Comment by lucianbr
2 days ago
What is the point of the "I'm Marcus" part of your introduction? Reading your post I get the impression it has zero value, or at least you think so.
> Hi, I'm Marcus
> What do you do Marcus
> I'm on a break now, but I used to be a director of IT
Is this really difficult? Seems really easy, and I was never a director of anything. Maybe that's the problem.
For some people, their work/job is just such a big part of their identity, that for them this is a problem. That is I guess the point the person you were replying to was trying to make.
It's also not really weird for a job to become such a big part of your identity, when people spend most of their time at work or at home thinking about their work.
A couple years ago a friend of mine mentioned that he had known another mutual friend of ours for many years, much longer than I would have guessed. I asked him "what does he do?" and he thought for a moment before saying "you know ... I have no idea, it has never come up".
Definitely one of his more interesting qualities.
I don't know if this is acceptable in the US, but I always found it distasteful when people ask about your job 30 seconds into meeting you. I think it's much more polite to talk about generic stuff until jobs or skills come up naturally. Sometimes, they just never do, and that's fine. Need to know!
>For some people, their work/job is just such a big part of their identity, that for them this is a problem.
That's only 1/2 of the dynamic. People also like to assign an identity to others.
For example, if I say, "I'm semi-retired." ... the follow-up question is always "Oh, so what did you do before that?" ... which is polite coded-speak for, "Did you inherit money or what work did you do for money that put you in the position to do that?"
People are naturally curious about your rough level of success, wealth, expertise, etc. Having a "no identity" stance isn't really a satisfactory answer for many listeners. They want to know more.
EDIT to replies: I do understand the harmless "small talk" aspect. I should've added more to re-emphasize the "people assigning identity" aspect.
Once I reply to the followup question with "Oh, I used to do consulting for finance" what then happens is others then introduce me as "And this is jasode -- he was a consultant for X". My ex-consultant life that I last did over 15 years ago is now part of a tagline/subheading associated with my name even though I never intended it.
The point is other people have this irresistible urge to "fill in the blank" with an identity -- especially an identity that is tied to how one earned money. I'm not complaining about this and it's just an observation of what humans naturally do.
It's also a low risk topic that can generate lots of follow up questions. It's regular small talk. Also, people here seem to downplay it, but doesn't it tell you a lot about a person what they do roughly half of their waking time? What they chose to do with their life? Sure, you're not your job or your career, but it's also a very normal part about getting to know someone and I'm not sure equating it to some way of gauging success levels is necessarily to right way to think about it.
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It is not just about assigning identity to others.
I am probing for topics of mutual interest, or topics that make other people passionate, to learn more about them generally.
In some people, this is completely orthogonal to their careers, but most of the time, there is an overlap. Like, I haven't yet met a railway engineer who wasn't a raging railway nerd at the same time.
> People are naturally curious about your rough level of success, wealth, expertise, etc.
I definitely find this more true in some cultures. e.g. silicon valley, it seems people want to know where you're at on the "hierarchy". Many parts of Asia too, you get treated differently if you're a low level worker, regular worker, executive etc.
Well, the "I'm Marcus" part is saying "I would like you to call me Marcus" I guess.
You're right, it is easy to say. But there's an identity and professional pride and all sorts of stuff wrapped up in the job title that isn't so easy to let go of.
It also leads on to questions like "and what are you doing now?" which get to "I'm lazing around doing nothing because my mental health took a hammering while I was IT Director", and so on. It's all so much easier and tidier with the job title.
Sounds really sad. I am not a director of anything, I probably make almost nothing compared to you, and yet I know who I am outside of my job. I have friends who value who I am, regardless of my job or even between jobs. I would not trade places with you for all the money in the world. I would not have any use for all that money then.
It's like when people say their pronouns, but for nouns.