12 ms·

Is There Any Room for the Not-Passionate Developer?

132 points by philou 10y ago

Animats 10y ago
The startup industry expects employees to be passionate about the banal. This is not realistic.
- eric-hu 10y ago
  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.
  - kelkes 10y ago
    made my day :)
  - atemerev 10y ago
    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 10y ago
      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 10y ago
        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.
    - Animats 10y ago
      There are such systems.[1] The first one is very old - it was Viamall, which became Yahoo Store. That was the first system that let you build a complex web page remotely from a browser. Shopping cart, checkout, and payments were all included. It was written in LISP. [1] https://www.aabacosmallbusiness.com/ecommerce https://www.aabacosmallbusiness.com/ecommerce
- chadcmulligan 10y ago
  Yes I see adds for startups wanting developers like "we're disrupting the plumbing business we need a developer that is prepared to sleep and eat 80 hour weeks for equity" and I think pass, who'd do that? There are very few startups I see that are doing something interesting, just CRUD business apps in some business vertical market
andrewfromx 10y ago
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 10y ago
  " 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?
  - ams6110 10y ago
    Well, a lot of people might do those things (I do) but it's not to boost my resume.
  - bbcbasic 10y ago
    Or project managing the oss projects us coders are expected to contribute too. Seriously spend 2 hrs creating a simple program on github. use a timeless language like Java or C++. Then you can tick the I have a github box and that'll sort you for a few years. Prior to interview push a bunch of commits backdated over the last 6 months.
    - morganvachon 10y ago
      > Prior to interview push a bunch of commits backdated over the last 6 months. That's a bit dishonest, isn't it? If you'll lie to look more productive you'll ultimately lie on the job, and that makes you a liability, not an asset.
      - bbcbasic 10y ago
        It's not a lie per se as you wouldn't make any claims in the cv etc. about how often you work on the project. Just here is my github url: xyz I don't need to do this myself as I often have commits from tinkering and being a perfectionist. But for the time strapped it could be useful. Remember it's about impressions. You could do 1 min a day with commit for 60 days and that'll look better on github than a single.one hour session. Even if the code commited is ultimately the same
hyperliner 10y ago
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.
KaiserPro 10y ago
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 10y ago
  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 10y ago
    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 10y ago
      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.
meanJim 10y ago
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.
- kpil 10y ago
  Add just a tiniest of a hint of nice personality, and then this is a description of a extremely valued team member :-)
- cs02rm0 10y ago
  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 10y ago
    Get your sports pilot license.
stale2002 10y ago
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 10y ago
  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 10y ago
    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 10y ago
      No, professional dedication and discipline are. Passion helps, but is neither necessary nor sufficient.
- collyw 10y ago
  What do you consider so lowly about CRUD work? CRUD can get pretty sophisticated. In fact my guess is that the majority of applications are some sort of CRUD.
daviross 10y ago
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.
- keymon-o 10y ago
  I don't think coding side projects should be anything more than a hobby. Difference between coding for work and coding as a hobby is that with hobby you don't stress out yourself, but it relaxes you and makes you feel good. If you take coding at home serious as you (presumably) do at work, like following deadlines, doing stuff you don't enjoy, stress yourself out, then it is a very unhealthy expectation.
  - gedrap 10y ago
    Same. Probably that's why I usually abandon my side projects ;) well, at least I learn something new every time. Just sometimes you need to get focused and finish some ugly small issue that prevents you from actually shipping. The feeling of shipping something that works usually beats it all at the end.
- thomasnno 10y ago
  I honestly believe that as long as you are always trying to improve and don't coast, you should be good. I do not do side projects after work, but do try to work on my coding skills, focus and discipline during the workday. 17 years and counting, and every single year I improve (some times only by a little bit, but it really adds up).
- greyskull 10y ago
santaclaus 10y ago
This article seems to conflate a passion for engineering with a passion for one's employer. The two are quite orthogonal.
- cderwin 10y ago
  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.
ams6110 10y ago
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.
sidcool 10y ago
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.
Gupie 10y ago
You need to be professional, keep learning, keep up to date and strive to improve your skills. Professionalism can't be faked, passion can.
anexprogrammer 10y ago
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.
- alien3d 10y ago
  Wow, got term like that outside work need to give ownership? As legal, anything not belonging to company are not the right company to take it.
  - anexprogrammer 10y ago
    Often something vague buried in the general terms, such as "All software developed while an employee of company is owned by company". Usually in addition to a standard no-compete clause.
- tooFastFuckYou 10y ago
  "sign a contract giving them ownership of all code inside or outside of work" Putting illegal things in a contract doesn't make them legal.
jkot 10y ago
> 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.
jimjimjim 10y ago
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 10y ago
  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.
mianos 10y ago
"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.
dasil003 10y ago
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 10y ago
  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.
peterwwillis 10y ago
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.
buro9 10y ago
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 10y ago
  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.
- lagadu 10y ago
  > 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. It's not that I'm not interested in programming but there are a lot of things that I'm FAR more interested in. My personal example: I love working out, I love computer games, I love snowboarding, I love geocaching and I adore playing with my car. It's extremely rare that I ever choose to dedicate my free time to developing software when I have something to do related to one of those things. I'm an experienced professional and consider myself to be pretty decent at it but when it comes to fun things I can do on my own time, it ranks abysmally low. The result? Total amount of software development that I've done outside work hours in the past year: 0 and I can't imagine it ever changing. edit: in fact the quickest way to make me stop reading a job ad is to write too much of those "we expect you to breathe xxx technology". No thanks, I will breathe it for exactly the 37 hours I'm paid for and not a single one more. Fortunately enterprise development is a nice fit for me :)
collyw 10y ago
There is plenty of crappy grunt work IT that needs done. It does the exact opposite of inspiring passion.
andrewstuart 10y ago
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 10y ago
  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 10y ago
    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 10y ago
      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.
toonies555 10y ago
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 10y ago
  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 10y ago
Personally I am more worried about those who just do not care. But that might be the mild definition of passionate.
meerita 10y ago
I believe passionately is about being passionate with the product, the company itself. Not-passionate means you're an executor and that's all.
touristtam 10y ago
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 10y ago
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)
pipio21 10y ago
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.
Swizec 10y ago
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.
SocratesV 10y ago
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?
Udo 10y ago
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.
robert_tweed 10y ago
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.
fapjacks 10y ago
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.
rpeden 10y ago
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.
Chris2048 10y ago
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?
msoad 10y ago
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
xchaotic 10y ago
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.
wtbob 10y ago
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.
rabino 10y ago
Allow me to be skeptical when your first quoted source is Gladwell.
danilocesar 10y ago
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.
thebigspacefuck 10y ago
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.
maxxxxx 10y ago
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.

132 points by philou 10y ago

Animats 10y ago

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

eric-hu 10y ago
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.
- kelkes 10y ago
  made my day :)
- atemerev 10y ago
  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 10y ago
    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 10y ago
      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.
  - Animats 10y ago
    There are such systems.[1] The first one is very old - it was Viamall, which became Yahoo Store. That was the first system that let you build a complex web page remotely from a browser. Shopping cart, checkout, and payments were all included. It was written in LISP. [1] https://www.aabacosmallbusiness.com/ecommerce https://www.aabacosmallbusiness.com/ecommerce
chadcmulligan 10y ago
Yes I see adds for startups wanting developers like "we're disrupting the plumbing business we need a developer that is prepared to sleep and eat 80 hour weeks for equity" and I think pass, who'd do that? There are very few startups I see that are doing something interesting, just CRUD business apps in some business vertical market

andrewfromx 10y ago

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 10y ago
" 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?
- ams6110 10y ago
  Well, a lot of people might do those things (I do) but it's not to boost my resume.
- bbcbasic 10y ago
  Or project managing the oss projects us coders are expected to contribute too. Seriously spend 2 hrs creating a simple program on github. use a timeless language like Java or C++. Then you can tick the I have a github box and that'll sort you for a few years. Prior to interview push a bunch of commits backdated over the last 6 months.
  - morganvachon 10y ago
    > Prior to interview push a bunch of commits backdated over the last 6 months. That's a bit dishonest, isn't it? If you'll lie to look more productive you'll ultimately lie on the job, and that makes you a liability, not an asset.
    - bbcbasic 10y ago
      It's not a lie per se as you wouldn't make any claims in the cv etc. about how often you work on the project. Just here is my github url: xyz I don't need to do this myself as I often have commits from tinkering and being a perfectionist. But for the time strapped it could be useful. Remember it's about impressions. You could do 1 min a day with commit for 60 days and that'll look better on github than a single.one hour session. Even if the code commited is ultimately the same

hyperliner 10y ago

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.

KaiserPro 10y ago

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 10y ago
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 10y ago
  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 10y ago
    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.

meanJim 10y ago

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.

kpil 10y ago
Add just a tiniest of a hint of nice personality, and then this is a description of a extremely valued team member :-)
cs02rm0 10y ago
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 10y ago
  Get your sports pilot license.

stale2002 10y ago

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 10y ago
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 10y ago
  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 10y ago
    No, professional dedication and discipline are. Passion helps, but is neither necessary nor sufficient.
collyw 10y ago
What do you consider so lowly about CRUD work? CRUD can get pretty sophisticated. In fact my guess is that the majority of applications are some sort of CRUD.

daviross 10y ago

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.

keymon-o 10y ago
I don't think coding side projects should be anything more than a hobby. Difference between coding for work and coding as a hobby is that with hobby you don't stress out yourself, but it relaxes you and makes you feel good. If you take coding at home serious as you (presumably) do at work, like following deadlines, doing stuff you don't enjoy, stress yourself out, then it is a very unhealthy expectation.
- gedrap 10y ago
  Same. Probably that's why I usually abandon my side projects ;) well, at least I learn something new every time. Just sometimes you need to get focused and finish some ugly small issue that prevents you from actually shipping. The feeling of shipping something that works usually beats it all at the end.
thomasnno 10y ago
I honestly believe that as long as you are always trying to improve and don't coast, you should be good. I do not do side projects after work, but do try to work on my coding skills, focus and discipline during the workday. 17 years and counting, and every single year I improve (some times only by a little bit, but it really adds up).
greyskull 10y ago

santaclaus 10y ago

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

cderwin 10y ago
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.

ams6110 10y ago

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.

sidcool 10y ago

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.

Gupie 10y ago

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

anexprogrammer 10y ago

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.

alien3d 10y ago
Wow, got term like that outside work need to give ownership? As legal, anything not belonging to company are not the right company to take it.
- anexprogrammer 10y ago
  Often something vague buried in the general terms, such as "All software developed while an employee of company is owned by company". Usually in addition to a standard no-compete clause.
tooFastFuckYou 10y ago
"sign a contract giving them ownership of all code inside or outside of work" Putting illegal things in a contract doesn't make them legal.

jkot 10y ago

> 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.

jimjimjim 10y ago

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 10y ago
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.

mianos 10y ago

"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.

dasil003 10y ago

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 10y ago
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.

peterwwillis 10y ago

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.

buro9 10y ago

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 10y ago
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.
lagadu 10y ago
> 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. It's not that I'm not interested in programming but there are a lot of things that I'm FAR more interested in. My personal example: I love working out, I love computer games, I love snowboarding, I love geocaching and I adore playing with my car. It's extremely rare that I ever choose to dedicate my free time to developing software when I have something to do related to one of those things. I'm an experienced professional and consider myself to be pretty decent at it but when it comes to fun things I can do on my own time, it ranks abysmally low. The result? Total amount of software development that I've done outside work hours in the past year: 0 and I can't imagine it ever changing. edit: in fact the quickest way to make me stop reading a job ad is to write too much of those "we expect you to breathe xxx technology". No thanks, I will breathe it for exactly the 37 hours I'm paid for and not a single one more. Fortunately enterprise development is a nice fit for me :)

collyw 10y ago

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

andrewstuart 10y ago

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 10y ago
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 10y ago
  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 10y ago
    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.

toonies555 10y ago

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 10y ago
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 10y ago

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

meerita 10y ago

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

touristtam 10y ago

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 10y ago

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)

pipio21 10y ago

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.

Swizec 10y ago

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.

SocratesV 10y ago

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?

Udo 10y ago

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.

robert_tweed 10y ago

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.

fapjacks 10y ago

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.

rpeden 10y ago

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.

Chris2048 10y ago

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?

msoad 10y ago

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

xchaotic 10y ago

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.

wtbob 10y ago

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.

rabino 10y ago

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

danilocesar 10y ago

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.

thebigspacefuck 10y ago

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.

maxxxxx 10y ago

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.