"By the way, what do you do?"

Translation: Nebenbei, was machst du?

[Sk8rMom]

Can "jedenfalls" be used here, too?

[kyky]

I don't think that fits here. http://www.dict.cc/?s=jedenfalls

[thnkloud9]

Can this also work:

Übrigens, was machst du von Beruf

[kyky]

"Was bist du von Beruf?" is fine.

[rinndy]

Ok, please explain what I did wrong with "Übrigens was tun Sie?" In another place "Was tut sie?" meant "What does she do?" So where did I go wrong here?

[kyky]

"machen" means "to do for a living, to work" here. "tun" is not used like that.

[rinndy]

Thanks, I was so confused.

[Mihilion]

Is other word order possible, like maybe "Was machst du übrigens?"?

[warforgad]

Yes, it was accepted for me

[SandyDR]

Uebrigens does not count as the first position? Because that looks, to me, like the verb is in position 3 not 2.

[dankedonkey]

I have been running circles on the internet trying to help answer your question and unfortunately, the only thing I came up with is: for both question words and adverbs at the beginning of a sentence, the verb comes after each and is in a 'second position', even when a sentence contains both!

There isn't a subordinating clause or anything, and in fact, I am kind of confused as to why there is even a comma in this German sentence.

Sadly, I wish I could point you to a link to show you some concrete word position order formula for this, but you'll have to take my word.

[rook32]

What about: Was machst du nebenbei ?