What do I do for a living?

[foxgrrl]

A question I am frequently asked is: What do you do for a living?

I'll usually say something like I'm a malware analyst. — although that's an incomplete answer. And they'll say What's malware? And I'll try to explain it to them, but they're too impatient for more than a one sentence explanation. And so I say stuff about hacking and computer viruses and spam, in about two or three sentences, which don't penetrate their skull. (Since they didn't really want to know the answer, they were just making small talk.) And in frustration I'll say something like I break into computers for a living. And then they're like Oh! But that's not really what I do either. And If you've ever seen my CV, you'll note that I do a lot of different, hard-to-explain things. Like Reverse engineering, exploit development, vulnerability analysis, tool development, and even some QA work (tracking down the root cause of the really hard bugs).

The only really succinct response I've come up with is that I stare at the 1's and 0's, and explain what's going on in English. (Or that I'm just really smart at people.)

Comments

[hep.livejournal.com]

when did we stop calling this security r&d? you do security r&d. that's what that job has always been called, since i had it in the 1990s.

[baxil.livejournal.com]

I agree. Seems to me that the simplest just-making-conversation answer is: "I work in [computer] network security."

[hep.livejournal.com]

computer research scientist always had a nice ring too. or the old stand by COMPUTRONICS EXPERT.

[yetanotherbob.livejournal.com]

"You ever seen Tron? It's like that. I defeat viruses using a frisbee." There you go.

[anaisdjuna.livejournal.com]

HOT!

[tracerj.livejournal.com]

Very much agreed. In fact, I think that having such a disc strapped to one's back should be a requirement for that sort of position. *sagenod*