Saturday, May 07, 2011

Software???!!!

Early morning today, I had the privilage to visit a Israeli post office. I had read on the web that they allow opening a 'checking account' and a VISA debit card comes along with it. I was fortunate to be served by a lady who could speak broken English. After going through numerous forms in Hebrew, she asked me about my profession.

What do you do? - She was talking and typing on the computer at the same time.

"I am an Engineer".

"Ok, but what do you do?"

(I didn't want to describe gory details of 22nm or 14 nm semiconductor technology) so I told her", Software." That works best in Bangalore, by the way.

"Software?? What does it mean?," she paused typing and looked up.

"It's well - the computer..!"

"Ah yes. Now I get it."

I walked out thanking myself for not mentioning "semiconductor" word.
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4 comments:

Milind said...

haha..
i have a position which sometime back was called as Sr Hardware Engr..

Even educated people would ask me whether i worked in networking (LAN etc)
:)

Thankfully it got renamed to Sr VLSI Engr

2:42 PM
Shantanu Prabhudesai said...

Oh at least that's ok to digest since it's still technical - i had a similar experience where the guy thought i was working in a "hardware shop" where they sell nut-bolts and paints! But inspte of all that, we all still prefer to proudly call ourselves hardware guys :-)

1:36 PM
Shantanu Prabhudesai said...

Oh, at least that's ok to digest since it's still technical - i once had an experience where the guy thought that i worked at a "hardware shop" where they sell nut-bolts and paints! In spite of all these impressions, we still proudly call ourselves hardware engineers :-)

1:39 PM
Sagar said...

I also use same technique while introducing myself to any non-technical person. Otherwise most of them thinks me as "computer assembler" or "networking" person. :)

9:59 AM

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