On The Clock: Why Modern Careers Are So Difficult to Explain --- More have jobs that didn't exist a generation ago, and even well-known professions are changing

 

“A list of the world's most misunderstood creatures includes sharks, bats and us -- at least when we talk about our careers.

 

LinkedIn estimates one in five Americans has a job that didn't exist in 2000. Many of the new titles aren't exactly self-explanatory.

 

Knowledge architects don't draw blueprints, conversation designers don't foster dialogue between people, and orchestration engineers don't work with musical instruments.

 

What do these people do? Their jobs all involve work with artificial-intelligence models. But mostly, they feel exasperated trying to explain their work, especially when sitting around the holiday dinner table with family.

 

Some of this disconnect is generational. But the struggle to articulate what we do for a living, and understand others' livelihoods, underscores a bigger shift: Jobs are getting more niche, and the fruits of our labor more abstract.

 

There are people with familiar titles whose duties are nothing like what we assume. I recently met a certified public accountant who has never prepared a tax return.

 

Some well-known fields have evolved to a point where certain roles within them are practically unrecognizable.

 

Still other jobs are highly visible, but many of us remain fuzzy on how they qualify as, well, jobs. Think of social-media influencers whose friends and family don't grasp the connection between having hordes of online followers and paying the bills.

 

"Roles may get more specialized as companies continue to invest in AI," says Dan Roth, LinkedIn's editor in chief. "We're already seeing new specialized leadership roles emerge, like workforce development manager and chief growth officer."

 

When someone asks Brad Peebles what he does for work, he privately debates whether to be specific or keep it simple. The technical version of his job is AI toxicology analyst -- the sort of title that makes even sober eyes glaze over at cocktail parties.

 

Basically he uses artificial intelligence to help assess threat levels after chemical spills and advises on cleanup efforts.

 

Usually he just tells people he's a principal consultant at an environmental engineering firm. He loses listeners quickly if he goes into the science behind a job that requires a Ph.D. in biology. He has noticed that mentioning AI is polarizing.

 

"Some people are just really afraid of it, and as soon as they hear it they shut down," Peebles says.

 

John Jeanson isn't an AI such-and-such or a crypto so-and-so. He's an accountant, one of the oldest -- and seemingly most straightforward -- professions.

 

Yet many of the people in his life don't get what he does.

 

"When I tell my family, 'Hey, I've got to work over the weekend,' they tell their friends I'm in the middle of busy tax season," he says. "I don't have anything to do with taxes."

 

His firm handles tax returns, mostly for companies backed by private equity. But Jeanson, whose title is chief financial officer and director of business development, says he has never prepared returns, even early in his career.

 

This is partly because millennial CPAs like him came up as technology automated basic tasks and created more specialties. Traditional accounting is widely seen as vulnerable to artificial intelligence.

 

Jeanson says his company still relies on human tax preparers. But AI's ability to reduce scutwork is one reason his role looks more like sales and marketing than accounting. He estimates that he spends three-quarters of his time meeting with prospects and much of the rest talking to existing clients.

 

Poring over the company's books is a smaller part of his day than most people imagine. His job is one of many that are morphing into something different from what we long understood.

 

A different sort of confusion dogs the millions of people trying to hack it as online content creators. The mystery isn't so much what they do all day. (That's often chronicled on social media.) It's how posting on TikTok or Instagram constitutes a viable career.

 

"Being at family holiday dinners is always funny business," says travel blogger Natalija Ugrina. "I repeatedly get asked every year, 'Natalija, when will you get a job?' I try to explain how I actually have a job and probably make more than I would with my economics degree."

 

Ugrina's original plan was to learn Italian, go to graduate school in Rome, then work on Wall Street. She finished her studies but changed course when social-media posts about her travels took off, and she realized she could use her education to negotiate contracts for branded content. "At first, it felt almost embarrassing," she says. "I moved across the world and learned Italian for this?"

 

Such is the burden for those with charm and perfect cheekbones.

 

Jaeda Skye graduated from college last year and paused her plan to go on to physical-therapy school. She'd built an online following, initially by filming herself trying various coffee drinks, and had a budding business advising people and companies on social-media strategy.

 

Her family is supportive, though not always sure how sampling espresso martini lattes enables her to make rent in New York.

 

She has tried likening herself to a real-estate agent who earns commissions. And she's compared herself to a billboard, explaining that companies promote products in her reel much as they advertise along the highway.

 

To illustrate the point, Skye brings freebies to family gatherings: drinks and snacks for her cousins, lotion and hair products for her grandmothers. "Then they're like, 'Someone just sent this to you for free? Why would anyone do that?'" she says.

 

Sometimes the explanation of your job raises more questions than it answers.” [1]

 

1. On The Clock: Why Modern Careers Are So Difficult to Explain --- More have jobs that didn't exist a generation ago, and even well-known professions are changing. Borchers, Callum.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 15 Dec 2025: A12.