alt Hacker NewsI love talking to people about their work, especially if it's a field I know nothing about. People spend eight hours a day doing something, they have a lot of knowledge about it.
When it's a job that's opaque to me, I like asking "What's a typical day for you like at work?"
Only about 1-in-10 people have even heard of my company (AMD). Most that have are businesspeople/investors/tech workers. That is slowly changing but it is difficult to explain what segment of the economy I work in.
About 30% of Canada are in the public sector. There aren't enough jobs in the private sector, so we hire many people to reduce the unemployment rate.
Asking such a person "what's a typical day for you like at work?" would be "writing/approving briefing notes/decks". Generally, you'd ask what ministry they're in and go over the org chart. You can spend about 20 minutes figuring out the exact agency/ministry/division they work in relative to yours, then gossip about name changes or re-orgs.
Unfortunately, that only works if you're also a public sector worker.
Also, youth unemployment rate in Canada is about 15% right now. Even bringing up the subject of jobs makes people in my age group uncomfortable since you're forcing them to admit they're unemployed. It's too risky a question.