Reaper / Death
I know it's not a uh... official actual job or anything and a fictional one, but for some reason it's really common titles that is often referenced by characters as 'a job'
I was forced to read Chef by “James Patterson” ( freaking sweat shop author probably never touched the book) They wanted us to believe you can be both a Cop and own a successful food truck, and I’m like....No those are two very high demand jobs. He only cooked at the food truck like maybe three times but somehow people just love his food and line up for it. I don’t think so.
There is definitely a trend of “chef” stories usually detective ones. There is a whole genre of “Foodie mystery”.
Some careers are going to make readers' eyes roll regardless.
I spent 20 years writing software professionally. I therefore HATE reading about programmers and pretty much any other IT staff you can name. I spot every flaw. They're all wrong, all turned into seedy hackers or worse, they've been glamorized (haha).
Likewise my husband, a courtroom attorney, will not watch "Law and Order" or anything similar because it's been botched so horribly. Even seeing a clip makes him twitch. But how do you get around a lawyer? 🤷♀️
I also work an office job. Though because we're expanding and our new office isn't ready yet, it's been more of a work from home job recently. XD
But my office job is pretty specific. I work for an embroidery/printed apparel company so I have to fix submitted designs before they go to production. Basically, some people try to submit photos or very detailed images for embroidery and I get to break their hearts (not really, okay). lol So mainly I fix images in Photoshop. Sometimes, I create designs from scratch. Sometimes, I help QC production files. And rarely I get to even help out on the production floor! Don't know if I'll be able to help out much this holiday season though because of the work from home thing. 
My characters from True Power are mostly too young to have jobs or too old for their job to be relevant to the story anymore. LOL
In my comic Celestial Chronicle Shion, I guess "ship captain" is pretty cliche for a sci-fi story. Though an interesting twist is that they're basically forced into becoming the captain of their ships due to an extremely rare, "special ability" that they had the fortune of gaining. Then there's the typical bridge crew and fighter pilots.
You're pointing out the downfall of writing about a job a writer might be unfamiliar with. Sure, there's researching and asking people with experience to help out with the details, but sometimes that's not possible for an amateur writer (especially if it's something too advanced for them to understand - I can't understand coding for the life of me). The studio behind L&O should have been able to be realistic (seeing as they have the resources), but sometimes a career is too divorced from the writers understanding and they can't help but throw in tons of assumptions (like the totally unrealistic fast-moving walls of code seen on every computer screen whenever a hacker is present).
[And there are the professions that a lot of people think they know, like being a florist or chef or doctor, so they never get properly researched from the get-go.]
Not to say that's an excuse not to research, or give up and write what they know. There are tons of people willing to talk about the particulars of their professions to make any work more true-to-life.
Gosh, I cracked up with this topic 
I have an emancipated character in my comic:
- He likes to write.
- He makes money working online, writing too.
But he's not a writer.
What his job is?
No, really, what, because I have no idea
I've worked a lot of jobs blue and white collar, and I tend to write about professions that I've at least had glancing interactions with. My comic has a wide swath of political grifters, an ex-lawyer, the requisite indie coffee haus bookstore but there's a visible owner who works it solo most of the time, there's a witch doctor herbalist, a security team for a celeb, a missionary, and a mining baron. and some moms, can't forget the moms. researching and thinking of interesting professions for characters is something I really look forward to doing.
oh yes! i agree there are tons of overused professions in comics, maybe because its more relatable? i duuno 
i use the "knight" class in my story which is can be found in almost any fantasy comic, so im guilty as well 
but i try to add a little bit of a twist so that it wont be generic 
I think in the case of something like Law & Order, it's probably not a case of writers not being well researched/experienced as much as the medium of TV has established its own tropes/cliches for lawyers. If they veer from those, to depict reality, the general audience won't accept it as "authentic".
Just a theory ...could apply to lots of tropes/cliches about occupations.
If we have the undying high school student, it must also come with the mysterious school principal. 🤧
I actually have a billionare mogul. But mine his wealth all comes from his family. He is half Chinese half Korean. But his Chinese father abandoned him and he used his father's money to make some good investments. His mother was from a super rich family and that is actually why his parents got married, it was a business merger, arranged marriage that leads to love. But yeah, I totally get the whole billionare nowadays trend, but they don't have money from anywhere specific or that makes sense to the market that we live in now.
Personally, I think it is okay to write rich characters as long as you do some research on how rich people became rich in the place your character's setting takes place.
Like make your character's back story make sense to the setting they are in. Don't just give them money because... I can.
Case and point. China one of the highest percentages of Billionare's in the world, many of them rich because of real estate. My characters father real Estate Billionaremother Advertising giant conglomerate worth Millions of Dollars. And there are parts where I actually show them working on adverts. XD
Well, not going to put the profession of my character who lives in ancient settings but for one in modern setting, so far I have:
Li XinWen - Actor
Li JingHua - Broker(is that the right job name?)
Xue Rui - cough CEO of his own company + One of the board of director for one of the well known hospital in that world.
Min XiaoYu - Account Supervisor + Martial arts Teacher
I guess out of those 4, only Xue Rui have the cliche type of profession 🤣🤣
I think the really common ones have all been stated. Student is I reckon the most popular! My that might just reflect the stage of life the writers find themselves in, and it might also reflect the fact that high school/ university student is a character almost everyone can identify with.
I just checked my own comics. Most of my characters don't have stated jobs, although many side characters are shopkeepers or banana peel salesmen or whatever else. The main characters are likely all just vagabonds. I did have one comic involving an evil gang of pastry chefs, and I have one coming in a few weeks about an accountant. And no, he doesn't have superpowers, he's literally a boring accountant.
