Not sure how the industry may define passion, but for me it's a constant drive to develop one's skills, improve one's output, and an interest in all these thing

Not sure how the industry may define passion, but for me it's a constant drive to develop one's skills, improve one's output, and an interest in all these things outside of the hours you get paid to be interested in them. I've hired good developers who had this type of passion, and good developers who lacked it. But I've yet to hire a truly great developer from the latter camp. It seems to me this is true in just about every industry, those who have devoted the most time and energy to a skillset tend to be the best at it.