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

[hasufin.livejournal.com]

When I was in college, I would sometimes be asked what I was studying, and when I would answer "Oh, I'm studying computer science." the asker would recoil in fear: I had just divulged that I was a member of that esoteric priesthood, the wizards who understood computers, and of course all computer people were hackers, so they had to fear me lest I break into their bank accounts and steal their money and all sorts of ridiculous things.

That fear is mostly gone now. Computer folks are just another kind of nerdy engineer-type, though with a bit more money and style than most. But, ultimately, those who study computers are still outside of the realm in which normal people operate. For someone like me, I can fully understand what you do (though not by any means how you do it), but to anyone outside the field, you're likely to not get any farther than "I work with computers".