I (programmer and team leader) get requests from the king (management and project manager) and pass them to the peasants (code monkeys), clean after their shit (QA and code review). I get peanuts in return while the king keep most of the loot.
Bob: “why can’t the king just ask the peasants directly?”
I’M A PEOPLE PERSON!!!
I’M A PEASANT PERSON, WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU NOBLES, WHY CAN’T YOU UNDERSTAND THAT
The project manager is your peer, not your king.
It all depends on the project and the team. On some, you work with and along the PM and all is good, and other times you get dictated unconnected requests that you need to fight or ignore.
Thankfully I’ve only ever worked in the first environment.
Ah, so you’re the
grand viziercourt jester.That definitely define my everyday job experience.
I get peanuts in return while the king keep most of the loot.
Well, at least this part hasn’t changed.
I’m a chemist, so I’d just tell them that I’m an alchemist.
Ooh, good idea. I’m an alprogrammer. Or is it alware algineer?
So close, yet so very wrong.
Apothecary might be better.
To be honest you might get away with moving the term chemistry forward a couple of decades
Beginning around 1720, a rigid distinction began to be drawn for the first time between “alchemy” and “chemistry”.[104][105] By the 1740s, “alchemy” was now restricted to the realm of gold making, leading to the popular belief that alchemists were charlatans, and the tradition itself nothing more than a fraud.[102][105]
My career hasn’t changed much since the 1700s, I’m a winemaker. Our company doesn’t have a vineyard we buy grapes from farmers, so our winery is in the city not some villa on the hill. At first glance our warehouse full of barrels is pretty similar to an old school winery. I could show my counterpart advances we have made in automation, like our bottling line or the giant industrial press, and I bet they’d get a kick out of moving stacks of barrels or fermentation tanks with a forklift. Using food grade plastic instead of wood makes cleaning easier, and our pump is electric not hand driven, but ultimately little has changed. Our wine lab is pretty high tech and probably the main exception, I dont think they tested for things like acidity and sulfur levels until the industrial revolution. I was literally just talking about this yesterday with my coworker. We had the bottling line out in the yard and we were sanitizing it by pumping boiling water through it with a diesel powered compressor. My contemporary may not understand sanitizing, or the equipment we used to do it, but he would easily understand the bottler and the importance of keeping it clean. I would love to share a few bottles of modern wine with a pre industrial master and vice versa.
I barely try to explain my job to people today, particularly family.
i’m teaching silicon rocks how to think
Merchants have become so powerful that I, a serf, have been taught number solely to account for every penny they make. For this, I’m allowed to live an okay life. I do it with magic (Excel) because they are so big and don’t want to hire many of me. They still act like the Dutch and East India Companies, with slightly fewer atrocities.
I think my job would be understandable at a basic level. My job involves healthcare, which has massively changed since the 1700s, but the basics are still there and would likely make sense to people.
I look at organs to find and document disease.
A witch!
Let’s toss them in a lake! If they die they weren’t a witch! If they don’t… We then know they are a witch!
Either way… Huzzah!
Ah, a barber!
Anatomical pathologist
Close! But I don’t have big enough brains or the paycheck to match lol. You could think of me as a glorified human butcher…far more crude than a surgeon. The pathologist gets the end result after all the blood and guts are out of the way haha. (Unless you’re a forensic pathologist…they slug around in guts all day!)
How do you get into that line of work??? Not because I want to, just morbid curiosity. I’m too squeamish.
Haha. Believe me I actually used to be very squeamish as a child. I still am as an adult with certain things…I nope the hell out of there for human vomit (altho it weirdly doesn’t really bother me with dogs and cats).
Dunno how it went away…I guess just slowly over time as you get exposed to more and more things. Plus I work in an incredibly well ventilated space, which cuts the grossness factor of any of it down by like 95%. You’d be surprised at how much smell influences your idea of “gross”, at least for me. And then if I am a bit grossed out by something, I can freely comment on it and laugh about it with my coworkers because I don’t have to worry about sparing a patient’s feelings…I only get the organ. I had a brief period of time in school where I had autopsy training…man I could NOT stand the smell and I almost threw up before because I tried to toughen it up and breathe through my nose. Big mistake! Idk how anyone can get used to smells like that. Mouth breathing only for me in that environment.
Anyway, my role is played by different people with different educational backgrounds depending on what country/region you’re in. Here in the US, my job requires a 4 year bachelor’s degree in basically any field… doesn’t really matter as long as you take basic science classes. From there, you enter a specialized 2 year master’s degree program. It’s similar to physician assistant school except we are paid a bit less (but with the advantage of not having to see patients). Our first year is book learning and our second year is hands on training on how to perform the job.
I was always interested in medical things, but I always hated having to interact with patients. This also allows me to work with my hands and see first hand the actual effects of disease. Cancer is no longer some mysterious, nebulous concept. I can see it with my own two eyes and feel it with my hands. Plus the paycheck is pretty stellar imo…not a doctor salary or anything, but I’m living comfortable as a single adult.
If it at all seems interesting, I’d encourage you to try to investigate more. I am generally hesitant to say my exact job title in public for fear of being doxxed (it’s a small field), but I’m always happy to share more with anyone over a DM.
That was super fascinating! Thank you so much for taking the time to explain!
I’m a peasant just like you.
As a programmer, I’d just tell them “I configure contraptions to perform tasks for people”
Magic. Got it.
"Some other guys figured out how to trick rocks into doing stuff by putting lightning into them
I just write to the rocks instructions for how to do some work. I get paid for doing that."
“You know how clockwork automatons work?”
“No.”
“Me neither.”
Farmer. I operate big metal things that weigh as much as your village that sucks down every plant over an area the size of Lichtenstein, then produces enough grain to feed 1700s England for a decade.
Silicon techno wizard.
I make rocks solve repetitive problems faster than humans, and they can talk to each other anywhere in the world and group up to solve even more complex problems.
I get paid in pictures of cats.
I tell employers how to prevent their workers from getting killed, and of they don’t listen, I tell the government to make sure the employer can’t work like that.
And most of the workers find me annoying for it.
This is actually one of the things that would confuse a 1700 person the most. Why would the government care about the lives of workers?
HR?
Ouch. No, workplace safety
sorry, it was a bit low. Have a good day, safety man!
You absolutely do not have to answer. But do you work for OSHA?
I do workplace safety, just not in the US. So, kind of.
That’s awesome. Thanks for sharing!
I’m a literal wizard. I spend hours writing in an esoteric language known only by those who study it in order to bend the world to my will and make things happen as I wish it.
The structure of my magic spells determine what the outcomes will be, and things can get really strange if you mess up the syntax.
I C you.
C++
C++++ because I see sharp.
I C snakes
I take food from the baker and carry it to people’s homes directly in exchange for custom. We call it “being a delivery girl”. The amazing part is what the baker makes, it’s called “pizza”
most understandable I’ve seen yet
No, I’d just tell them I’m a wizard.
