I was explaining to my mom how my company is in need of developers and how we'll need more of them in the future - to which she replied:

"oh... what are you going to do? You can't live without a job!"

- erm? What?

"Well - you're not smart like those guys. You'll probably get fired now."

- Wtf mom!? I'm a friggin lead dev and i've been a developer for like 10 years now!? 😳

*silence* "is that what you've been doing? I thought you just kept clicking on stuff"

Profession: Stuff clicker

I feel your pain. Until I explained to my dad and mum what I did they just called me a button puncher. A FRIGGING BUTTON PUNCHER!!!

@merlindiavova suddenly i had the image of homer simpson punchng that single button the whole day 😂

@Skipp Doh! 😂

"You are not smart like those guys" dude... What the fuck, that's way too harsh a thing to say to your kid. And she even says you will probably get fired ? If my mother told me that I wouldn't talk to her for a very long time holy shit.

Ah supportive parents. If only we could get some... I've been programming for forty years and my parents still have no idea what it is I actually do for a living. I would have got more respect if I'd turned to prostitution. Or politics which is much the same thing and better paid

As I posted in another rant, i recently quit my job.
My mom got quite a bit of a panic attack; how am I going to live without a job??
Then I told her, i have 3 very good job offers on my desk where I just need to sign.
I don't think they realize how high the demand in (good) developers is...

my in laws were shocked when I up and quit my job one time. I explained why and they were understanding but concerned that I didn't have another job lined up. I uploaded my updated resume and their jaws dropped as the recruiter calls came for in.
Next time I found myself they simply said "that's exciting! Maybe you'll get another pay increase like last time".
Yea... probably.

I think that's lovely. My mother doesn't understand either what I do for a living. She thinks I am drawing buttons and do something with geometry on phones (I'm Android Engineer + embedded). But I smile whenever she tries to understand and is concerned about stuff she heard on TV about online frauds. She says something like:" be careful, I heard that on that thing... yeah, the Internet, people can steal your money. I know that you work with internet... It's dangerous ".

My father was an Electronics Engineer so it's easier to explain but sometimes not as easy as you would think.

They are your parents. Reassure them and smile. Although your adult, they still don't get it (and never will for 100%).

My parents are like children but I am not upset at all. They care and don't really understand what a senior engineer means.

Oh, i did not mean to make this rant sound negative. @shasha i know they're concerned and i too find it funny when they try to tackle anything IT 😀

Try to understand parents come from a very slow moving world and things stayed constant. Our always changing high stress and heavy workload environments, scare the shit out of them and they really don't understand it.

I was developing games and my mom while very supportive told me to get a job you can't draw pictures all day... I then told her people pay a lot of money for my 'pictures'

In all my dev positions senior management doesn't even know what we really do, just that if you don't have us or IT nothing works.

Explaining what you do often will just bore everyone to death and explaining it works with magic has often just simplified my life.

I trust them to do their job and they trust me to do mine.

I am fortunate that my company sees the value provided by our team. Even though we are currently working on projects that have yet to yield significant income.