Today a nine-year-old asked me what I do. That question has been a tough one over the last seven years since I did hundreds of little jobs all rolled together. I could not even say that I was working toward a single purpose. About the best I could do is, “I try to increase sales and save the company money while trying to make all the people happy all the time.” But by the time I said all that, I had abstracted my job to the point where I was not really saying much. After all, isn’t that what the whole company does? What small piece of that big puzzle did I really do? I guess I just did all the pieces nobody else wanted to.
Well things have gotten to be a bit easier lately as a greater percentage of my work has involved application development. I have been programing for about 15 years but it has rarely been my primary function. Over the last several months I have started doing a lot of programming and plan do a lot more in the near future. Now I can just say that I am a programmer, or more accurately a Business Applications Developer.
But that still does not tell a nine-year-old what I do. Especially a nine-year-old that is not very familiar with computers. So I stood there talking to a blank stare for a few minutes until it finally hit me. “I am a teacher.” I teach computers how to analyze the past, predict the future, calculate costs and probabilities, plan and track projects, and do a bunch of other really cool things.
And now that I think about it that is what I have been doing for the last seven years. Almost every time I sent an email (and I have sent a bunch) I was teaching. When someone ask for information I went and got the answer then taught them how to get the answer on their own next time just in case I was not available. Of course some people never bothered to learn but I at least gave them the opportunity. Whenever someone wanted a report I made sure to give them more data than they could comprehend, but if they had time I was thrilled to show them how to find new and exciting trends. And part of building new applications was that I got to teach people how to use them and at the same time I got to teach them how to do a bunch other stuff with their computers.
So now when people ask what I do, I can tell them, “I teach computers how to work with people and people how to work with computers and with other people.”
What do you think?
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I like it. You have always been good at using your words to simplify difficult concepts. You understand them and can explain them to those who don’t without making the person seem dumb for asking.
That’s one of the things I love about you!