@Taskerland Tellingly James is a designer and artist as much as a tech person.

It's one of the challenges when you find others with whom there is mutual intelligibility!

I am grateful when I speak with others, who tell me things such as: "grey, I didn't understand about 60% of the technobabble you just said."

Alas, not many individuals ever remind me of how confusing I may sound to others.

My ex-wife would get furious with me when I would use words she didn't understand. I grew up in a house hold where we had a full OED set and would spend a lot of time just flipping through the pages when I was a kid. So to me, looking up unknown terms in a lexicon or dictionary or whatever is just second nature. I am a polyglot and do such things constantly.

Yet, I do desire to be understood, just as I strive to understand others. I tend to accept the onus of doing my best to learn more; but attempting to adjust my own expressions so as to be better understood? Feels a lot more challenging.

I've also worked as a chef professionally, though I am vegan, so a little more niche. Having written as much, I have encountered some coworkers on occasion, who wouldn't document recipes with ingredient amounts. It's one thing if you're watching a YouTube video of comedian Nigel Ng playing his Uncle Roger character saying to cook: "with feeling" but if you're in a kitchen, shared by others, with customers, who expect some level of consistency? That doesn't do for a recipe that can be repeated. Such things are more like a magician's notes than particularly helpful.

I also find that "well paid" is rarely, if ever true when it comes to IT. I've had more than one job, where I was effectively making less than the minimum wage and on call 24x7. A horrid combination. I'm 50, and have never known a livable wage no more than 40 hour work week.

There's a term in Japanese ブラック企業「burakku kigyou」which loosely translates to: "Black Company" but is more or less representative of illegal business practices. That encompasses, almost the entirety of my employers throughout my career history. Though there have been, rarely, exceptions. Once I even worked for a place where I was part of a union! Once that job lasted a few months.

Out of decades of working. I was forced to work, unpaid, as a minor as well. Writing Excel macros and similar BS for my dad under threat of not having a roof over my head if I didn't do his bidding.

"well paid"? Maybe Bill Gates broligarch billionaires who plagiarize others' creations? But I wouldn't really call that honest.

But gosh, can I ever do some things in IT that most cannot comprehend with our "Martian" as you phrase it. ;-/

CC: @Taskerland@dice.camp

@SJohnRoss@dice.camp @Taskerland@dice.camp I needed to speak to a plumber about irrigation for a large garden a few years ago, and yeah. Whole new world of plumbing knowledge and terminology I didn't understand layered on top of horticultural terminology I didn't understand.​

@Taskerland @SJohnRoss "It's a thing grandad's car had. Why are you crying?"

S. John Ross Indeed. There is, of course, a relevant XKCD for this.

@Taskerland pinned/evergreen post

@SJohnRoss @Taskerland
I'm an IT person who never learned to speak Martian well. It's a weird spot to be in. I can do the work. I can explain it in mostly lay terms. I can't explain it in Martian. Thank cats people are willing to listen to me to realize I do know it.

@Taskerland @vdonnut I hosted and did my own blog (wordpress, not from scratch) for a couple of years in 2011 and even I have no idea what the hell these kind of posts are talking about within a couple of sentences

@Taskerland 100%. I'm an IT professional and could host a lot of things myself but the last thing I want to do is more work in my off time. No way I'm going to try and convince anyone outside of the field to do that shit.