Be it family, hobbies, religion, other topics of interest, the scope of things to do in life is near-infinite. You could spend your evening honing your skills

Be it family, hobbies, religion, other topics of interest, the scope of things to do in life is near-infinite. You could spend your evening honing your skills for a while, yes, but even then at some point you might feel tired of just spending all your time on computer-related stuff. Then you log on HN, like you did for the last decade or so, and see another "Ask HN: I don't feel passionate about coding anymore" post. It's okay buddy, passion will come back, or might not in a way that makes it okay, you just need a breather. Sorry, went on a bit of a tangent, cause I do agree with you in fact. I do expect my colleagues to meet a baseline of competency, one that usually only met by "doing your homework", and at the same time, I don't think it's reasonable to expect them to do it out of habit.