There are plenty of jobs where passion is necessary because some practical aspect of the job sucks -- low base pay, crunch times and long hours in startups and

There are plenty of jobs where passion is necessary because some practical aspect of the job sucks -- low base pay, crunch times and long hours in startups and the video game and movie/special effects industries, for example. Some folks make a career of this; others will switch specializations and have fun war stories to share with their coworkers at their new 9-to-5. Passion also matters if you don't demonstrate the skills required for the role but get hired anyway. Being hired as a PFY, or unpaid high school/college internships, or "boss's son/daughter cleans the office" type jobs, especially since some of these roles aren't standing hires, but are "created" for the right candidate. I think that the value a "paychecks are ok" sort of piece is two-fold. (1) For people who think that they have to pretend to be passionate because their employer cares, we want you to know that other kinds of jobs exist. There are trade-offs; maybe you'll be working in ad-tech, or some other boring cog of business logic, but they exist. (2) For young people (especially minorities) who think that "programming is not for them" because they're not thinking about it 24/7, we say, "there are places here where you can belong". The folks I've met who are most passionate about designing circuits for fun on the weekend are the 9-to-5, spend-time-with-the-kids types. You don't have time to design circuits on the weekend if you're doing 80-hour work weeks. Don't believe recruiting sites that say "we hire people with passion" when they really mean "we want unpaid overtime", ugh.