group conversation.

If the group conversation breaks out into smaller conversations, then greater detail might be warranted depending on the inclination and knowledgeability of the participants. But it's a balancing act.

So I don't think it's "Sadly, no" at all. It's actually great that you can say something to which people can relate.

As a math grad student, I really feel you on the crickets thing. My research is some obscure application of agebraic topology to general relativity.

Over the years I've played with all kinds of ways to relate what I do to people. These days I kind of feel that the storytelling is more important than accurately describing my research. So instead of answering with some compact three-sentence explanation, I'll take the opportunity to start telling stories about space and the mysteries of the universe.

I'm not sure people walk away with an understanding of what I do in any useful sense, but the conversations are often fun and I feel like they at least understand how I feel about my research.

FWIW, you job sounds pretty badass to me. :)

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