We're all in business. Everyone doing office work. Most of us believe that we're worlds apart: Finance, IT, Marketing, HR, Product, Engineering ... and then a hundred other sub-functions inside each. Most of us refer to what we do using terminology like _"I'm in DevOps"_ or _"I'm in Product Marketing"_. Most of us would be surprised to be put in the same bucket. We think working in data engineering under IT and working in accounts payable under Finance at the same company are immensely different. They aren't. They're very, very similar. In fact, they're practically the same thing. The difference between a software engineer and a sales controller is a rounding error compared to the difference between a plumber and a midwife. Or between a middle school teacher and an orchestra conductor. Or between a chef and a paramedic. Or between a waste collector and a physiotherapist. --- Gen alphas call us _clankers_ (because we go _clank, clank, clank_ on our keyboards). A clanker is primarily a gen alpha slur to mean an AI bot, but in some select kids circles, it's actually used to mean _us_. ------- <br> From sufficiently far away -- either far away in time (kids or grandmas) or far away in conceptual space (make up artists or lab technicians) -- we look identical. We sit at our office or home desks all day long and go clank, clank, clank.