Everyone asks interesting questions when they don't know you: "What do you do?" or "Where do you work?"
I never liked these questions because they are attempts to define somebody by how they make their money at that time. Although that might have been useful in the past, when people would take up an all-encompassing and defined "career" in their youth and continue with it throughout their lives, this has become less common and relevant over the years. For a polyhistor like me, this is especially true, given I rarely have employment that reflects my purposes beyond resource provision.
What we really want to do when we ask such questions is to define someone, putting them in a readily definable category "box". Would it not be better to seek a greater understanding of the person you query? This is why I propose a new question to ask that strives to elicit deeper knowledge: Who You Are?