I follow an informal rule of "never be the first person in a conversation to bring up work/career" (or weather, or family/kids).

If you play the rule like a game, it's kind of fun.

After starting with a personal trainer, I made it 10 sessions (10 hours) of small talk before he finally asked me something that led to a conversation about work.

It's a lot more challenging (but way more rewarding I find) to initiate conversation topics relevant to the context you're meeting the person in, and waiting for the other person to bring up the boilerplate conversation topics if it's important to them.

That is horrible. Conversations are most easy to start around weather, work, and family. (Travel, where you live, hobbies, and sport are most of the rest.)

you don't help anyone avoiding conversation.

That’s why it’s a game.

If I run out of interesting conversation starters, I default to weather/work/family and carry on.

I simply prefer to start with unique/contextual topics first.

that makes sense.

bluGill: "how is your family" $another-guy: oh, still dead after that train crash. or bluGill : "what do you do for work" $another-girl: why are you asking? Do you have a problem with that? ... fun conversations indeed.

I don’t understand what you’re trying to communicate.

I don’t have a problem with those questions. I do have a problem with getting bored at social events by boring boilerplate conversation, and I shared my strategy for having interesting conversations.

I’m happy to debate you if you clearly state a viewpoint.

I hate asking people what they do, but it's hard to know ahead of time what questions will get an excited answer, so it's sort of a fall back.

I feel like asking 'what brought you to <city>?' is a framing that doesn't box them in so much, they can respond with non-work interests or volunteer about what they do if they want

"What you do" seems more sympathetic than "who you are" and "who you know". American culture might be more meritocratic at a basic level.

I would say it's pretty rare to hear, "What do you do?" as a first introduction in the wild in America.

"How do you know x?" is in fact much more common.

it depends on where you live in america too. in somewhere like seattle everyone has to have a what’s your job and title dick waving contest

i live in a more laid back city now and i have friends where i still have no idea what they do for work

I'm from America and I also dislike it because it's usually a rude question often used by small-minded people to pigeonhole others into presumptive stereotypes or by people who don't put much thought into substantive or genuine conversation. It's also sometimes a passive-aggressive question really asking "How much do you make?" by cheap materialists.

Alternatives:

"What do you spend time on that you enjoy?"

"How or where did you meet 'x'?"

"What's the most interesting, counterintuitive thing you've learned recently?"

[Insert situational-led curious question here.]

What about it don’t you understand?

You can never get into any kind of detail with people from a different career path.

Like, "I'm a software engineer" is the most people understand. If I say "I write tests for the GPU factory to improve semiconductor yield and screen parts" then launch into something about product binning, there's only 1% of people who'll be interested. The typical marketing person or government bureaucrat won't care.

Meanwhile "how do you know x" launches into a story about 'x', a person we both know and care about. Then we can swap stories.

I 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.

What? I get so much joy out of learning the details of careers of people in different industries than me. I had an hourlong conversation with someone the other day who is in the high-end rug business…where he sources from, how he deals with difficult clientele, how he gets new leads, what it’s like visiting the remote villages where the rugs are made, etc. And another one with a hedge fund quant, and a separate one with a professional dancer. These are some of my favorite conversations to have with people.

How can you possibly not understand? You really are flummoxed about people who devote themselves to supporting their families economically and thus invest great energy into that pursuit?

That’s like going to the Olympic Village, among all the athletes, and being unable to understand why athletes ask each other “What’s your sport?” They are in the Olympics, man! They put everything into getting there. Ask them about their obsession, for crying out loud.

And ask me about how I am trying to make it in the world. I am happy to talk about it! Why aren’t you?

How are those the same? You're comparing exclusively star athletes and the general public - many of whom might have jobs in fields not of their choosing, be underpaid, doing grunt work, etc. It's rare to have a high paying, interesting job with good working environment. As another commenter mentioned, it can devolve into status games as well, which is off-putting.

On the Internet, where passive aggressive behaviors reign supreme, "I don't understand" is code for "I dislike"

The people that say it about mundane things like asking what someone does for a living, know full well why people ask it.