People Sharing Hilariously Bad Stock Photos of Their Jobs

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There’s something about stock photos that make them instantly recognizable as a genre, a weird, posey cheesiness often unified by hilariously bad photo editing. When you see a stock photo, you just know that it’s a stock photo. The hashtag #BadStockPhotosOfMyJob, originally started by scientists, is a perfect collection of the times when stock photographers clearly had no idea what they were doing with their weird photos.

I always give a thumbs up after a pelvic exam, it’s so not creepy at all.

I find listening to the shoulder joint an incredibly important part of any examination. Heart and lungs are for losers.

I often hit people in the middle of their face with a reflex hammer.

"And the Lord said: 'Let there be oxycodone'. And there was oxycodone, and the oxycodone was good. And there was much rejoicing!"

I sit in a dark room and project code straight to my face while solving complicated problems. This helps me to immerse myself in it and "feel" the code.

Because when doing research, I always wear my regalia to the library. How else will people know I have a PhD?!

I often hold my slides and stare moodily at them. You know, instead of looking at them under the microscope that's right in front of me. Sometimes I invite a colleague to join me.

As an evolutionary biologist, you have *no idea* how hard it is to find tweasers small enough to grab bits of DNA (which is the main part of our job, obvs)

As an ecologist, I can confirm that my days consist of much stethoscoping of trees in an unnecessary lab coat. It’s the only proper way to detect wildlifes.

It always feels so fucking good to stick the mouthpiece in my ear at the end of the day. I can hear the echoes of all the notes I missed.

This is exactly what I look like when I write.

Academia is bearded men eagerly pointing at absolutely nothing and being very serious about it.

Because if you *really* want to understand the brain, you have to listen to it. Real close.

It is true that most lawyers are Slytherins.

As a botanist, I am so petrified of plants I cover my entire body in hazmat safety gear. (Except the parts actually touching them, of course).

As a security researcher I always look at various devices with a magnifying glass. It's the best way of finding security vulnerabilities (they glow red).

I spend my days laughing at models of DNA that twist the wrong way.

It is very important to look seductively shortly before your hair and gloves get caught in the drill and cuttings get stuck in your eyes...

I am an analyst, and I have to say, Shutterstock really hits the nail on the head about the worst aspect of my job. I can't go 15 bloody minutes without icons, charts, and gears floating around and obscuring my field of vision!

I mean I have no idea what this 'environmental scientist' is doing but I can say the defeated posture is correct.

"Hey space astronomer, where is space?" [Space astronomer puts on his lab coat and adjusts his space safety goggles] "According to my latest science, there is space."

20 thoughts on “People Sharing Hilariously Bad Stock Photos of Their Jobs”

  1. Should have included the one with the electronics assembler holding her soldering iron by the heater, instead of the handle.

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  3. As a graphic designer who has to weed through this dreck in order to get an image that actually works for content and composition, you can’t often fault the designer or photographer — it’s usually the unbelievably literal product managers that beg for inane imagery like this. Does make my photo searches a little funnier, though.

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  5. And the one where the “vet” is listening to the dogs shoulder joint with a stethoscope, The stethoscope isn’t even in his ears. Do they even watch Grey’s Anatomy?

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  6. The vet doesn’t have the stethoscope in his ears because huskies have such strong heartbeats, the thumping would rupture his eardrums.

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  7. Tried my job, conservation biology : It’s spot on, I DO spend all day holding single leads at arms length, looking at them with magnifying glasses, in a lab coat obviously. That’s when I’m not cupping a tiny model of earth in my hands, or a tiny sapling in a handful of soil.
    Cause that’s how we can solve problems ya know, and improve the quality of the environment so life stops vanishing from this planet.
    Oh, and I also get the floating graph and symbols thing, but they’re all green and there recycling signs and water drops and tree leaves mostly…
    😂

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  8. As a technology specialist for household chemicals, I have found exactly zero stock photos of my job.

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  9. You missed the mechanic holding a spanner near nothing you could or should use a spanner on

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  10. Yup, much of my time as a school psychologist is spent holding up blank pages in front of students and having them point at nothing… unless it’s my turn to point, obviously.

  16. As.a programmer, I can tell you that no.5 is 100% accurate.
    /goes back to coding in a dark room

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  18. As an analyst I too have the issue with floating charts and graphs and weird numbers obscuring my vision. Haha

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