What's something people incorrectly assume about your line of work and/or hobby?

Therapists are not "always analysing" you.

Seriously, you gotta pay me before I'll spend the energy to do that

Just because I am in IT doesn't mean I can hack your taxes away, and if I could, I wouldn't because I like my freedom

Your business degree does not make you an industrial engineer, you don't even fucking understand why I keep crusading against variance!

That I can make the band suck less. Sure, there’s something to be said about polishing a shit... But ultimately, it’s shit in>shit out. Your guitar doesn’t sound like ass because of the EQ; it sounds like ass because the guitarist had nine beers before he even walked on stage, and he can’t stay on beat to save his goddamned life.

Psychoacoustics is a fascinating subject. Just like placebo, people will fool themselves into thinking that something sounds good or bad, simply because they want it to. I always keep a DFA fader on my console, for when random people walk up and have suggestions. I make an adjustment to the DFA fader, they smile and nod to themselves, and then walk away. DFA means “Does Fuck All”. It’s literally a fader that isn’t doing anything at all. It’s not in the mix, it’s not in the monitors. It’s just a spare fader. But by adjusting the DFA, audience members will feel like I took them seriously, and they’ll placebo themselves into thinking that I took their advice.

To be clear, not all audience advice is bad advice. But for every “it’s too loud” complaint, you’ll inevitably get an equal and opposite “it’s too quiet”. There’s a reason music festivals have their audio console fenced off with a very wide perimeter. It’s specifically so drunken audience members can’t just saunter up and start yelling suggestions. That shit is distracting and 99% of the time is entirely unproductive.

That management and leadership are smart, visionary, people without whom everything would fall apart.

It doesn't matter what my line of work is. Management is mostly out of touch idiots everywhere.

"We need to redesign the web page to be more modern! Get me a big hero image and an image carousel!"

"Customers are complaining about how they can't save their search settings. Maybe we should do something about that?"

"No that's not a priority"

I'm a physical substation designer, and people ask me if I can do electrician stuff.

No, I can't, and don't ask me anything about electricity, thanks.

I just had to google what a substation was. My initial guess was that you made subways lol.

I’m a general contractor, and I think a lot of my customers assume I know everything about construction work - that whenever I’m doing something, it’s something I’ve done dozens of times before. But quite often, that’s not the case. Sometimes, all I know about the task at hand comes from a YouTube video I watched the night before, or I’m just following the manufacturer’s instructions step by step.

People don’t realize how often I’m just winging it and hoping it turns out fine. The fact that someone hires me usually means they know even less about the job than I do, which creates the illusion of much greater expertise. But in reality, the main difference between me and them often just boils down to the fact that I'm not afraid to try.

And that you have the experience of trying
- In many cases, yes - but my work also involves a lot of things that I’m doing for the very first time.

That I smoke all day, everyday. I don't. I read reports, I check environmental variable, I take readings from and make adjustments to tanks, I instruct people on how to prune and I sob over the new room of completely bare ones because nobody fucking listens to me.

I'm a game designer. Most people have a very hard time understanding what I do

What I've learned from this thread is you can fix my laptop

People always assume I want to turn my hobby into a job. I love to bake - it helps me de-stress from my job. If I made it my job, I wouldn't have something to help me de-stress anymore. I make enough money; I don't need to extract the joy from everything in my life for the sake of making more money.

Hussle culture is damned annoying

Someone glimpses Dark Theme enabled Outlook with custom rules to auto sort email and suddenly you're Neo and can undo longstanding problems caused by nepo IT hires even though you're a plant operator like them with the same user privileges.

I work in IT (Sysadmin). "Oh, you fix computers? Can you look at my laptop?"

I've had to be very direct with my family that I don't fix computers (anymore, I used to do remote and hands on helldesk), I fix the deeper kind of stuff that keeps email working for an entire company, or makes sure new hires can log in to work stuff.
- I'm an IT manager and today I had the director of HR bring me her new iphone asking if I can help her set it up. Um, no... first, that isn't my job, and second, I have no idea how to setup an iphone. I assume it's an easy process but I've never done it before and have more pressing matters to attend to instead of fiddling with her new phone.
“I’d be glad to, which UNIX do you use on it?” generally stops that conversation from progressing.
- I wish. When I tell people I've been exclusively using Linux for more than 10 years they give me a blank look then repeat the question.

"oh wow your photography is so nice what camera do you use?"

._. photography is 80% skill and 20% gear and yet, i never get asked "what technique did you use?", it's always about the camera i use, as if this entry level DSLR is framing and shooting on its own

What techniques do you use?
- oh various ones! what i pick always depends on the lighting conditions, if the subject is stationary or moving, and the vibe i want for the photo.
  i definitely prefer single thought out takes rather than rapid fire 20 photos with hope that one of them is the one (i don't shoot sports often). And overall i really like framing things with the foreground to give a feeling of depth to the photo. In post processing i focus on making the photos look like i remember them to have been, coloured by memory and all that, rather than try to recreate realism 1:1. i'm being kinda vague but my photos are mostly on my PC and i use lemmy on mobile so can't point to anything more specific, and tbf, a lot of my best takes are just patience and or luck
  above all though, i like experimenting with how i shoot or edit :)
  thanks for asking <3
I took this photo with my iPhone 12 mini:
https://metapixl.com/p/Stoy/797570781570361213
It is a fantastic photo, I use it as my current lockscreen.
This photo was taken with my Lumix S5
https://metapixl.com/p/Stoy/795407386229307789
They are two very different photos, I hesitate to rank them in terms of how good they are.
A good camera gives the photographer more tools to get the photo they want, but you still need skills and experience to take good photos.

I'm an antenna engineer and anyone who vaguely knows what that means asks if I'm a ham radio operator. Nope.

It's frugal.

... It's not. Yarn is expensive as hell, even more so if you want any type of durability or wearability or comfort.

It’s crazy – I have a really nice oversized jumper, and people who’ve known I knit have asked if I made it. Lol no, it would have cost like 10 times more. I bought it on sale (it’s machine made).
The same goes for many handcrafts. Have you seen the cost of one teeny skein of embroidery ribbon? And I always feel a bit sad when I see hand crocheted tablecloths or large cross stitch pieces at thrift shops for almost nothing. Someone spent hundreds of hours on that, and it’s being sold for the price of like 3 tiny skeins of floss.

As a teacher: I don't get summers off.

As a waitress: Carrying food or drinks to the table is the least significant part of the job.

You don't? I dated the teacher across the street and she partied all summer. Yes, they stop later and start sooner than when the kids do.
- As a junior teacher, I taught summer school. The more senior teachers were doing continuing education. We all made lesson plans, prepared materials, and had mandatory professional development seminars.

QA tests software.
QA reports issue with software.
Developers review issue report.
"Will Not Fix", "Works As Designed", "Cannot Reproduce", "Works on my machine"

End Users: "This software is buggy, their QA must suck!"

As a developer I cherish Q/A and dread anytime they would start typing something into Teams.

I do not actually have keys to anything, nor am I allowed to wear headphones.

(Janitor)

Why no headphones? Seems like that would make the job more enjoyable.
- ...that's why.
  /s it's a safety issue, kitchen workers aren't allowed to use them either

I'm a web developer. People assume the following:

I'm an expert with operating systems.
I'm good with math.
I eat junk food and drink energy drinks/soda.
I'm a proponent and consumer of all new technologies.
I like (insert) TV, Movie, or Anime.

I assume you wear programmer socks. DM pics?
- I wear black GOLDTOE socks or leather sandals.
Hey bro, can you hack my ex GFs Facebook?
- Yeah, by social engineering. You would probably be better at that than myself though since you can get a girlfriend.
I'm knowledgeable about operating systems.
I'm good with math.
I eat junk food and drink energy drinks/soda.
I read about new techniques but am very wary of heavily marketed stuff.
I read a ton of Asian comics.
People assume that I know how to do webpages, they don't know what a web developer is. No, I don't know l. Well barely but not really, I'm a data engineer goddammit.

No one knows the difference between fire eating and fire breathing. Everyone asks me for fire breathing lessons. I don't fire breathe. I also highly advise against it.

That I can fix their computer or home network.

Sorry, Bubba, if your router costs less than my PC, there's not much I can do. Same answer if your PC costs less than my car.

Also, I haven't been good at troubleshooting windows (to the extent that is at all possible) since Tobey was Spiderman.

People assume that because I'm into technology that I can unlock ~~stolen~~ phones or do XYZ whatever with their Facebook/Twitter/Instagram accounts or whatever. One, I don't touch stolen devices. Two, I don't have any accounts with any of those sort of services, and ain't about to start one to learn the ins and outs for other people.

I work with embedded programming. I am not the first person you should ask to make a website for you...

Can you make me a website that runs on my microwave?