I worked for the army for a long time.  People know what an army is, and they know what the army is, but it was always difficult to talk to people about what I actually worked on.  "So you blow shit up?"  It's hard to put into words how far off that is from reality, but yeah, sure, I blow shit up. 

My wife worked for a long time for M&M Mars, the candy company.  That was easy to explain.  Even if it was hard to explain what she did specifically, everybody knows what M&M's are.  There are probably only a few people on earth who aren't familiar with at least one Mars product. 

Now that I work for NASA, I feel like I finally have a name brand job.  I do some pretty specific things for some pretty specific projects, but everybody knows what NASA is.  In fact, a lot of people know more about the project I'm working on than me. #business