More Than Your Job Title: Finding Identity

You Are Not Your Job Title: Reclaiming Your Identity in a Work-Obsessed World

The cocktail party. The networking event. The first day at a new job. Someone approaches with a smile and the inevitable question: “So, what do you do?”

Not “What makes you come alive?” Not “What keeps you awake at night?” Not even “What do you care about?” Just: “What do you do?”—as if your job title contains the entire map of your soul.

We’ve turned human beings into human doings. In the space of one question, we’ve reduced the infinite complexity of a person’s existence to their economic function. We meet Shakespeare and ask if he’s in marketing. We encounter Einstein and wonder about his quarterly targets.

This question reveals our deepest cultural sickness: we’ve confused productivity with identity, accomplishment with worth, salary with soul. We live in a civilization that has forgotten the difference between what someone does for money and who someone is as a person.

But here’s the trap—it’s not just politeness. It’s a mutual protection racket. “What do you do?” is safer than “Who are you?” because it keeps the conversation in the shallow end where nobody has to risk drowning in actual human complexity.

When you ask what someone does, you get a neat category: lawyer, teacher, consultant, unemployed. Easy to file away, easy to make assumptions about, easy to decide how much respect they deserve based on societal hierarchies we pretend we don’t believe in but absolutely do.

But “Who are you?” That’s chaos. That’s someone telling you they’re a mother who dreams of being an artist, or an accountant who writes poetry, or a CEO who feels like they’re failing at everything that actually matters. That’s messiness you can’t categorize or judge or dismiss with a knowing nod.

We ask “what do you do” because we’ve been trained to see each other as economic units rather than human beings. The question sorts people into useful (can they help my career?) and irrelevant (do they matter to my advancement?). It’s networking disguised as conversation.

The cruelest part? Many people have learned to introduce themselves through their jobs because that’s the only version of themselves they think is acceptable. “I’m just a stay-at-home mom” or “I’m just a cashier”—the word “just” doing the violent work of self-erasure.

We’ve created a world where your value is determined by your job title, your salary, your productivity metrics. Where children learn to answer “What do you want to be when you grow up?” instead of “Who do you want to become?” Where retirement feels like death because we’ve forgotten who we are when we’re not what we do.

But imagine if we asked different questions. “What brings you joy?” “What are you learning about yourself?” “What would you do if money wasn’t a factor?” Imagine if we were curious about people’s dreams, struggles, passions, fears—the actual content of their inner lives.

The question “Who are you?” is dangerous because it demands that both people show up as whole human beings rather than professional profiles. It requires us to see each other as complex, contradictory, evolving creatures rather than walking LinkedIn profiles.

Maybe the reason we avoid “Who are you?” is because we’re terrified of the question ourselves. Because if our identity is so wrapped up in what we do for work, then who the hell are we when we’re not doing it?

Next time someone asks what you do, try this: “I’m someone who happens to work as a [job title], but what I really am is…” and see what comes after. See if you remember who you are beneath what you do.

See if they remember too.