The people who say that you shouldn’t lead your answer to “tell me about yourself“ with what you do for work.

Do you mean to say that I shouldn’t default to explaining how I occupy myself for the task that takes up the most time of my waking hours?

Do you actually care about what it is that interests me?

I get it, if your job is just about making money and it's not very important for who you are, then leading with that isn't important. But I love my job. A lot.

"How do you spend your spare time?" gets answered with "…the same things I do in my job"