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I think hiring has become more difficult now that programming has been discovered as a well paying mainstream career. When I started in the 90s most people I wo

I think hiring has become more difficult now that programming has been discovered as a well paying mainstream career. When I started in the 90s most people I worked with had a passion for the craft but now I find we interview a lot of people who have a CS degree just for the career prospects but not out of interest for the craft. I find it much easier to deal with someone who has no relevant experience but cares vs someone who had 10 years experience but doesn't care. Now someone who has 10 years AND cares is rare but pure gold.

menacingly 8y ago
This has been on the tip of my tongue but not formalized. I don't think it even matters if you're talented or particularly brilliant. If you've felt the delight of bending the machine to your modest intentions of blinking a light then you tend to be a person I wouldn't be able to stop from tackling tricky problems if I wanted to.
VerbEncroacher 8y ago
let the self incrimination begin: halt
Aeolun 8y ago
After 10 years, most veterans have learned not to care. Or at least, not care too much.
- dalore 8y ago
  I would say us old timers learn to be more picky about what we care about. It's a finite resource.
  - ghaff 8y ago
    That's a great way of putting it. "Choose your battles" in other words. I look back and I can remember getting very wound up about some things that just didn't matter. And, today, I shake my head a little bit at people for whom every single little thing is something to man the barricades over.
    - ryandrake 8y ago
      I remember a job as a junior programmer: typical 90’s era C++ Windows application. Compiling it with compiler defaults would spew out a continuous stream of thousands of warnings. This was before unit tests and static analysis were in vogue, so random crashes and errors everywhere. Major performance problems. I argued for code hygiene, fix all these crashes, figure out what’s behind the compiler warnings, etc. The response was predictable to anyone who’s been in software for a while: No, we actually need moar features! Keep spooning features into the software and we will succeed! One of my tasks was actually to write a separate process, a watchdog, that would detect every time the app crashed and re-start it quickly hoping the user didn’t notice. Totally demotivating if you were passionate about software craftsmanship. I started fantasizing that the company would crash and burn, and I would be standing there among the rubble saying, “See, I told you to fix those COMPILER WARNINGS!!” Never happened. The company simply limped along in this now-familiar “zombie mode” neither succeeding or failing until it was gobbled up by a bigger mediocre company.
      - imhoguy 8y ago
        > I started fantasizing that the company would crash and burn, and I would be standing there among the rubble... Have you had a part in writing Office Space [0] screenplay? It's Milton's wish. [0] https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0151804/ https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0151804/
  - ryandvm 8y ago
    Bingo. As an "old timer", it's not that we don't care; we still love the craft as much as ever. It's just that we are at a point in our careers where we can afford to have a much lower tolerance for bullshit. Manager says "let's have a weekend pizza party hackathon!!!" and the old-timers are the first to recognize and decline the opportunity for unpaid overtime fixing bugs.
    - fma 8y ago
      In my younger days (I'm only 35 lol) I used to want to apply for jobs that said junk like "fast paced environment". Now I'm like screw that... I mean every company wants you to work as hard as possible and turn things around...but now I feel the ones publish it want to put you through the ringer.
      - HillaryBriss 8y ago
        > "fast paced environment" yes. and, if I were to pursue a job with such a description, I'd have only myself to blame when the insane conditions started.
    - collyw 8y ago
      As I said in another comment caring about producing good work is completely different about caring about every hyped up new trend that our industry comes up with (usually a rehash of something from 20 years ago).
    - pvarangot 8y ago
      As a manager I never do nor support hackatons except when the team themselves suggest it's the only way... but when I myself have to code or fix or debug something that needs grind time I still enjoy them. If I'm not getting payed enough to put that hours is another issue to discuss with my manager besides the pizza hackatons themselves.
  - sparrish 8y ago
    We've learned live is a marathon, not a dash. I'll churn out stable code; I'll deliver on reasonable deadlines; I'll do my darnedest to make the product the very best I can. But I'll do it at the pace of 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. I have a family and a life outside of your corporation that I truly value more than this, or any, job. I'm no rockstar. I build stuff that gets stuff done.
- ravenstine 8y ago
  They pretty much have to because the majority of environments they have to work in aren't hospitable to people who actually care. Hence many of us eventually get to the point of "just make it work" that we once used to scoff at on HN. As with most things in life, software engineers eventually beat the game only to find that there was nothing to win the whole time playing by a set of ideals.
  - hinkley 8y ago
    I carried this torch a lot longer than most. I never really gave it up because I was fortunate enough as a young man to be in some environments that proved to be that for certain values of “right”, doing the right thing now makes you faster a year from now. And it’s painful to watch a project grind to a halt as bad code accretes. Since I took up gardening I’ve developed a more nuanced view on this. For perennials, there’s a way a plant “should” be but the plant is organic. It has a life of its own. Trying to force it will kill the plant. There is a tempo to bending it to your design and for some plants you need a five year plan to get there, and the plan changes several times. For software I don’t have that much patience. I change jobs more often than houses, and I expect a team to listen to reason, so the more like a 2 year plan. To get A you often have to give up on B or C for a while. Pick priorities that are constructive and try not to grind your teeth while the wheels of progress grind into motion.
- saosebastiao 8y ago
  I've learned to reciprocate care. I owe no loyalty to a company that refuses to appropriately value my contribution.
- saiya-jin 8y ago
  It's hard to truly care in any soulless corporation that cares only about profits and IT is seen generally as a pure cost centre (banking is worst in this, but others are not stellar either). Another aspect is meaning of life - if your response is work, then you either have that 0.01% type of work which really matters (and is hardly IT, maybe in Red Cross/MSF style), or much more probably you are just lying to yourself. Life has so much more meaning outside of work, outside of sitting in front of computers. The older you get the more clear this should be, even if you started as a hardcore IT geek. I know I did, but boy am I glad I moved on.
  - VerbEncroacher 8y ago
    There have been many keynote speeches on this same topic. You may have written something excellent in the past, but now do you want to pour your soul into it for the next thirty years? Let someone who has devoted their life to the care of the geriatric population tell you the truth about what you value.
  - ryandrake 8y ago
    I used to be that stupid guy who would actually bring work home and do it for free after hours, because I loved programming so much and didn’t have any hobbies. Then I slowly realized it was not getting me ahead at all so switched over to just doing my own little hobby/learning projects at home, that all went nowhere, but hey I was programming and programming is fun! These days I don’t even want to get near a computer when I’m done with work. I’ve got a kid and non-technology hobbies that are more fulfilling. I still enjoy programming, but it must be purposeful, there must be a goal and a plan. I won’t just habitually open a terminal and start programming something “because programming.”
    - CzechTech 8y ago
      Who TF "opens a terminal" to start programming? Are you a time traveller from the 80s?
- swalsh 8y ago
  I have about 12 years of experience, occasionally I'll find myself really interested in some tech. But generally speaking, the technical problems don't interest me anymore. I find myself more fascinated with the business problems. But generally speaking, businesses have been structured to exclude the developer from these problems until it is dev time, in which case the problem is presented as "here's an issue, here's what we want you to build to fix it". So in general my passion has been lost. Finding a company where I can be present during the solution finding phase has been difficult with my pay level.
  - thetrumanshow 8y ago
    I worked for a small web-consulting agency for 3 years that allowed me to be a part of everything from the sit-down consultation with the client, to the estimation of engineering effort, to the design/build, and to the demo and support of the production version. Its not a given to have this access and you generally have to ask for it, but it is available to you if you ask. Pros: I learned how to listen to customers, create proposals that tend to close, and upsell... all while being able to build the end product. This has helped me to close a good number of side projects after I moved back to working for larger companies. Cons: The challenge working as an engineer in these small firms is that your resources are limited to the budget of the customer, which can be too small to do top-notch engineering work. You can generally find the balance without sacrificing too much quality, but you will never be completely satisfied with your work-product.
  - arkh 8y ago
    Domain Driven Design. As a dev you usually stumble upon it for the architecture / coding part. But those are just details. The Domain part is all about the business: where do you add value, what things you can outsource because they're not at the heart of your strategy, which projects should get your better people etc. So I think it can be a good bridge for people who come from tech and want to dabble in the business part of their company.
- mixmastamyk 8y ago
  Funny story (now), caring too much once got me "separated" from a high paying job, when an impulsive lead walked in and took over our project shortly before what would have been a successful delivery.
FLUX-YOU 8y ago
The passion/craftsman culture changed when we started selling our souls for the next ad-click or personal information collection system. While it might have seemed good back then, we now have a massively cobbled-together web ecosystem. I know it's a cheap shot, but those same passionate people built the crap we have today. I don't think it speaks very highly of that time or the merits of passion. (many individuals had passion back then and would be strongly against today's web practices -- I do get that) When you start peeling away the layers of the career, the actual craft is only a portion of today's work. If I could code 8 hours a day, I would. But it's hard to spend a day in the workshop with that passionate, quiet, productive focus.
- jimmy1 8y ago
  > The passion/craftsman culture changed when we started selling our souls for the next ad-click or personal information collection system. I am really passionate about the information collection system I work on. I do my best to ensure data isn't leaked, everything is secure and encrypted. If you would like to offer a solution to the fact that the vast majority of people in this country now expect software to be free (save, some AAA video game titles), I am all ears. Until then, I am going to be passionate about what I do, but realistic as well as I have a family to provide for.
  - twtw 8y ago
    > If you would like to offer a solution to the fact that the vast majority of people in this country expect software to be free This is critical. I think it even goes beyond this: most developers expect software they use to be open source. People have gotten used to the software from Google/Facebook/etc that they can develop and release as open source due to their essentially infinite revenue stream.
  - FLUX-YOU 8y ago
    >If you would like to offer a solution to the fact that the vast majority of people in this country now expect software to be free (save, some AAA video game titles), I am all ears. Subscriptions? I pay for Netflix, Amazon Prime, Github, MS Office, a VPN, and probably a few others. If you're B2B, use price per user/customer/developer? e.g. Highcharts was worth the money vs. free options. The problem is there's no guarantee you don't also collect info or decide to play ads even if I pay for a subscription.
snowwrestler 8y ago
By all means, you should use whatever criteria you would like to hire your own staff. But in general, I would encourage folks in computer tech industries to be hesitant to assume such a binary approach to evaluating prospects. "Did you code for fun in high school?" might be a useful question now, because software development as a field is so young that high school students can try out significant work easily. But in most high-end professional fields, that's not true. Imagine asking a prospective medical resident "did you treat any diseases in high school?" or "how much surgery do you do in your spare time?" I think we should take it as a positive sign that people are approaching software and computer technology as a professional career that they can professionally pursue. That approach can produce great work too, and a growing field means a greater diversity in how people find and display their passion. Getting a CS degree is not easy, and requires some base level of interest and commitment to complete. Even a bootcamp is not free, and takes some focus and work. Anyone above a certain age (like me) came into the industry sideways, as it was developing, as a result of personal passion and interest. Let's not mistake that for an inherent property of a good tech employee... every industry on Earth started that way at some point. Computer technology industries are maturing, just like railroads, oil development, aviation, telecommunications, and dozens of other industries have over time. That's not bad, and we will have to take it into account as we consider the model employee. Hiring people who are "not proven" might also mean hiring people who are well trained, but maybe have not yet proven their passion in a way you recognize.
- deleted 8y ago
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- ghaff 8y ago
  CS/programming is almost unique in this regard in that there's a significant school of thought out there that, if you haven't been programming as a hobby since you were a kid, that's a disqualification. As you say, there is pretty much zero expectation in any other STEM field that you did much more than take some science classes in high school and liked them. (In STEM. Obviously you presumably don't apply to Juilliard because you decided you might want to give this music thing a try.)
  - deleted 8y ago
parthdesai 8y ago
And what about when companies these days exploit the term "caring"? I like programming as much as the next person here but i'm not going to code 80 hours a day. I also like going to gym and working out, riding my bike, playing soccer and hanging out with friends. Companies these days expect you to have side projects or contribution to popular open source libraries while having a job. Oh and did i mention asking you questions about algorithms and data-structures that you most likely haven't used in years and won't be using for foreseeable future?
- busterarm 8y ago
  Related point, some companies don't intentionally exploit this but end up hiring someone who works and commits code cowboy style 14 hours a day. The company thinks that person is amazing while the person's coworkers hate working with them.
  - scarface74 8y ago
    I’ve worked crazy hours for weeks at a time learning a new to me technology or trying to figure out something. I purposefully, don’t tell anyone that I’m working late or on weekends and I don’t send or respond to emails outside of office hours. When I was Dev lead, I recommended no one send or respond to emails outside of normal office hours. If they were really having an issue or wanted to work late to figure out something and they had a quick question, I would sometimes answer over Skype but I would never communicate outside of the team or with management outside of office hours unless something was blowing up. Even then, my manager would have to call me or Skype me. I told them that I don’t have work email on my personal phone.
  - shagie 8y ago
    C2 called this a Hero Culture and labeled it as an organizational anti pattern. http://wiki.c2.com/?HeroCulture http://wiki.c2.com/?HeroCulture
- mirko22 8y ago
  On the other hand imagine how much you would learn if you could spend all you gym and bike time learning computer science and other things (not saying you should but the more time you out into something usually you know more about that thing). Also I think knowing data structures is essential cos you are using them ALL the time you just don’t know it cos you never bothered to learn them. But they are corner stone of every program.
collyw 8y ago
Cares about what though? Building simple,solid, maintainable software that does what it is supposed to? Or cares about chasing every new fad, has ten frameworks listed on their resume and is currently midway through the machine learning / blockchain hype? I care about the former, but plenty of people would see that as having little "passion". For example, I don't have any experience using NoSQL databases on my CV, because I haven't had a use case for them and I could tell that they weren't all that they were hyped up to be 5 years ago when those were peak hype cycle. (I can design a relational database properly and know how to index it and optimize queries). Ten years is plenty of time for this industry to kill any passion you started with. I still care about producing good work.
- wafflesraccoon 8y ago
  After programming professionally for several years now I'm always shocked to hear that people program for fun in their free time. Once I get home from work, the last thing I want to think about is writing software.
  - mixmastamyk 8y ago
    True, but am able to get excited about something that "scratches an itch," or will improve longterm productivity. Your commute might also be killing some enthusiasm, I know it did when I went in to the office.
  - collyw 8y ago
    If I have an interesting problem, I honestly don't mind. That has happened once in the last 15 years that I can actually remember.
  - kodablah 8y ago
    For many, it completely depends on time spent at work and effort spent at work. I've been on both sides. If you spend a lot of time and effort at work (not a bad thing), your desire is diminished outside of work. However if you don't have to spend a bunch of time/effort at work, there is time/effort available. Granted, even that relies on whether you enjoy it over other things, but you shouldn't be shocked.
deleted 8y ago
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heyvictor 8y ago
https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/unlocking-clubhouse https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/unlocking-clubhouse I agree with the article on not hiring with the big tech companies' processes. I wanted to add the book 'unlocking the clubhouse' on hiring by finding candidates who make programming/CS their life. There is nothing wrong imo on those who are passionate about computer science, but when you hire based on uber-interested in CS candidates, then you end up with a non-diverse team (not hiring people who didnt come into CS through the same route and didn't have the 'fortune' of being introduced to CS when they were kids). I'm not doing the book justice.
iamdave 8y ago
I find it much easier to deal with someone who has no relevant experience but cares vs someone who had 10 years experience but doesn't care Why? This is a legitimate, but deeply opinionated "why". You employing me and me working for you is a business transaction. Why should I care about your mission beyond giving enough 'care' to produce great work that helps you run your business, run it well, so much that you'll want to keep the relationship going, but maybe provides me with some learning opportunities and skills that if we part ways, I don't starve looking for the next opportunity. That's it. I don't care about whatever your mission was when you started the company, I don't care how you think you're saving the world by creating another conference call platform. In my 22 year career I have deeply truly cared about one company that employed me. One. And even then, it was still a transaction: we need your skills, I have those skills, let's trade and do good work together. That's all I need to 'care' about, IMO it's all the employer needs to 'care' about. Caveat Lector: --- Maybe I'm jaded looking at a tech industry that doesn't seem to have a damn clue what it's doing when it comes to hiring, disaffected by all of these bullshit job requirements that are as far removed from reality as Earth is from one of Jupiter's moons, and offended by these job interviews that feel less like conversations and more like I'm trying to outwit a power hungry DM during a game of Dungeons and Dragons.
- dasil003 8y ago
  That's legitimate, and I would take you any day over someone who cared a lot but had no relevant skills. However caring about the business is absolutely a value-add. Don't get me wrong, you should be careful to avoid being taken advantage of, but generally you will have better career progression if you can inhabit the space between emotional disengagement and being a kool-aid drinking doormat—it's actually a pretty wide space.
  - iamdave 8y ago
    However caring about the business is absolutely a value-add. I can dig this, it absolutely is. It's definitely supplemental (emphasis critical).
- maxxxxx 8y ago
scarface74 8y ago
Looking from the outside, you might assume that I have a “passion” for development. I check all of the boxes. - started programming in 1986 in AppleSoft Basic and 65C02 assembly language. - graduated with a degree in CS - I can bit twiddle pretty well and spent the first 12 years of my career doing C. - I read blogs, post in technical discussion, listen to podcast, etc. - I have up to date AWS certifications. Etc. But I don’t think I have a “passion” for development. I do it to pay my bills and remain competitive. I don’t do side projects but I will work late to learn a new to me technology or framework. I definitely don’t spend time learning frameworks or technologies that aren’t marketable.
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  Just the fact that you read blogs and post in technical discussions shows that you care to improve your craft and don't just wait for somebody to tell you what to. There are no hard criteria to define "caring" but I like people to do something. Read stuff, know at least a little about the latest trends, think about ways to do things differently, try out things and so on.
amorphous 8y ago
> someone who has 10 years AND cares is rare but pure gold. One way to attract those people: choose to build your product using a rather exotic language (e.g. Clojure or Elixir). You take a substantial risk because the language is rather unproven and you will have a hard time finding experienced developers. BUT if someone with 10+ years experience makes the effort to learn a language that does not have an immediate payoff that is a good sign you found someone who cares.
- ktta 8y ago
  Not sure if I'm getting the joke here, but this seems to be a great way to spent most time on development rather than actually building a product.
  - amorphous 8y ago
    Not meant as a joke at all. I have spoken to a few companies that chose Clojure as their development language. They had problems finding people because it's a new language. When I asked them why didn't they just chose something more established like Java with a seemingly unlimited supply of developers they said that they want to attract a certain type of developer that they are willing to train. And that goes both ways. I want to work for a company that chooses language X instead of ruby-python-java-and-the-like because they care. Mind you, this is not meant as a language bashing, not at all Edit: obviously, those companies chose Clojure first of all because of technical reasons, but the hiring part is another perk
  - dancek 8y ago
    Not sure if you're familiar with the mentioned languages. I've been working on my first Clojure/ClojureScript project for a couple of months now. Alone, with no previous real-world experience on any lisp. I dare say I'm more productive now than I would be with React+Redux and a Spring/ASP.NET/Rails backend (all of which I have experience with in more than one project).
- mixmastamyk 8y ago
  True but also true you'll be spending a lot of time on utility libraries that were solved twenty years ago in languageX.
mixmastamyk 8y ago
> Now someone who has 10 years AND cares is rare but pure gold. Pertinent to the article, most of those folks are unhireable today because they can't code with a gun to their head (ala swordfish).
- droidist2 8y ago
  Gun to the head = the pressure of an interview?
  - mixmastamyk 8y ago
    Yes, one maybe two pass/fail questions at random, $200k in a suitcase, clock ticking, pride/family/livelihood on the line, (unintentionally) smug host watching your every move. Any problem is trivial easy once you've solved it ten times. The otherwise ridiculous film Swordfish has a similar scene with higher stakes.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
zschuessler 8y ago
My team has had this issue in hiring. Much of it is due to bootcamps telling students they will make massive salaries after a 6-month course. That has attracted a different crowd of applicants. We are always open to junior engineers, but lately it has been rough interviewing them. It's common to see applicants with no real world experience asking for $100/hour. About half didn't have a portfolio anywhere, but said they could get a recommendation from their bootcamp instructor. One of our last ten junior applicants had a passion for software. 9/10 of the last applicants were motivated by money and asked for ~$100/hour rates. We've stopped actively interviewing juniors because of it. We live in a very affordable city, too.
- technofiend 8y ago
  You ever read any of Michael Lewis' work? He's written several books now that are thematically similar but he's famous for writing an expose of Wall Street's Solomon Brothers called "Liar's Poker". It was fairly critical of Wall Street and its practices but was also filled with lurid descriptions of what the traders got up to with their new found wealth. He was regularly contacted for years afterwards by people wondering how they too could get a high paying job on Wall Street.
  - zschuessler 8y ago
    I have not but much appreciate you taking the time to recommend it! Looks like a good read, I just purchased it.
- blizzard8 8y ago
  Same in our company, where I am tasked with phone screening and it's been horrible to interview junior candidates because most of them are looking for good salary rather than passion for computer science or solving the problems not seen before. Ironically, most of them have completed Master's in computer science as well.
  - glizzard9 8y ago
    My anecdotes are the complete opposite of yours, so I guess they cancel out :)
jondubois 8y ago
>> Now someone who has 10 years AND cares is rare but pure gold. As someone who started programming from a young age and has almost 10 years of commercial experience, I have to say that being in this industry is horrible. If they promoted people using a random number generator, it would be a step up from what we have now. The most horrible thing is that in spite of your passion and experience, your ideas are constantly undermined by money-oriented snake oil salesmen who make extraordinary optimistic claims to become liked by management and get promoted quickly within the company; then, just before everything falls apart, they jump ship for a higher position in a different company and let other people deal with the consequences of their past actions. That's why it's really hard to find people with 10 over years who still care. Caring is a weakness.
- nbardy 8y ago
  The bias for promoting people who build massive card houses is frustrating. I've found myself cleaning up the mess my manager left behind pushing through whatever feature he used to get promoted countless times. And then getting pressure by that same manager when there is too much tech debt in the code base they left behind.
  - ryandrake 8y ago
    Most companies promote based on the surface level “what you did” rather than “how you did it”. It’s not going to change. Be glad you don’t work for one of those companies that promote based on who you’re friends with.
- TuringNYC 8y ago
  I was at a Big-4 consulting company at my first job. I once got passed up for promotion because they said "i didnt handle critical production situations with clients, analyzing them and planning to bring them to a close." I explained...that is because I had such perfectly tested work that I didnt have any major Production issues requiring critical client meetings or mitigation plans. The success criteria there was almost encouraging poor delivery!
  - 8y ago
maxxxxx 8y ago
I want to add: I don't think "caring" means that somebody coded from early youth on or works another 40 hours per week on side projects. All I mean is that somebody is curious about the systems he/she is working with, explores things, stays at least a little informed about latest trends, maybe reads some blogs, thinks about ways to do things better, is able to criticize himself/herself (it's a good sign to be embarrassed about something you did years ago), learns more about the tools he/she is using than strictly necessary, tries to understand the bigger picture. All this can be done in a 40 hours week. No need for overtime or starting at age of 3. During a one year project I see a lot of people who barely grow during that time. Others grow a lot because they put in a little extra mental effort. That's the people I like to work with.
draw_down 8y ago
> we interview a lot of people who have a CS degree just for the career prospects but not out of interest for the craft. Sounds OK to me. I care if someone can do the job well, not if they have a burning passion for it or whatever. We have stuff that needs to get done and we want people who can handle that while being nice to work with. Tacking on more requirements than that is counterproductive, and you don't get to complain about how hard it is to hire if you're doing that.
majormajor 8y ago
The art, I think, in hiring and managing is how to build useful things even when you can't rely on everyone intrinsically caring and being self-driven. If you wait to find a dozen, fifty, a hundred people who care, you might miss out on a lot of opportunities.
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  That's how most big companies work. Their processes are designed for average people who do average work. It works well for them but personally I find such an environment depressing.
  - majormajor 8y ago
    Even if you have above-average people you likely won't get consistent above-average caring.
ehlo 8y ago
Having started in 2008, I was able to observe this as well actually. As a programmer who does the job because it's somehow in the DNA one needs to change according to that I think. People should probably care less about getting a fancy job or making one success after another at work. Instead it becomes more useful to be comfortable with the work and maybe not care too much. Eventually people will see how people who breath this stuff are far more comfortable with the work and teams that include them produce far more pleasurable results. As Programming has become mainstream in some way, far more companies look for coders, even outside of the startup space which creates much more opportunities also for people who know their stuff.
watwut 8y ago
It just seems like false dichotomy to me. The idea that you must project passion the right way else you don't care. I think it did not worked that way on 90ties either. Also, people who stayed in this industry long do care generally. There is also something good to he said about people who understand importance of boring tasks and negotiation and planning and process and do those boring tasks.
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  I think the term "passion" has been abused a lot to mean being excited and loudly proclaiming "I am so passionate. I love it.". I am not likely that and I dont expect to be like that. With passion I mean the desire to learn and do a good job just because it makes life more interesting. I work around 40 hours a week and I try to make this time as interesting and enjoyable as possible. To me that means to do a good job and improve as much as possible. Once I am on my way home I don't think about work anymore.
dan-robertson 8y ago
One popular idea is that programmers should be passionate and spend their spare time working on open source. Another career with a reputation as a stable well-paid job is law. In law, pro-bono work is at least somewhat similar to open source work for programmers: It doesn’t directly make money, is considered morally good, and possibly a way to widen one’s experience. However in law, lawyers in a firm are typically required to spend a certain amount of time doing pro-bono work (during working hours) whereas the same does not happen with programming.
MichaelMoser123 8y ago
I agree with you, but how do you define 'cares'? How do you identify if a candidate for a job at your company cares or not?
Joof 8y ago
Anecdote: I had been programming for ~12 years consistently by the time I got my first job. Almost entirely for fun. I'd managed to get jaded with software (especially commercial software) by this time. I'm considering going back to school for tropical paleoclimatology, largely because I never cared much about the career prospects. Maybe there's nothing wrong with doing it if you want a good career? Hobbyist programming is substantially more rewarding, in my opinion.

menacingly 8y ago

This has been on the tip of my tongue but not formalized. I don't think it even matters if you're talented or particularly brilliant. If you've felt the delight of bending the machine to your modest intentions of blinking a light then you tend to be a person I wouldn't be able to stop from tackling tricky problems if I wanted to.

VerbEncroacher 8y ago

let the self incrimination begin: halt

Aeolun 8y ago

After 10 years, most veterans have learned not to care. Or at least, not care too much.

dalore 8y ago
I would say us old timers learn to be more picky about what we care about. It's a finite resource.
- ghaff 8y ago
  That's a great way of putting it. "Choose your battles" in other words. I look back and I can remember getting very wound up about some things that just didn't matter. And, today, I shake my head a little bit at people for whom every single little thing is something to man the barricades over.
  - ryandrake 8y ago
    I remember a job as a junior programmer: typical 90’s era C++ Windows application. Compiling it with compiler defaults would spew out a continuous stream of thousands of warnings. This was before unit tests and static analysis were in vogue, so random crashes and errors everywhere. Major performance problems. I argued for code hygiene, fix all these crashes, figure out what’s behind the compiler warnings, etc. The response was predictable to anyone who’s been in software for a while: No, we actually need moar features! Keep spooning features into the software and we will succeed! One of my tasks was actually to write a separate process, a watchdog, that would detect every time the app crashed and re-start it quickly hoping the user didn’t notice. Totally demotivating if you were passionate about software craftsmanship. I started fantasizing that the company would crash and burn, and I would be standing there among the rubble saying, “See, I told you to fix those COMPILER WARNINGS!!” Never happened. The company simply limped along in this now-familiar “zombie mode” neither succeeding or failing until it was gobbled up by a bigger mediocre company.
    - imhoguy 8y ago
      > I started fantasizing that the company would crash and burn, and I would be standing there among the rubble... Have you had a part in writing Office Space [0] screenplay? It's Milton's wish. [0] https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0151804/ https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0151804/
- ryandvm 8y ago
  Bingo. As an "old timer", it's not that we don't care; we still love the craft as much as ever. It's just that we are at a point in our careers where we can afford to have a much lower tolerance for bullshit. Manager says "let's have a weekend pizza party hackathon!!!" and the old-timers are the first to recognize and decline the opportunity for unpaid overtime fixing bugs.
  - fma 8y ago
    In my younger days (I'm only 35 lol) I used to want to apply for jobs that said junk like "fast paced environment". Now I'm like screw that... I mean every company wants you to work as hard as possible and turn things around...but now I feel the ones publish it want to put you through the ringer.
    - HillaryBriss 8y ago
      > "fast paced environment" yes. and, if I were to pursue a job with such a description, I'd have only myself to blame when the insane conditions started.
  - collyw 8y ago
    As I said in another comment caring about producing good work is completely different about caring about every hyped up new trend that our industry comes up with (usually a rehash of something from 20 years ago).
  - pvarangot 8y ago
    As a manager I never do nor support hackatons except when the team themselves suggest it's the only way... but when I myself have to code or fix or debug something that needs grind time I still enjoy them. If I'm not getting payed enough to put that hours is another issue to discuss with my manager besides the pizza hackatons themselves.
- sparrish 8y ago
  We've learned live is a marathon, not a dash. I'll churn out stable code; I'll deliver on reasonable deadlines; I'll do my darnedest to make the product the very best I can. But I'll do it at the pace of 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. I have a family and a life outside of your corporation that I truly value more than this, or any, job. I'm no rockstar. I build stuff that gets stuff done.
ravenstine 8y ago
They pretty much have to because the majority of environments they have to work in aren't hospitable to people who actually care. Hence many of us eventually get to the point of "just make it work" that we once used to scoff at on HN. As with most things in life, software engineers eventually beat the game only to find that there was nothing to win the whole time playing by a set of ideals.
- hinkley 8y ago
  I carried this torch a lot longer than most. I never really gave it up because I was fortunate enough as a young man to be in some environments that proved to be that for certain values of “right”, doing the right thing now makes you faster a year from now. And it’s painful to watch a project grind to a halt as bad code accretes. Since I took up gardening I’ve developed a more nuanced view on this. For perennials, there’s a way a plant “should” be but the plant is organic. It has a life of its own. Trying to force it will kill the plant. There is a tempo to bending it to your design and for some plants you need a five year plan to get there, and the plan changes several times. For software I don’t have that much patience. I change jobs more often than houses, and I expect a team to listen to reason, so the more like a 2 year plan. To get A you often have to give up on B or C for a while. Pick priorities that are constructive and try not to grind your teeth while the wheels of progress grind into motion.
saosebastiao 8y ago
I've learned to reciprocate care. I owe no loyalty to a company that refuses to appropriately value my contribution.
saiya-jin 8y ago
It's hard to truly care in any soulless corporation that cares only about profits and IT is seen generally as a pure cost centre (banking is worst in this, but others are not stellar either). Another aspect is meaning of life - if your response is work, then you either have that 0.01% type of work which really matters (and is hardly IT, maybe in Red Cross/MSF style), or much more probably you are just lying to yourself. Life has so much more meaning outside of work, outside of sitting in front of computers. The older you get the more clear this should be, even if you started as a hardcore IT geek. I know I did, but boy am I glad I moved on.
- VerbEncroacher 8y ago
  There have been many keynote speeches on this same topic. You may have written something excellent in the past, but now do you want to pour your soul into it for the next thirty years? Let someone who has devoted their life to the care of the geriatric population tell you the truth about what you value.
- ryandrake 8y ago
  I used to be that stupid guy who would actually bring work home and do it for free after hours, because I loved programming so much and didn’t have any hobbies. Then I slowly realized it was not getting me ahead at all so switched over to just doing my own little hobby/learning projects at home, that all went nowhere, but hey I was programming and programming is fun! These days I don’t even want to get near a computer when I’m done with work. I’ve got a kid and non-technology hobbies that are more fulfilling. I still enjoy programming, but it must be purposeful, there must be a goal and a plan. I won’t just habitually open a terminal and start programming something “because programming.”
  - CzechTech 8y ago
    Who TF "opens a terminal" to start programming? Are you a time traveller from the 80s?
swalsh 8y ago
I have about 12 years of experience, occasionally I'll find myself really interested in some tech. But generally speaking, the technical problems don't interest me anymore. I find myself more fascinated with the business problems. But generally speaking, businesses have been structured to exclude the developer from these problems until it is dev time, in which case the problem is presented as "here's an issue, here's what we want you to build to fix it". So in general my passion has been lost. Finding a company where I can be present during the solution finding phase has been difficult with my pay level.
- thetrumanshow 8y ago
  I worked for a small web-consulting agency for 3 years that allowed me to be a part of everything from the sit-down consultation with the client, to the estimation of engineering effort, to the design/build, and to the demo and support of the production version. Its not a given to have this access and you generally have to ask for it, but it is available to you if you ask. Pros: I learned how to listen to customers, create proposals that tend to close, and upsell... all while being able to build the end product. This has helped me to close a good number of side projects after I moved back to working for larger companies. Cons: The challenge working as an engineer in these small firms is that your resources are limited to the budget of the customer, which can be too small to do top-notch engineering work. You can generally find the balance without sacrificing too much quality, but you will never be completely satisfied with your work-product.
- arkh 8y ago
  Domain Driven Design. As a dev you usually stumble upon it for the architecture / coding part. But those are just details. The Domain part is all about the business: where do you add value, what things you can outsource because they're not at the heart of your strategy, which projects should get your better people etc. So I think it can be a good bridge for people who come from tech and want to dabble in the business part of their company.
mixmastamyk 8y ago
Funny story (now), caring too much once got me "separated" from a high paying job, when an impulsive lead walked in and took over our project shortly before what would have been a successful delivery.

FLUX-YOU 8y ago

The passion/craftsman culture changed when we started selling our souls for the next ad-click or personal information collection system. While it might have seemed good back then, we now have a massively cobbled-together web ecosystem. I know it's a cheap shot, but those same passionate people built the crap we have today. I don't think it speaks very highly of that time or the merits of passion. (many individuals had passion back then and would be strongly against today's web practices -- I do get that) When you start peeling away the layers of the career, the actual craft is only a portion of today's work. If I could code 8 hours a day, I would. But it's hard to spend a day in the workshop with that passionate, quiet, productive focus.

jimmy1 8y ago
> The passion/craftsman culture changed when we started selling our souls for the next ad-click or personal information collection system. I am really passionate about the information collection system I work on. I do my best to ensure data isn't leaked, everything is secure and encrypted. If you would like to offer a solution to the fact that the vast majority of people in this country now expect software to be free (save, some AAA video game titles), I am all ears. Until then, I am going to be passionate about what I do, but realistic as well as I have a family to provide for.
- twtw 8y ago
  > If you would like to offer a solution to the fact that the vast majority of people in this country expect software to be free This is critical. I think it even goes beyond this: most developers expect software they use to be open source. People have gotten used to the software from Google/Facebook/etc that they can develop and release as open source due to their essentially infinite revenue stream.
- FLUX-YOU 8y ago
  >If you would like to offer a solution to the fact that the vast majority of people in this country now expect software to be free (save, some AAA video game titles), I am all ears. Subscriptions? I pay for Netflix, Amazon Prime, Github, MS Office, a VPN, and probably a few others. If you're B2B, use price per user/customer/developer? e.g. Highcharts was worth the money vs. free options. The problem is there's no guarantee you don't also collect info or decide to play ads even if I pay for a subscription.

snowwrestler 8y ago

By all means, you should use whatever criteria you would like to hire your own staff. But in general, I would encourage folks in computer tech industries to be hesitant to assume such a binary approach to evaluating prospects. "Did you code for fun in high school?" might be a useful question now, because software development as a field is so young that high school students can try out significant work easily. But in most high-end professional fields, that's not true. Imagine asking a prospective medical resident "did you treat any diseases in high school?" or "how much surgery do you do in your spare time?" I think we should take it as a positive sign that people are approaching software and computer technology as a professional career that they can professionally pursue. That approach can produce great work too, and a growing field means a greater diversity in how people find and display their passion. Getting a CS degree is not easy, and requires some base level of interest and commitment to complete. Even a bootcamp is not free, and takes some focus and work. Anyone above a certain age (like me) came into the industry sideways, as it was developing, as a result of personal passion and interest. Let's not mistake that for an inherent property of a good tech employee... every industry on Earth started that way at some point. Computer technology industries are maturing, just like railroads, oil development, aviation, telecommunications, and dozens of other industries have over time. That's not bad, and we will have to take it into account as we consider the model employee. Hiring people who are "not proven" might also mean hiring people who are well trained, but maybe have not yet proven their passion in a way you recognize.

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ghaff 8y ago
CS/programming is almost unique in this regard in that there's a significant school of thought out there that, if you haven't been programming as a hobby since you were a kid, that's a disqualification. As you say, there is pretty much zero expectation in any other STEM field that you did much more than take some science classes in high school and liked them. (In STEM. Obviously you presumably don't apply to Juilliard because you decided you might want to give this music thing a try.)
- deleted 8y ago

parthdesai 8y ago

And what about when companies these days exploit the term "caring"? I like programming as much as the next person here but i'm not going to code 80 hours a day. I also like going to gym and working out, riding my bike, playing soccer and hanging out with friends. Companies these days expect you to have side projects or contribution to popular open source libraries while having a job. Oh and did i mention asking you questions about algorithms and data-structures that you most likely haven't used in years and won't be using for foreseeable future?

busterarm 8y ago
Related point, some companies don't intentionally exploit this but end up hiring someone who works and commits code cowboy style 14 hours a day. The company thinks that person is amazing while the person's coworkers hate working with them.
- scarface74 8y ago
  I’ve worked crazy hours for weeks at a time learning a new to me technology or trying to figure out something. I purposefully, don’t tell anyone that I’m working late or on weekends and I don’t send or respond to emails outside of office hours. When I was Dev lead, I recommended no one send or respond to emails outside of normal office hours. If they were really having an issue or wanted to work late to figure out something and they had a quick question, I would sometimes answer over Skype but I would never communicate outside of the team or with management outside of office hours unless something was blowing up. Even then, my manager would have to call me or Skype me. I told them that I don’t have work email on my personal phone.
- shagie 8y ago
  C2 called this a Hero Culture and labeled it as an organizational anti pattern. http://wiki.c2.com/?HeroCulture http://wiki.c2.com/?HeroCulture
mirko22 8y ago
On the other hand imagine how much you would learn if you could spend all you gym and bike time learning computer science and other things (not saying you should but the more time you out into something usually you know more about that thing). Also I think knowing data structures is essential cos you are using them ALL the time you just don’t know it cos you never bothered to learn them. But they are corner stone of every program.

collyw 8y ago

Cares about what though? Building simple,solid, maintainable software that does what it is supposed to? Or cares about chasing every new fad, has ten frameworks listed on their resume and is currently midway through the machine learning / blockchain hype? I care about the former, but plenty of people would see that as having little "passion". For example, I don't have any experience using NoSQL databases on my CV, because I haven't had a use case for them and I could tell that they weren't all that they were hyped up to be 5 years ago when those were peak hype cycle. (I can design a relational database properly and know how to index it and optimize queries). Ten years is plenty of time for this industry to kill any passion you started with. I still care about producing good work.

wafflesraccoon 8y ago
After programming professionally for several years now I'm always shocked to hear that people program for fun in their free time. Once I get home from work, the last thing I want to think about is writing software.
- mixmastamyk 8y ago
  True, but am able to get excited about something that "scratches an itch," or will improve longterm productivity. Your commute might also be killing some enthusiasm, I know it did when I went in to the office.
- collyw 8y ago
  If I have an interesting problem, I honestly don't mind. That has happened once in the last 15 years that I can actually remember.
- kodablah 8y ago
  For many, it completely depends on time spent at work and effort spent at work. I've been on both sides. If you spend a lot of time and effort at work (not a bad thing), your desire is diminished outside of work. However if you don't have to spend a bunch of time/effort at work, there is time/effort available. Granted, even that relies on whether you enjoy it over other things, but you shouldn't be shocked.

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heyvictor 8y ago

https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/unlocking-clubhouse https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/unlocking-clubhouse I agree with the article on not hiring with the big tech companies' processes. I wanted to add the book 'unlocking the clubhouse' on hiring by finding candidates who make programming/CS their life. There is nothing wrong imo on those who are passionate about computer science, but when you hire based on uber-interested in CS candidates, then you end up with a non-diverse team (not hiring people who didnt come into CS through the same route and didn't have the 'fortune' of being introduced to CS when they were kids). I'm not doing the book justice.

iamdave 8y ago

I find it much easier to deal with someone who has no relevant experience but cares vs someone who had 10 years experience but doesn't care Why? This is a legitimate, but deeply opinionated "why". You employing me and me working for you is a business transaction. Why should I care about your mission beyond giving enough 'care' to produce great work that helps you run your business, run it well, so much that you'll want to keep the relationship going, but maybe provides me with some learning opportunities and skills that if we part ways, I don't starve looking for the next opportunity. That's it. I don't care about whatever your mission was when you started the company, I don't care how you think you're saving the world by creating another conference call platform. In my 22 year career I have deeply truly cared about one company that employed me. One. And even then, it was still a transaction: we need your skills, I have those skills, let's trade and do good work together. That's all I need to 'care' about, IMO it's all the employer needs to 'care' about. Caveat Lector: --- Maybe I'm jaded looking at a tech industry that doesn't seem to have a damn clue what it's doing when it comes to hiring, disaffected by all of these bullshit job requirements that are as far removed from reality as Earth is from one of Jupiter's moons, and offended by these job interviews that feel less like conversations and more like I'm trying to outwit a power hungry DM during a game of Dungeons and Dragons.

dasil003 8y ago
That's legitimate, and I would take you any day over someone who cared a lot but had no relevant skills. However caring about the business is absolutely a value-add. Don't get me wrong, you should be careful to avoid being taken advantage of, but generally you will have better career progression if you can inhabit the space between emotional disengagement and being a kool-aid drinking doormat—it's actually a pretty wide space.
- iamdave 8y ago
  However caring about the business is absolutely a value-add. I can dig this, it absolutely is. It's definitely supplemental (emphasis critical).
maxxxxx 8y ago

scarface74 8y ago

Looking from the outside, you might assume that I have a “passion” for development. I check all of the boxes. - started programming in 1986 in AppleSoft Basic and 65C02 assembly language. - graduated with a degree in CS - I can bit twiddle pretty well and spent the first 12 years of my career doing C. - I read blogs, post in technical discussion, listen to podcast, etc. - I have up to date AWS certifications. Etc. But I don’t think I have a “passion” for development. I do it to pay my bills and remain competitive. I don’t do side projects but I will work late to learn a new to me technology or framework. I definitely don’t spend time learning frameworks or technologies that aren’t marketable.

maxxxxx 8y ago
Just the fact that you read blogs and post in technical discussions shows that you care to improve your craft and don't just wait for somebody to tell you what to. There are no hard criteria to define "caring" but I like people to do something. Read stuff, know at least a little about the latest trends, think about ways to do things differently, try out things and so on.

amorphous 8y ago

> someone who has 10 years AND cares is rare but pure gold. One way to attract those people: choose to build your product using a rather exotic language (e.g. Clojure or Elixir). You take a substantial risk because the language is rather unproven and you will have a hard time finding experienced developers. BUT if someone with 10+ years experience makes the effort to learn a language that does not have an immediate payoff that is a good sign you found someone who cares.

ktta 8y ago
Not sure if I'm getting the joke here, but this seems to be a great way to spent most time on development rather than actually building a product.
- amorphous 8y ago
  Not meant as a joke at all. I have spoken to a few companies that chose Clojure as their development language. They had problems finding people because it's a new language. When I asked them why didn't they just chose something more established like Java with a seemingly unlimited supply of developers they said that they want to attract a certain type of developer that they are willing to train. And that goes both ways. I want to work for a company that chooses language X instead of ruby-python-java-and-the-like because they care. Mind you, this is not meant as a language bashing, not at all Edit: obviously, those companies chose Clojure first of all because of technical reasons, but the hiring part is another perk
- dancek 8y ago
  Not sure if you're familiar with the mentioned languages. I've been working on my first Clojure/ClojureScript project for a couple of months now. Alone, with no previous real-world experience on any lisp. I dare say I'm more productive now than I would be with React+Redux and a Spring/ASP.NET/Rails backend (all of which I have experience with in more than one project).
mixmastamyk 8y ago
True but also true you'll be spending a lot of time on utility libraries that were solved twenty years ago in languageX.

mixmastamyk 8y ago

> Now someone who has 10 years AND cares is rare but pure gold. Pertinent to the article, most of those folks are unhireable today because they can't code with a gun to their head (ala swordfish).

droidist2 8y ago
Gun to the head = the pressure of an interview?
- mixmastamyk 8y ago
  Yes, one maybe two pass/fail questions at random, $200k in a suitcase, clock ticking, pride/family/livelihood on the line, (unintentionally) smug host watching your every move. Any problem is trivial easy once you've solved it ten times. The otherwise ridiculous film Swordfish has a similar scene with higher stakes.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]

zschuessler 8y ago

My team has had this issue in hiring. Much of it is due to bootcamps telling students they will make massive salaries after a 6-month course. That has attracted a different crowd of applicants. We are always open to junior engineers, but lately it has been rough interviewing them. It's common to see applicants with no real world experience asking for $100/hour. About half didn't have a portfolio anywhere, but said they could get a recommendation from their bootcamp instructor. One of our last ten junior applicants had a passion for software. 9/10 of the last applicants were motivated by money and asked for ~$100/hour rates. We've stopped actively interviewing juniors because of it. We live in a very affordable city, too.

technofiend 8y ago
You ever read any of Michael Lewis' work? He's written several books now that are thematically similar but he's famous for writing an expose of Wall Street's Solomon Brothers called "Liar's Poker". It was fairly critical of Wall Street and its practices but was also filled with lurid descriptions of what the traders got up to with their new found wealth. He was regularly contacted for years afterwards by people wondering how they too could get a high paying job on Wall Street.
- zschuessler 8y ago
  I have not but much appreciate you taking the time to recommend it! Looks like a good read, I just purchased it.
blizzard8 8y ago
Same in our company, where I am tasked with phone screening and it's been horrible to interview junior candidates because most of them are looking for good salary rather than passion for computer science or solving the problems not seen before. Ironically, most of them have completed Master's in computer science as well.
- glizzard9 8y ago
  My anecdotes are the complete opposite of yours, so I guess they cancel out :)

jondubois 8y ago

>> Now someone who has 10 years AND cares is rare but pure gold. As someone who started programming from a young age and has almost 10 years of commercial experience, I have to say that being in this industry is horrible. If they promoted people using a random number generator, it would be a step up from what we have now. The most horrible thing is that in spite of your passion and experience, your ideas are constantly undermined by money-oriented snake oil salesmen who make extraordinary optimistic claims to become liked by management and get promoted quickly within the company; then, just before everything falls apart, they jump ship for a higher position in a different company and let other people deal with the consequences of their past actions. That's why it's really hard to find people with 10 over years who still care. Caring is a weakness.

nbardy 8y ago
The bias for promoting people who build massive card houses is frustrating. I've found myself cleaning up the mess my manager left behind pushing through whatever feature he used to get promoted countless times. And then getting pressure by that same manager when there is too much tech debt in the code base they left behind.
- ryandrake 8y ago
  Most companies promote based on the surface level “what you did” rather than “how you did it”. It’s not going to change. Be glad you don’t work for one of those companies that promote based on who you’re friends with.
TuringNYC 8y ago
I was at a Big-4 consulting company at my first job. I once got passed up for promotion because they said "i didnt handle critical production situations with clients, analyzing them and planning to bring them to a close." I explained...that is because I had such perfectly tested work that I didnt have any major Production issues requiring critical client meetings or mitigation plans. The success criteria there was almost encouraging poor delivery!
- 8y ago

maxxxxx 8y ago

I want to add: I don't think "caring" means that somebody coded from early youth on or works another 40 hours per week on side projects. All I mean is that somebody is curious about the systems he/she is working with, explores things, stays at least a little informed about latest trends, maybe reads some blogs, thinks about ways to do things better, is able to criticize himself/herself (it's a good sign to be embarrassed about something you did years ago), learns more about the tools he/she is using than strictly necessary, tries to understand the bigger picture. All this can be done in a 40 hours week. No need for overtime or starting at age of 3. During a one year project I see a lot of people who barely grow during that time. Others grow a lot because they put in a little extra mental effort. That's the people I like to work with.

draw_down 8y ago

> we interview a lot of people who have a CS degree just for the career prospects but not out of interest for the craft. Sounds OK to me. I care if someone can do the job well, not if they have a burning passion for it or whatever. We have stuff that needs to get done and we want people who can handle that while being nice to work with. Tacking on more requirements than that is counterproductive, and you don't get to complain about how hard it is to hire if you're doing that.

majormajor 8y ago

The art, I think, in hiring and managing is how to build useful things even when you can't rely on everyone intrinsically caring and being self-driven. If you wait to find a dozen, fifty, a hundred people who care, you might miss out on a lot of opportunities.

maxxxxx 8y ago
That's how most big companies work. Their processes are designed for average people who do average work. It works well for them but personally I find such an environment depressing.
- majormajor 8y ago
  Even if you have above-average people you likely won't get consistent above-average caring.

ehlo 8y ago

Having started in 2008, I was able to observe this as well actually. As a programmer who does the job because it's somehow in the DNA one needs to change according to that I think. People should probably care less about getting a fancy job or making one success after another at work. Instead it becomes more useful to be comfortable with the work and maybe not care too much. Eventually people will see how people who breath this stuff are far more comfortable with the work and teams that include them produce far more pleasurable results. As Programming has become mainstream in some way, far more companies look for coders, even outside of the startup space which creates much more opportunities also for people who know their stuff.

watwut 8y ago

It just seems like false dichotomy to me. The idea that you must project passion the right way else you don't care. I think it did not worked that way on 90ties either. Also, people who stayed in this industry long do care generally. There is also something good to he said about people who understand importance of boring tasks and negotiation and planning and process and do those boring tasks.

maxxxxx 8y ago
I think the term "passion" has been abused a lot to mean being excited and loudly proclaiming "I am so passionate. I love it.". I am not likely that and I dont expect to be like that. With passion I mean the desire to learn and do a good job just because it makes life more interesting. I work around 40 hours a week and I try to make this time as interesting and enjoyable as possible. To me that means to do a good job and improve as much as possible. Once I am on my way home I don't think about work anymore.

dan-robertson 8y ago

One popular idea is that programmers should be passionate and spend their spare time working on open source. Another career with a reputation as a stable well-paid job is law. In law, pro-bono work is at least somewhat similar to open source work for programmers: It doesn’t directly make money, is considered morally good, and possibly a way to widen one’s experience. However in law, lawyers in a firm are typically required to spend a certain amount of time doing pro-bono work (during working hours) whereas the same does not happen with programming.

MichaelMoser123 8y ago

I agree with you, but how do you define 'cares'? How do you identify if a candidate for a job at your company cares or not?

Joof 8y ago

Anecdote: I had been programming for ~12 years consistently by the time I got my first job. Almost entirely for fun. I'd managed to get jaded with software (especially commercial software) by this time. I'm considering going back to school for tropical paleoclimatology, largely because I never cared much about the career prospects. Maybe there's nothing wrong with doing it if you want a good career? Hobbyist programming is substantially more rewarding, in my opinion.