
Is There Any Room for the Not-Passionate Developer? - philou
http://philippe.bourgau.net/is-there-any-room-for-the-not-passionate-developer/
======
daviross
This is always worrying to see when set as an expectation. I mean, I enjoy
coding. My employer gets my 40-ish hours of attention. But I just can't seem
to get into after-hours or weekend coding side projects.

I have ideas to explore (Nothing I'd ever want to turn into a business, perish
the thought), but I just... can't find the motivation to spend more hours
doing what I already spend about a third of my life doing. I enjoy reading
articles and the like, sure, but if I wanted to work on side projects, I'd
need to take extended time away from work to "reset" and get into something.

Does this make me destined to fall behind? I'm hoping not, but given how many
people talk about needing one's job to be their all-consuming passion, to be
something they spend spare time and weekends on... I'm not always hopeful.

~~~
orthoganol
Probably not what people want to hear, but I think it's near impossible to
complete a significant personal project while working a FT day job, let alone
gain the inspiration for something unique and meaningful. If you're really
passionate about pursuing your own projects, unless you are superhuman, I
think you'll have to take time off work, or find something PT or flexible
consulting hours.

~~~
taneq
I find it really hard to be passionate about personal projects at the same
time as work projects. The moment I get excited about something at work, all
of my personal stuff gets instantly shelved. Then, when work turns non-
technical, all of a sudden I'm all fired up for my old projects.

~~~
hbhakhra
I've seen this exact cycle multiple times with my job. I got into programming
because I enjoy it and find it fulfilling. When I hit boring times at my job,
I seek that fulfillment with side projects.

------
KaiserPro
I have pride in my work, but I'm not going to kill myself for the company.

I work a 35 hour week, and if you want more out of me, pay me. I'm good enough
to be worth a wage, I'm not about to undermine my own health and the hiring
market to satisfy some fad about over work.

Just look at the games industry. Overwork is endemic. The only way its
sustainable is by creaming off a new layer of young star-eyed programmers each
cycle.

In areas that are not as glamorous, its just not possible.

I do not derive my self worth by how many hours extra that I put in at work.

~~~
mrweasel
I'm very much the same way, except you can't pay me to work more that 37 hours
a week. At this point I feel that I'm to old to care about whatever random
deadline management set on a project. It's not that I don't care about
deadlines, I do, but if it's unrealistic, I'm not going to stay late to help
meet it.

No one is rewarding you for getting stress or burn out. It's true that
management will often reward those who stay late and "put in the extra hours",
but in the long run I don't see it being worth the strain on my mental health.

~~~
stevenwiles
how can I become as well off as you?

I am young, 20-something developer, but i already conciously slack off and
don't give a shit at my job, doing just enough to not get noticed/fired.

How do I take the next step of working less hours? I would like to work at
most 10 - 20 hours per week, but still retain my full-time, 40 hr/week
payrate. Do you have any advice for me? Thank you.

~~~
mrweasel
Sorry, no. I'm in Denmark, pretty much any standard contract here will say 37
hours a week. I tried to have my contract changed to say 30 hours (and of
cause having my salary reduced), that not something management really like.

I don't slack off, and I do care about my job. What I don't care about are
deadlines set by random, or unwillingness to adjust deadline if issues show up
along the way. I view it as a "I can be just as inflexible as management" sort
of deal.

Of cause it helps that I'm not worried about losing my job. There's plenty of
job for developers around here.

------
robert_tweed
A lot of development work is boring, unglamorous stuff that pays the bills and
can't be avoided. Passionate developers hate that.

I've had to intentionally recruit "boring" developers, who weren't passionate
at all. They just get on and do their 9-to-5 because it's their job. Without
their help, we'd have lost most of our A-players due to a lack of sufficiently
interesting work.

Relatedly, there's a difference between being motivated and being disciplined.
Passion and motivation are essential wherever innovation is required, but
otherwise discipline is what gets the job done. Turns out, in any team larger
than a handful of people, you need a mix both.

------
andrewfromx
Sure, I remember one non-passionate developer got very upset when companies
asked him for code samples. He said "f that, I have a life. When I go home I
cook, or read, I don't write more code. Any code samples I have belong to the
company where I coded them. I'm not a nerd that does open source projects." So
yeah, there u go. People like that exist and are part of the workforce.

~~~
slyall
" So outside of work, what management projects are your working on and could
you provide some samples of your work? "

Do managers spend their off-hours coaching kids sports teams and running
charities in order to boast their resumes?

~~~
ryandrake
Or more absurdly: Do plumbers re-do their home drain piping as a hobby because
of their passion for PVC? Do landscapers go home and trim hedges after hours
for fun? Do doctors spend their off-ours doing minor surgery in order to have
"remarkable careers"? Maybe some do, but it's not expected. Why is it that
software practitioners are expected to always be coding in their free time and
working on side projects?

~~~
wtbob
> Do doctors spend their off-ours doing minor surgery in order to have
> "remarkable careers"?

Quite a few go to the Third World to perform surgery for free — and, not
coincidentally, increase their skills.

~~~
lsaferite
Yes, but that's not concurrent with working a full-time paid position either.
When the go to another country with a group like MSF that is basically their
full-time job, paid or not.

------
meanJim
There is room for both the passionate and non-passionate developer.

Because passion doesn't necessarily equate to skill. Passion looks like an
eagerness to be immersed in a topic and invest time in that topic. Some people
work out of necessity and not necessarily passion (maybe just passion to make
a living, pay the bills, and support their families).

What actually matters is that you:

\- follow through with your promises and claims to your team or
manager/boss/founder/yourself

\- you leave things better than you found them

\- you're reliable

If you adequately do those things, there is plenty of room for you, passion or
no passion.

~~~
cs02rm0
I'd agree with that.

My dad was a fast jet pilot, I grew up on RAF bases watching jets fly
overhead, as a scout I worked at air shows. It was all I wanted to do, but
unfortunately I was too tall to make the entry requirements.

I'm 34 and still haven't really got past that. As a student I looked for job
adverts for well paid positions and decided that I'd look to become a contract
Java developer in London on an income that would put me in the top 1% in the
UK. It took me 5 years and I didn't have to go to London. Many of my peers are
still struggling to get a mortgage with some looking at 40 year terms. While I
have one, I have the funds to pay it off. Now my family are financially secure
I can start taking on fixed price work with more risk and more reward;
building out a business and getting away from a cripplingly sedentary job is
the next goal.

I think you need commitment (amongst other aspects) and passion is one vehicle
to achieve that, I'd imagine a more rewarding one, but it's not the only one.

~~~
elliotec
Get your sports pilot license.

------
rpeden
The best developers I've worked with are the ones who realize that while
passion is helpful, it often fails you at the times when you need it most.

As an example, if I'm in the middle of a 3 a.m. debugging session because
someone slipped a bug into production and customers are complaining and the
company is losing money, I find that stone-cold professional determination is
more reliable than passion.

I've worked with developers who has busy lives and families. They didn't do
much programming outside of work, and they mostly worked 9-5. But they were so
locked-in, determined, and professional while on the clock that they kicked
ass and outperformed most of their colleagues. What programming they did do
outside of the office was carefully chosen to help them keep up to date with
the latest and greatest.

This isn't meant to knock passionate developers; I consider myself one of
them. But given the opportunity in the future, I'd gladly work with a team of
hyper-productive, focused, professional developers even if they don't have the
'passion' for programming that a lot of job postings seem to be looking for.

------
hyperliner
[http://hbswk.hbs.edu/archive/5289.html](http://hbswk.hbs.edu/archive/5289.html)

"The great majority of employees are quite enthusiastic when they start a new
job. But in about 85 percent of companies, our research finds, employees'
morale sharply declines after their first six months—and continues to
deteriorate for years afterward. That finding is based on surveys of about 1.2
million employees at 52 primarily Fortune 1000 companies from 2001 through
2004, conducted by Sirota Survey Intelligence (Purchase, New York)."

Seems like a large sample. I don't see how an employee who happens to be a
developer would somehow be different.

I am pretty sure there are many accountants/writers/designers/brick layers who
are passionate about their jobs, and many who aren't.

------
anexprogrammer
It's a stupid expectation.

Passion doesn't even correlate with outside events OP lists.

Little point having a side project when your employer often asks you to sign a
contract giving them ownership of all code inside or outside of work. I've
walked away from job offers because they wouldn't strike this.

Where's the passion coming from in the 90 of 100 programming jobs that are
programming payroll, fuel pump displays, stock systems and the 1,001 other not
exciting, not full stack, not web dev role? OK, there's probably someone,
somewhere, who can get passionate about fuel pump programming, but...

Also consider the employer's point of view. Unless junior code-monkey is
needed, and even then, I would far rather see a well rounded individual with
some non-IT to the fore. With at least a fighting chance of some social skills
and some other interests than discover all free time is spent at the laptop
working on other stuff. It can help when understanding client needs, or bring
the idea from the model engineering or some other hobby to the task at hand.

As with almost everything, balance is the key. If, as a parent, you can't read
one programming book a year, or spend a couple of weekends worth of time on a
bit of tinkering there's something wrong. The reason a lot of parents end up
no longer developers is they probably became senior enough that they're
herding cats (staff) instead of bits.

So I'll stick with DHH and heavily favour work-life balance.

~~~
Kliment
I'm super excited about programming "boring" stuff like the things you listed,
because there are often huge usability improvements to be made and the people
who use them express a tremendous amount of gratitude when they experience
process automation. However, from what I can see, the bulk of them are in huge
corporates and/or huge consultancies that work for them. Where are these 90%
of jobs from your pov?

~~~
anexprogrammer
Well a good proportion are in those huge corporates or consultancies. An awful
lot of people end up at those places, often straight from uni. Only later do
they realise it's not usually the best place for your career or job
satisfaction!

------
Animats
The startup industry expects employees to be passionate about the banal. This
is not realistic.

~~~
eric-hu
About you:

You have a passion for CRUD apps. You dream about CRUD in your sleep.

You attend (or give talks at!) CRUD conferences. Your bookshelf has at least
five books on CRUD. You attend CRUDathons, and maybe have won first place in
the most READs or most CREATEs category.

~~~
atemerev
CRUD is a "hard problem". There are currently no RAD frameworks for simple
CRUD apps — nothing like FoxPro or FileMaker of their heyday. The amounts of
redundant labor being put in CRUD apps all over the world is insane — and no
one seems to be doing anything about it.

So yes, I am mildly passionate about CRUD apps development, and it is not hard
to imagine someone who is really passionate about it, coding next-gen rapid
development environment for CRUD webapps weekend after weekend, and on its way
to becoming yet another garden variety tech billionaire.

If some industry is "boring" and monotonous, it is ripe for disruption by
something exciting. Truck driving. Filing taxes. Accounting. Paralegal. And
yes, CRUD app development — will be automated nearly out of existence soon.

~~~
trengrj
Agree with you here that CRUD is a surprisingly hard problem. I've been
playing around with Rails however and find it really helps with getting past
CRUD.

~~~
barrkel
Rails tends to deal with CRUD not by raising the level of abstraction, but by
automating the generation of code. That helps when every different CRUD route
grows little hairs of difference, but is less than ideal if you have bigger
refactorings to make.

------
buro9
If you are interested in the craft, it's hard to imagine the interest ends
when you cross the threshold of the workplace on your way home.

But how that interest is measured is more interesting. A friend of mine just
creates things for his kids, another has small hacks around the home, another
is playing with his music setup and creating his own pedals, I run lots of
forums and the systems for them.

It doesn't have to be a "Where's your OSS contributions?", or a "Work outside
of work".

You just cannot make someone deeply interested _not_ take an interest outside
of work.

The hard bit is how to detect this fundamental curiosity, because I agree
strongly with others that it isn't "What are your side projects, where are
your OSS contributions?". It may surface in many more subtle ways, mostly
private noodling around, wondering how things work, and could they be made
better.

~~~
vertex-four
The thing is... if you're interested in almost anything else, there's no
particular expectation that you spend every possible waking hour doing it.
Most hobbies, you spend maybe an hour or two a night on, if that, and spend
the rest of your evenings doing something else.

If you get enough flexibility to explore things you're interested in within
the context of work, it seems perfectly reasonable that 40 hours a week of
that is enough.

------
jimjimjim
Enterprise development.

For an internal project over a certain size for a large enough organization
you actually want people that will just do their thing, be happy, collect a
pay check and carry on.

your über 10x coder won't make any difference in these environments.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Yeah, that über coder is likely to make things worse because spending 40+
hours a day in a typical software job makes you feel your brain is atrophying
and doing some overly clever stuff suddenly becomes a good defense strategy.

------
Swizec
It's simple: If you spend more than 40 hours per week at the office, then you
are bad at your job.

There are only two reasons. You either aren't productive enough, which means
you are bad at your core job, or you are taking on too much, which means you
either lack the social skills to say No, the maturity to manage your time, or
that you are fucking around too much at the office. Basically, anything more
than 40 hours means that you are either bad at your job or at managing your
job.

That said, coding outside of the office with no particular purpose in mind is
a lot of fun. The whole "play" thing. It's important to keep it at the level
of play, don't get too serious. Serious ruins the point of play.

------
xchaotic
Funny how most articles mention family as the only acceptable thing to do
outside of work, Even, or especially when you're young, there's more to life
than shaving milliseconds from that query code. Working OT should not only be
discouraged, but disallowed to force people into hobbies or things they care
about - watching loads of TV or whatever they feel like as long as it's not
homogenous. We know it in biology and other science that too sterile ecosystem
is not good - you need diversity and variety. If all you do is code or later
code and have kids, then on a global scale it leads to a really dull society.

------
ams6110
I don't like the word passion. When someone asks me the cliche question "What
are you passionate about" I want to punch them in the nose.

The word passion to me implies an level of emotional obsession that borders on
(or actually is) unhealthy.

I enjoy programming, and find it interesting. But I'm not passionate about it.

------
msoad
My wife is going to school to become a programmer. She is the exact opposite
of me. She is passionate about programming and it's a job to her. She hates
talking about code outside of working hours. Yet she's a good programmer that
can get the job done and has a part time job while at school.

I believe there are many people like her in the industry and they are the ones
who do the majority of the work.

I have a super passionate colleague. It's actually counter productive working
with him because most of our energy goes into design debates and office
politics and competition

------
dasil003
By any measure I'm a workaholic and I love programming, but something feels
off with the word "passion" in this context. I don't think you need to be
passionate to be good at anything, what you need is motivation and practice.
In the case of programming, I believe you need enough curiosity such that the
dopamine hit you get from figuring something outweighs the incredible pain of
getting to that point. Only by stacking up those gains over a period of years
will you achieve competence. If you don't feel that satisfaction and drive to
continue learning then you will definitely burn out before you are competent.

In other words, I believe there's an intrinsic quality one needs to become a
good programmer, but it doesn't necessarily manifest as passion.

~~~
cel1ne
My dopamine hit often comes from improved performance: Awesome, I cut the
runtime by a factor of 25!

Or reduced code. Or improved UI.

Generally anything that improves my life as a developer or those of my users.

------
stale2002
There is quite a bit of room for the non-passionate developer.

The fact of the matter is that there are a lot of companies out there doing
CRUD web development and there are lots of jobs that only require mediocre
skills.

And it turns out that the Tech shortage is so bad that those mediocre jobs
still pay very good salaries.

This is why tech bootcamps are so successful. It is not that these bootcamps
are able to pop out high skilled developers in 3 months that are better than
Top Tier CS grads. Thats ridiculous.

They are so successful because it turns out that you don't really have to be
that great of a programmer to do CRUD web dev at your average startup. But
these startups still pay insanely good salaries when compared to the median US
work wage.

~~~
BurritoAlPastor
It seems like you're implicitly asserting that non-passionate developers have
'mediocre' skills, and are best-suited for CRUD work. Do you mean to say that
passion is a prerequisite of professional excellence in our field?

It also seems like you're saying that bootcamps only produce mediocre CRUD
developers - who, presumably, are non-passionate? I know some (passionate,
highly-skilled) bootcamp graduates who would be really quite insulted.

You might be a little more deliberate with your axioms.

~~~
ktRolster
_Do you mean to say that passion is a prerequisite of professional excellence
in our field?_

Isn't it a prerequisite for excellence in any field?

~~~
vonmoltke
No, professional dedication and discipline are. Passion helps, but is neither
necessary nor sufficient.

------
mianos
"passion: a strong feeling of enthusiasm or excitement for something or about
doing something".

I am sure there is a place for people who are not passionate but I don't even
want to work there. I have been programming computers for more than 30 years
and it still excites me. I want to build great things and make the small
things perfect. There is _always_ a place for passion and always something
interesting about everything.

Being excited and enthusiastic hasn't killed me yet.

It is not about huge hours. The world is full of dumbasses who work massive
hours and write shit code.

------
Udo
I consider myself a passionate developer, and while strive to put myself into
scenarios and projects where that is a plus, it's generally not the easiest
route. People who _care_ about what they're doing technically become bored or
aggravated easily in their daily work. Being opinionated about things that are
considered taboo is not always a good thing either, especially if that goes
against common tropes or when you're on a buzzword-driven project. It's also
easy to aggravate other passionate developers if there are different opinions.
Passion-induced skepticism about a solution or tech stack can sometimes even
be construed as incompetence.

If your passion is programming in general, chances are you have a broad
experience background, which is not always perceived in a positive light by
management. I recently had a meeting with a potential client who told me they
would not hire me because they found it strange and implausible that someone
would be able and willing to do both script language programming and also
develop native modules in C.

I would say, all things being equal, non-passionate developers are very
feasible career-wise and absolutely essential for many projects, because
chances are they're going to be doing the brunt of the work.

Especially in a team, these players are important for follow through. I like
to think of teams as RPG adventuring parties: you need people from all
character classes to make it work. While all-mage or all-beserker parties
_can_ sometimes pull through, a balanced and diverse approach is a better
generalized strategy. You want tanks and support characters.

------
thebigspacefuck
When I started working, I lived with my parents to pay off student loan debt.
I didn't have to go shopping or fix my house. I worked from 8 to 7, forgot to
eat lunch sometimes, went to sleep at 8:30, and woke up at 4:30 to hit the gym
before work. I'd code in my off time and go in on the weekends. Now, 3 years
in, I have a house, a dog, a girlfriend, go to the grocery store and cook my
own meals, try to work out some of the time, too many home improvement
projects, a lawn to attend to, an old motorcycle I want to restore. That is, I
now have everything I dreamed of and went to school for in the first place.
But some part of me thinks that maybe I should be doing more, or I should be
studying to try to work for one of the big software companies, or developing a
portfolio. Part of me wants to, but mostly I just want a decent life, and
maybe once I have that worked out I'll come back to software in my free time,
because really, I do like it, maybe even a little too much, but right now I'd
rather just try to get my shit together in the real world for once.

------
andrewstuart
Passion is a proxy for "interest in the topic".

The key point being that programming really requires that the programmer is
deeply interested in doing it.

~~~
TeMPOraL
No, it does not - as evidenced by most of the industry. Being deeply
interested actually hinders your ability to work in a lot of typical
programming jobs, because it'll make you get bored out by the realities of
business and pushing the same pointless CRUD or boilerplate JS code.

I feel that the reason startups like young people is that only fresh
programmers can feel passionate about or impressed by this kind of work.

~~~
andrewstuart
OK I see you are doing the HN thing and pedantically interpreting the words
literally.

Programming well requires that you be interested in the topic. It is of course
possible to program a computer without being very interested and many do.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Not trying to be pedantic here. You wrote, quote, "programming really requires
that the programmer is deeply interested in doing it", and I disagree with
that.

As for your clarification, it depends on how you understand the word "well".
In general, mastering _any_ skill requires interest in it, otherwise a person
settles down on the minimum level that lets them do their job comfortably. But
a point I think is important to highlight is that this minimum skill level is
often "programming well" in the business context. No matter how many buzzwords
companies put into their job offers, what most of the industry really wants is
replaceable cogs that follow orders well and don't think too much. Being
_actually passionate_ about programming seems not only a bad proxy; having
passion can be counterproductive at work.

------
santaclaus
This article seems to conflate a passion for engineering with a passion for
one's employer. The two are quite orthogonal.

~~~
cderwin
True, but neither should be a job requirement. I don't need to be a domain
expert in marketing to write a relatively simple SPA and API over your "big
data" idea, and whether or not I know Go or ES6 (or any other "bleeding edge"
technology) has extraordinarily little impact on my value to the organization.

------
pipio21
I believe that people don't understand that when you work with a computer you
are working with a machine that can work for you. Specially when you are a
programmer.

That is the first mindset that I will implant in any young programmer, make
the computer work harder, but learn to work less yourself.

Forget about working more hours, you will get older, you will get ill,
specially if you work too hard. Start working today in making the machine do
your work.

As a professional you should be able to compete working 40 hours a day easily.
If not you are making something wrong. You need more skills and not just
learning a new language(of the week).

I will study less programming and start studying other things like art(music o
painting) or psychology(how humans work) because that way you can improve
interfaces and your own tools.

In fact I had this education myself, and I can do lots of things that other
people can't. For me is obvious how to make it and why but for the rest of the
people is very hard. I realize now that is my education in those areas that
people had not studied because in theory they are useless for the technical
work.

When I see programmers that only know about programming I see how fast they
dig their own grave, just working too much. Maintenance goes up over time and
they could barely sustain their own code. They can't progress as they are
stuck with old code maintenance. The code gets too complex to understand just
using text alone.

Quite interesting they only develop visual tools and test when asked and for
non programmers. I see it as people not wanting to use screwdrivers because
they have their nails or teeth, but technically able to do it for others.

They ignore how to make great documentation,structure the code(to constantly
reduce complexity) or how to communicate graphically in order to make tools
that make their life easier and life gets harder and harder for them.

I am training right now people and I teach them something as simple as using
(Dear) IMGUI over their own program to visually control their own code and
memory. After a month or so they start getting it on a big AHA!! moment why
they were so much unproductive before.

------
danilocesar
So I had this discussion in another group today, and I guess one point that no
one brought here is the fact that some people/managers/companies faces
software engineering as an art.

Under this point of view, we should compare software engineering with
painters, musicians, writers. Isn't it expected from this guys to "breath"
their areas even when they are "not working"?

I'm not saying that I agree with that point of view. Just adding another point
of view to the discussion.

* credits are not mine.

------
SocratesV
Would it be fair to say that we expect people to really like solving problems,
and implementing the solutions, rather than being passionate about coding?

I really, REALLY, enjoy solving problems that will make people's lives easier
and while implementing the solutions will frequently get the feeling it's not
the right way to code it or it's not the most elegant way, and will devote a
sane amount of time trying to make it better (after making it work), which
usually ends up with the application of the SOLID principles (fun fact, there
are more than the 5 letters).

However, ignoring the rare events where a problem consumes me and makes me go
almost a day without eating properly (relax, I drink a lot of tea/infusions
and I'm not exactly thin, also not obese) just wanting to make it work and
feeling energised, I too don't feel incredibly motivated to put time into
coding after work.

After work I usually read about current affairs (politics, economy, science),
read some pages of a book, play a game and binge watch something on a
streaming service. Not the first time the solution to a problem comes to me
when I'm almost falling asleep, or sometimes when I wake up in the middle of
the night.

Guess people are different, which doesn't mean people that aren't always
demonstrating passion are incompetent or will provide worse results. Do I dare
to say they will be the most consistent in the long run, though a mix of these
types of people will probably be the best combination, as they will support
and learn from each other?

------
peterwwillis
Two really basic flaws in the logic here.

 _> As my Aïkido professor says, the more you practice, the better you get …_

Oh, sure, because every Aikido practicioner who has practiced the same number
of hours has the same ranking. (That's sarcasm, btw...)

 _> Studies have repeatedly demonstrated that 40h per week is the most
productive work load [...] But then, how do passionate people manage to remain
productive when working more than 40 hours per week ?_

I don't know what studies you're quoting, but this just makes no sense. For
the _same work output over longer time_ , you will have more productivity. The
trick is keeping up the pace. At the same time, there is absolutely no
evidence that "passionate" programmers are more productive _for the same
amount of time_ than "non-passionate" programmers.

And yes, you need time out of the box to make out-of-the-box solutions.
Archimedes' bathtub, Newton's apple, the Apple Computer's fonts, ...... you
really have to get the hell out of the office once in a while.

------
fapjacks
I dunno. Enjoying programming is not even on the same planet as having a
passion for it. I have a genuine passion for programming. I do it in my spare
time, because _I fucking love programming_. My employer gets forty hours a
week. More, very occasionally, you know, when there are fires or whatever. But
I spend some of my spare time programming that I would otherwise devote to
personal relationships, or watching cat videos, or whatever everybody else
does. There is a mountain of difference between the programming that happens
at work, and the programming you do in your spare time because you are
passionate about programming. I am 100% confident after twenty years in the
industry that if you aren't taking _some_ amount of your spare time to write
code for yourself, you aren't really passionate about programming. End of
story. Nobody says you need to blow your weekends and stay up all night behind
your computer. But if you are clocking out at 5pm and never touching your IDE
until 8am the next morning, you just aren't passionate about programming. And
if you used to spend some personal time programming out of passion, and you
don't anymore, consider that you might have lost the passion you once had.
That happens, you know. You've just become passionate about your kids these
days, instead. And is that wrong? No. But it's not wrong either that employers
are rewarding people who are genuinely passionate about programming. Can it be
an expectation? Sure! Why not? Go work for BigCorp or whatever, if the
position here requires passion for programming. But think for a minute that
every company that says they only hire passionate programmers also says they
only hire 10x programmers. We all know that's not true. So if you enjoy
programming, but you aren't really passionate about programming, there's
nothing stopping you from telling people in an interview that you've got
"passion" for programming. Might as well tell them you're "10x for sure, bro".
They won't know the difference anyways.

------
sidcool
Absolutely. You might be more interested in solving real world problems and
hence you learnt programming. You might not be passionate about programming,
but he tools it provides to solve problems. It's like using Microsoft Excel, I
am not passionate about it but use it extensively to solve problems I am
passionate about.

------
jkot
> _that might also be the moment in your life when you become a parent_

> _That is when things get tricky. Neither can you jump ship for the next cool
> and risky startup where you’ll do great things, nor can you find enough time
> moonlighting to improve your skills_

I have opposite experience. Just before becoming parent, I quit my cubicle
job. I started 'cool risky opensource startup', to be at home with a child.

9-5 had lot of overhead (socializing, commute, babysitter...). Now I can
organize my time better, work longer and do more work, while spending more
time with my kid.

------
maxxxxx
How about spending the first 40 hours of work with passion? There seems to be
this belief that workplaces have to be demotivating and therefore all learning
has to happen outside of work.

------
Gupie
You need to be professional, keep learning, keep up to date and strive to
improve your skills. Professionalism can't be faked, passion can.

------
toonies555
banks and insurance company IT departments are littered with non-passionate
devs. They probably started bright eyed and bushy tailed, but then they had to
maintain 30yr old systems and make fixes for patches that fixed another patch.
New projects and passion come together. you dont find any passion in
maintenance.

~~~
majewsky
Counterexample: I was more passionate about my last maintenance job, where I
could shape the system through slow, but steady refactoring, compared to my
current job, where I mostly string together buzzword-worthy components.

------
Qantourisc
Personally I am more worried about those who just do not care. But that might
be the mild definition of passionate.

------
collyw
There is plenty of crappy grunt work IT that needs done. It does the exact
opposite of inspiring passion.

------
wtbob
I think that one should only spend 36-40 hours a week on work, but one should
_also_ spend plenty of time outside of that honing one's craft. I think that
neatly squares the circle of burnout vs. getting to 10,000 hours.

------
touristtam
How can you be passionate about your work when the company you work for is
pushing product that are uninspiring and you feel every day the breath of
management to deliver something that dull thing?

------
nolim1t
Look at team fit first (If you're gonna spend at least 30% of your time with
them, they better be pleasant to work with) and then their future potential
(based on their past experience)

------
meerita
I believe passionately is about being passionate with the product, the company
itself. Not-passionate means you're an executor and that's all.

------
rabino
Allow me to be skeptical when your first quoted source is Gladwell.

------
Chris2048
A passionate programmer should work overtime - just not for their employer. My
overtime goes on my own projects only - why put overtime into something you
don't own?

