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It always bothers me that everyone seems to think that non-passionate devs will be lazy and do crap work. When you go to the grocery store, some cashiers are b

It always bothers me that everyone seems to think that non-passionate devs will be lazy and do crap work. When you go to the grocery store, some cashiers are better at their job than others, right? Probably most of them, good or bad, don’t love their jobs and are not passionate about “cashiering”, but some care about doing a good job regardless. I probably wouldn’t be considered a passionate dev, I don’t have open source projects for example. But I do care about my work and try to do it as good as I know/can. After all, even if I don’t do programming out of working hours, I still have 40 hours weekly devoted to it, so that’s plenty of time to practice. Not to mention that I’ve met incredibly passionate devs… that were passionate about their stuff, not their employer’s. I’ve caught some of them working on their open source stuff during working hours, in fact.

punkbit 3y ago
Finally someone puts this in a very clear and honest way!
robotnikman 3y ago
This right here describes me perfectly. On work I am not passionate about I still want to do a good job and be satisfied with my work in the end.
ravenstine 3y ago
"Passion" as a career development meme is designed to extract more work for the same pay. It's one thing if passion is a requirement for success. In software development, the bar is so low that while passion may be of huge benefit, it's by no means a strong predictor of career success. If you enjoy coding just enough that you get your job done adequately every day and don't feel burned out, that's perfectly fine. When recruiters are looking for "passionate" developers, that means they want you going above and beyond in order to guarantee they get their cut after N-months with your company. That doesn't mean you actually need to live and breathe code. Moreover, I hope nobody after age 29 actually lives and breathes code, even if they really like programming. There's a lot more to life than software. Work at a sustainable pace, maybe do a few unambitious hobby projects, and spend the rest of your time doing things with people who matter. A lot of those high-passion types are overly intellectual douchebag types who slow down the development process because someone didn't use their preferred design pattern. Do you really want to be one of them?
- shrimp_emoji 3y ago
  > There's a lot more to life than software. There's a lot more to a banana than the interior. Like the peel and the tree and the backbreaking labor to grow it and the Phoneutria! > Work at a sustainable pace, maybe do a few unambitious hobby projects, and spend the rest of your time doing things with people who matter. You had me at the first Sorta lost me at the second (hobby projects: good, but necessarily unambitious?) Devastatingly puzzled at the third (can I work on ambitious hobby projects with these as-yet-unidentified people?)
- bluefirebrand 3y ago
  > Moreover, I hope nobody after age 29 actually lives and breathes code, even if they really like programming Why 29, that feels like a really arbitrary cutoff. Are people in their 20s not allowed work-life balance?
  - ravenstine 3y ago
    I could have said 30, but I felt like saying 29 because that's the point where some people think "oh no, my 20s are about to end."
  - regular_trash 3y ago
    To me, this comment seems to use age as a proxy for determining how far someone is in their "career journey". It may be more understandable for someone to get the experience of "living and breathing code" early on, while it's harder to see what might motivate a person to continue doing so after gathering a decade or more of experience in the IT profession.
  - sophacles 3y ago
    I read it less as a proscription against work-life balance and more as an excuse for those who are enthusiastic and young. Someone in their 20s is still new to their career, and it's exciting to be paid to do this thing you would be doing for free anyway... its totally understandable if that person dives into the deep-end and is totally immersed for a while. There's also just the exuberance of youth - one thing I miss most about my 20s is the ability to get excited about something and go head-first into it. Some combination of age and random other responsibilities and concerns that one picks up over the years makes that much harder in my middle age. Some people (like me) tend to need to learn the hard way - the downside of going hard at work all the time was a lesson I needed to experience. It's better I did it young than now, I'm not nearly resilient enough anymore to make that mistake.

punkbit 3y ago

Finally someone puts this in a very clear and honest way!

robotnikman 3y ago

This right here describes me perfectly. On work I am not passionate about I still want to do a good job and be satisfied with my work in the end.

ravenstine 3y ago

"Passion" as a career development meme is designed to extract more work for the same pay. It's one thing if passion is a requirement for success. In software development, the bar is so low that while passion may be of huge benefit, it's by no means a strong predictor of career success. If you enjoy coding just enough that you get your job done adequately every day and don't feel burned out, that's perfectly fine. When recruiters are looking for "passionate" developers, that means they want you going above and beyond in order to guarantee they get their cut after N-months with your company. That doesn't mean you actually need to live and breathe code. Moreover, I hope nobody after age 29 actually lives and breathes code, even if they really like programming. There's a lot more to life than software. Work at a sustainable pace, maybe do a few unambitious hobby projects, and spend the rest of your time doing things with people who matter. A lot of those high-passion types are overly intellectual douchebag types who slow down the development process because someone didn't use their preferred design pattern. Do you really want to be one of them?

shrimp_emoji 3y ago
> There's a lot more to life than software. There's a lot more to a banana than the interior. Like the peel and the tree and the backbreaking labor to grow it and the Phoneutria! > Work at a sustainable pace, maybe do a few unambitious hobby projects, and spend the rest of your time doing things with people who matter. You had me at the first Sorta lost me at the second (hobby projects: good, but necessarily unambitious?) Devastatingly puzzled at the third (can I work on ambitious hobby projects with these as-yet-unidentified people?)
bluefirebrand 3y ago
> Moreover, I hope nobody after age 29 actually lives and breathes code, even if they really like programming Why 29, that feels like a really arbitrary cutoff. Are people in their 20s not allowed work-life balance?
- ravenstine 3y ago
  I could have said 30, but I felt like saying 29 because that's the point where some people think "oh no, my 20s are about to end."
- regular_trash 3y ago
  To me, this comment seems to use age as a proxy for determining how far someone is in their "career journey". It may be more understandable for someone to get the experience of "living and breathing code" early on, while it's harder to see what might motivate a person to continue doing so after gathering a decade or more of experience in the IT profession.
- sophacles 3y ago
  I read it less as a proscription against work-life balance and more as an excuse for those who are enthusiastic and young. Someone in their 20s is still new to their career, and it's exciting to be paid to do this thing you would be doing for free anyway... its totally understandable if that person dives into the deep-end and is totally immersed for a while. There's also just the exuberance of youth - one thing I miss most about my 20s is the ability to get excited about something and go head-first into it. Some combination of age and random other responsibilities and concerns that one picks up over the years makes that much harder in my middle age. Some people (like me) tend to need to learn the hard way - the downside of going hard at work all the time was a lesson I needed to experience. It's better I did it young than now, I'm not nearly resilient enough anymore to make that mistake.