I think that the stigma is less than it was, and these days people are quite interested if you're working on a cool public facing service. No, what we do isn't

I think that the stigma is less than it was, and these days people are quite interested if you're working on a cool public facing service. No, what we do isn't really /cool/ and you will still bore them if you get into details, but that applies to most white-collar professions. You don't need to change your identity or succumb to "developer culture" in order to succeed, and in fact being a citizen of the "normal" world is a distinct advantage in many regards - product design, communicating with non-developers, team management..