I get asked a lot what I do for a living.  I've responded in a variety ways, "I'm a developer", "I'm a software engineer", "I write web applications", "I'm an application architect", etc. Usually people respond by smiling, nodding their head and then professing that they have no idea what that means but they figure it's important.  The truth is I'm not just a "developer" or an "architect".  I do deal with a fair amount of architectural things, design related things and a myriad of operational things too.  Tonight I realized one way in which I can illustrate what it is I do...  Think of when you buy a new computer.  You invest a lot of time in setting that new computer up.  You transfer files from your old computer, you setup your email, install software, configure your software, etc. My job is to do all of those steps you take to setup your computer and do it in one step, the push of a button. So I spend part of my day trying to figure out how to setup the systems that your favorite web software runs on in a single step.