I'm a consultant, I work with all kinds of people. The number one skill required is communication, and learning to communicate with new teams, new people, new companies. All of them have different ways to communicate. Many of them use emojis, not all, but I also work with lots of different countries.

I also do quite a bit of work in the gaming community which has its own custom emoji culture, a different beast altogether.

People communicate outside of work; a heart to a loved one, my dad using a car emoji in the family group chat to indicate he is driving home from work, a thumbs-up when someone in a friend group suggest going to a movie

Are you, like probably 95% of us on this forum working in tech?

Edit: Yup, you're a techie. Hint: you live in a bubble.