Game Dev here. More specifically, audio director. Used to be tech sound designer and composer. I find it hard to explain even over here, among the geeks like me.

I’m a public servant, so while it’s easy to tell people I work for The Government, it’s a lot harder to explain what I do. My job is a mish-mash of like three different roles in one of the least popular departments. When people ask, I say I work for (our version of) the DMV, and that’s usually good enough.

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Mine is usually pretty simple to explain. I do CNC, which is cutting objecting/materials into useful shapes using big machines.

Reading the first several posts… Is everyone here in IT? 🤣🤣

Nope. I keep the internet working.

People seem happy when I say that. Unless my internet at home craps out and my wife makes a cheeky joke about it.

I’m a software developer. My default explanation to people who don’t know what that means is, “I whisper to computers, and sometimes they do what I ask”.

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No.
“I keep the computer systems running at the local newspaper, and prevent it from getting hacked” is pretty straightforward.
It provides enough to latch on to for normie small talk.
And I can dose the tech talk based on what questions I get back.

Explaining that I’m a systems and infrastructure admin is actually easier for me than explaining my organization to people lol. Because it’s a local government agency that provides services to school districts, and people don’t really know we exist if they aren’t a district staff member themselves (and even then sometimes they don’t know!), and we’re a bit niche in our specific services, I usually just end up saying “school ISP” despite that only being a small part of it. 😂

My friend had this problem, I knew him for a while and couldn’t figure it out. I believe he was a “Transpondster”.

I have two ways of explaining. The first one is just saying “I work with data” followed by some hand waving and shrugging.
The other is where I really go into detail and explain everything. Going gaga over some minute aspect that I find awesome but couldn’t even interest one of my coworkers.
Neither seems to really work, but I don’t get follow up questions which suits me just fine :)

Yes, definitely. It’s easier now that I’m part of operational support and can oversimplify it by referring to myself as an IT dude, but back when I was part of the field rotation, when I tried to sum up what “offshore seismic survey technician” is, I was sometimes asked “so, how’s it like working on an oil rig?”.
I wouldn’t know, I’ve never been on one. I’ve been on ships around them, but never on the rigs themselves.

I’m a florist. People understand what I do, they usually just don’t think it’s worth doing or paying me for my labor.

I don’t have trouble explaining. I keep it high level and generic because 99 times out of 100, people are just making small talk and want to know just enough about you to categorize you.