Natural byproduct of male socialization. Basically, yes, there is a list of talking points--we've just never signed off on it. It's passed implicitly from parents of both genders to their sons, and also via societal messaging and peer pressure. And even though the old framework is cracking there's still a lot of legacy toxicity that needs to be dealt with.

I suppose I should add a little bit, though? Because there's one thing I'm not seeing in the comments here, which is a sympathetic take on men talking/advising about work.

Picture that you're raised in a world where your worth isn't pegged to your "soft" traits like your ability to attract others or to be compassionate, humorous, and interesting. Instead, literally everybody tells you that your worth is pegged to your ability to climb a hierarchy, succeed, and above all, to BE USEFUL.

This last bit is so ubiquitous that it's terrifying. You are utterly convinced from a young age that your worth depends on your ability to not be a burden to others. Being super-useful (i.e. socially dominant, lots of resources) is great, but being moderately-useful is also okay as long as you meet people who agree that moderate is enough. However, if you are not adding enough utility to match the preferences of the people around you, you fear that others will consider you a parasite and, after a period of brief tolerance in the hopes that you'll get your act together, they will ultimately discard you in favor of someone who *is* useful enough.

As you grow older you notice that some men break pattern--men who are exceptionally attractive or charming seem to get away with being useless more often. But men are often discouraged from cultivating those traits because they are seen as either something you have to have naturally, or something that is sleazy to use as a strategy to connect with others. (The exception is athletics--athletics is considered a valid path to male attractiveness, so you find in masculine culture that there's a lot of tacit acceptance for muscle, exertion, and athleticism, and frequent contempt for many men who express too much interest in style, clothing, makeup, music, or the arts).

So, if you lack naturally attractive traits and don't have a natural way with women? Your fallback is: be useful.

This fear of being useless drives a lot of male problems--so, to that end, you can expect that a lot of men will scramble to demonstrate that they are useful because they are really trying to prove themselves worthy of your affections.

But, beyond that, in a world where everybody expects you to put your usefulness first, that's what you wind up investing most of your time and emotional energy in. So, the result is, men really love talking about work. It's one of those areas where they are confident and secure, and feel like it is safe to be their unguarded selves. The result is that work-talk often forms the foundation of a lot of the best conversations men have, especially once they have become professionally established--guys love to talk shop, and if they're talking about other things, it often grows organically out of a conversation about work. Or, alternately, they'll talk about personal things from the angle of what they're doing about it, or what they think they should do.