3 days ago I posted a poll on Hacker News and asked this question:
How do you describe yourself? Programmer, software engineer, developer, coder, computer scientist, .. ?
The reason why I asked is because when a non-technical person asks what I do, I often don’t know which word to use.
My biggest pet peeve, which perhaps is my own bias is that when someone says “programmer”, I take it that they pretty much know how to use an if statement, loops, call functions, but that’s it. You can hire people on Rentacoder and elance with that skillset for < US $10 an hour. I guess "programmer" doesn't capture the bulk of the value of someone with a computer science background. But maybe there's my problem. Non-techies probably equate Computer Science with just programming anyway.
Thus I decided to ask the good folks on Hacker News. Out of the entire thread there, I liked Mahmud’s answer the best.
By the time the career question comes up I have already asked them about theirs, shared with them what I know about it, and “thought out loud” about what I think is most difficult/interesting/new about their industry, that they think I am a peer or an insider.
We all know something about every industry and every line of work, or at least have the interest to inquire about it (if not for anything else, because we’re completely ignorant of it.)
Share what you know, show interest, and shut up.Allow people to see you under their own favorite lights. If you can hold a conversation with a scientist just fine, no need to tell him you’re an entrepreneur. And if a business man likes your management acumen and eye for the market, no need to call yourself a code-monkey. You’re all of the above, but keep the conversation at their pace, ask questions from most general to more specific, and let them categorize you through the course of a mutually comforting conversation.
This is why you don’t jump into an elevator pitch with everyone you meet, just because you got an idea and a GoDaddy domain.
The multiple choice options were:
- Software engineer
- Software developer
- Developer
- Engineer
- Coder
- Programmer
- Computer scientist
- Other
The results are in. Out of 794 votes:
Top result: Programmer
Second result: Software Developer
Third result: Software Engineer
Honorary mention: Developer (almost as frequent as “Software Engineer”)
If anyone is interested in parsing out the various “other” data, here’s the data dump.