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"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

"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.
  - ravenstine 3y ago
    I agree. I don't regret the passion and vigor that I had in my 20s. To an extent, I don't even regret the times I put in more effort than I should have, especially when working for real jerk bosses. It was an experience that I needed to have. On the other side of the coin, I've lived enough years in my 30s and have met enough 30-somethings and beyond to conclude that, besides rare exceptions, having the same "passion" when you're no longer that young is probably not the best thing for most people. If the fact that your company doesn't actually value excellence or that your coworkers aren't interested enough still bothers you if you're older than 30 then it's a sign to start caring less. If I cared as much in my 30s as I did in my 20s about workplace excellence, I'd be fat, single, and friendless. Just saying. It's not like that for everyone, but I think everyone should consider whether that's true for them.
BlargMcLarg 3y ago
Most companies can't even handle truly passionate people. Passionate people generally fight to deliver quality at a decent pace. They care too much about their work to ignore inefficiencies, bureaucracy, poor quality, and more. These companies claiming they care about 'passion'? They are the same ones telling you the equivalent of 'shut up and just do the job' the moment you care too much. Your only reward is double the grunt work for a 5% pay increase at best. The places where this isn't the case and there isn't a huge caveat? They are a blip on the market. If passion really was so important, they wouldn't do so much to turn it into a joke and make all their workers meek or jaded.
kderbyma 3y ago
Maybe you should step back from the code and let people who do want to dig in do it??? strange you seem to not appreciate quality and definitely have a chip on your shoulder. sounds like you should maybe stay out of the code and recoup? maybe management is your calling? or you have the personality for it? many projects need people who actually care about improving the product performance because they realise the magnitude of benefits that come not just technically, but across the board. people tend to be happier when they get more done with less effort.
- ravenstine 3y ago
  Strange that you think I have a chip on my shoulder. I'm far from having a chip on my shoulder, actually. I enjoy writing software and my career is good (despite my criticisms of the field). I'm simply pushing back on the idea that software developers need to be passionate, and am pointing out that the word "passion" can be used against developers. When you hear the word "passion" or any positive sounding word or phrase emitted from the mouth of a business, you have to remember that a business has incentives that are not necessarily in the favor of the individual. > many projects need people who actually care about improving the product performance I object to the idea that this requires passion. A person who is not passionate can still be competent at their work and solve problems like product performance. It just doesn't mean that they're going to care as much about things that satisfy developers but don't actually improve the end product, like toolchains, design patterns, the latest and greatest frameworks and transpilers, the "correct" way to do OOP, etc. > people tend to be happier when they get more done with less effort. That is true, but it doesn't necessarily follow that a team of passionate developers equates to less development effort. It certainly can, but it's not a guarantee. If you get people who are so passionate that they must die on every hill when it comes to a the team not agreeing over something as simple as tabs-vs-spaces (just an example), that can result in more effort that an individual developer needs to make in order for their code to be approved. Developers who care to the point that every rule needs to be carried out to a tee, even when it sacrifices code clarity and developer happiness, can make everyone including themselves miserable. That's the point I was attempting to make, not that developers should work hard a few years and then kick back and stop caring at all, like a certain other individual in this thread (not you btw) believes. > maybe management is your calling? Good heavens, no. lol But the suggestion is appreciated.
rektide 3y ago
It sucks that so often the various troubles here are true, but it also sucks that we are so hopelessly fatalistic & degrading about passion. This post covers most of the typical angles, and they're all bad, all roundly degrade everyone with passion. The possibility of the Joyous Warrior (who isn't also a hopeless mess to work with or a terrible bore with no life or otherwise awful) isn't permitted. I personally like to temper myself with a little more optimism. Leaving the box open for hope, too, seems reasonable. And I feel like I've met so many people who might not be as maximally obsessed, but who do really relish the incredible fantastic wide open world in which software devs get to tred & lead the ways.
000ooo000 3y ago
I agree with your thoughts, particularly passion being leveraged against the worker. It's not my favourite book but Work Won't Love You Back talks about this a bit. IMHO the problem with passion at work is that usually when companies say they value passion, they really mean that they want workers who are passionate about doing exactly what the company wants all of the time. When you're green, it's easy and feels good to believe all the BS rhetoric about how we're One Team, working together to benefit society, etc, so you channel your passion into your work. But after one spends a few years in the corporate environment, one learns how rarely a craftsman's passion aligns with the goals of a profit driven entity. I don't hold much passion for using shit tools to quickly pump out mediocre software employing user-hostile patterns that will probably be binned in a few years because someone certified as clueless decided so. The changes required to modern development to make me passionate at work are just a total nonstarter. So I withhold my passion for my personal life.
okbuddylol 3y ago
Some people aren't cut out for this kind of work, exhibit A. It's offensive for you to offer this kind of negative advice with not even ten years under your belt, you know nothing about industry arcs and what makes a sustainable long career. Treating 29 (or 30) as an age cutoff for serious professional effort as an IC screams immaturity and total unawareness of the breadth and depth of the field. With your background, you could only have scratched the surface by that age. Selfishly I'd like you to continue dispensing this kind of advice because attrition reduces competition, but I have to wonder, why are you even here commenting? Shouldn't you be walking your son or something worthy of the gravitas of three whole decades' life experience?
- ravenstine 3y ago
  > Some people aren't cut out for this kind of work, exhibit A. Interesting that I'm not cut out for work that I voluntarily partake in, have an interest in, and am continually paid for. > It's offensive for you to offer this kind of negative advice I'm not one of those people who cares about whether people are offended more than calling a spade a spade, so don't waste your breath telling me that I'm offensive. It's one thing if you're personally insulted for some specific reason, but I'm not sorry if you or anyone else are offended because I have a perspective. By the way, if you carefully reread my comment, you'll see that I didn't state that all passionate developers are bad or are suckers. Passionate developers can be the best asset or the worst asset on a team, and some people believe that passion is of upmost importance without considering whether their expectations of the 68.3% of software developers is reasonable; there's nothing wrong with being an adequate developer, and overly passionate developers tyrannizing others with their standards is a form of douchebaggery. If telling passionate developers to question whether their passion is making things worse for themselves and those around them is offensive, then offensive I shall be. > not even ten years under your belt You were that offended that you had to find me on GitHub in order to find my LinkedIn to figure out how long I've been in the industry? Wow. That's some real motivation you have. As if a resume can accurately represent how much actual experience someone has programming, interacting with other programmers, or working with passionate people in any industry in general. Maybe you should stop hiding behind that throwaway account so we can dig into your history, bub. At least I'm open about mine. > you know nothing about industry arcs and what makes a sustainable long career. Oh, yeah? At what point does one finally know anything about industry arcs or sustainable careers? 15 years? 20 years? 30 years? Is it when I finally get a gray pube? > Treating 29 (or 30) as an age cutoff for serious professional effort as an IC screams immaturity and total unawareness of the breadth and depth of the field. Where did you get the idea that I was suggesting an age cutoff for serious professional effort? Effort is related to passion, but they are not the same thing. One can be a dispassionate about programming but still put in serious professional effort because they code to live, not live to code. The point of the "29" thing is that nobody is young forever, and that life will not wait for you; there are lifestyles that are may be appropriate for young people but not necessarily for someone who is no longer that young. Being a "passionate" programmer can lead to workplace stress and reduced time living outside of the world outside of software, and while young people are going to pay their dues more or less, aged programmers should question whether intentional passion is a diminishing return at their experience level. Unnecessary stress isn't associated with prolonged lifespan, to say the least, and having good relationships with your coworkers is usually more important than whether code is elegant (a codeword for intellectually satisfying). Life outside of software shouldn't be postponed forever. Like I said in another comment, if I maintained the same passion as I did when I got started, my life in my 30s would be a lot less rich and vibrant than it currently is, and life is full of opportunities that present themselves only once. > With your background, you could only have scratched the surface by that age. Gee, I'm really sorry I didn't go into engineering targeting systems for Raytheon, or AAA console games, or LLMs for OpenAI, or some mass psychological experiment for Facebook. If I had, then I'd have real passion! > Selfishly I'd like you to continue dispensing this kind of advice because attrition reduces competition, but I have to wonder, why are you even here commenting? One could ask you the same pointless question, but I'll neither do that or dignify it with an actual response. > Shouldn't you be walking your son or something worthy of the gravitas of three whole decades' life experience? I could have made different choices in life that would have lead to me having children by now, yes, but what the purple fuck does that have to do with whether career passion can be counterproductive or harmful? To recycle your verbiage, you are exhibit A of why passionate careerists can suck. Is the way you responded to me how you treat your coworkers when they don't meet your standards? Do you review their LinkedIn profiles when they don't use your favorite design patterns or don't code enough outside of work? All you did was attack me without addressing whether what I said was valid, regardless of my experience level. The fact that you seem to care almost solely about the prestige of years spent coding, which is a number, says a lot about you. Passionate coders should consider whether their view of coding makes them insufferable; do you agree?
Fire-Dragon-DoL 3y ago
I agree with everything except with the over 29 statement. People should be able to be passionate about whatever they want, even coding 24/7 if that's what they love.
- ravenstine 3y ago
  They certainly should be and have the autonomy to make that choice. At the same time, as I get older (and I'm not even that old), the more that I think that people generally would benefit from being able to step aside from their work momentarily to have other experiences. There will be the exception of the person who really just wants to do nothing but code until they die and find no fulfillment in anything else, but they are outliers. If someone is going to figure out that their life really should just be about coding passionately, they should do so sooner rather than later so they don't end up wishing they'd done more with the youth they no longer have and can never obtain again. Life can be cruel that way and, on the contrary, I think suggesting that people not treat their life in their 30s the same way as they did in their 20s is more likely to lead to sustained happiness than telling them to indefinitely follow their passion with blinders on.

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.
- ravenstine 3y ago
  I agree. I don't regret the passion and vigor that I had in my 20s. To an extent, I don't even regret the times I put in more effort than I should have, especially when working for real jerk bosses. It was an experience that I needed to have. On the other side of the coin, I've lived enough years in my 30s and have met enough 30-somethings and beyond to conclude that, besides rare exceptions, having the same "passion" when you're no longer that young is probably not the best thing for most people. If the fact that your company doesn't actually value excellence or that your coworkers aren't interested enough still bothers you if you're older than 30 then it's a sign to start caring less. If I cared as much in my 30s as I did in my 20s about workplace excellence, I'd be fat, single, and friendless. Just saying. It's not like that for everyone, but I think everyone should consider whether that's true for them.

BlargMcLarg 3y ago

Most companies can't even handle truly passionate people. Passionate people generally fight to deliver quality at a decent pace. They care too much about their work to ignore inefficiencies, bureaucracy, poor quality, and more. These companies claiming they care about 'passion'? They are the same ones telling you the equivalent of 'shut up and just do the job' the moment you care too much. Your only reward is double the grunt work for a 5% pay increase at best. The places where this isn't the case and there isn't a huge caveat? They are a blip on the market. If passion really was so important, they wouldn't do so much to turn it into a joke and make all their workers meek or jaded.

kderbyma 3y ago

Maybe you should step back from the code and let people who do want to dig in do it??? strange you seem to not appreciate quality and definitely have a chip on your shoulder. sounds like you should maybe stay out of the code and recoup? maybe management is your calling? or you have the personality for it? many projects need people who actually care about improving the product performance because they realise the magnitude of benefits that come not just technically, but across the board. people tend to be happier when they get more done with less effort.

ravenstine 3y ago
Strange that you think I have a chip on my shoulder. I'm far from having a chip on my shoulder, actually. I enjoy writing software and my career is good (despite my criticisms of the field). I'm simply pushing back on the idea that software developers need to be passionate, and am pointing out that the word "passion" can be used against developers. When you hear the word "passion" or any positive sounding word or phrase emitted from the mouth of a business, you have to remember that a business has incentives that are not necessarily in the favor of the individual. > many projects need people who actually care about improving the product performance I object to the idea that this requires passion. A person who is not passionate can still be competent at their work and solve problems like product performance. It just doesn't mean that they're going to care as much about things that satisfy developers but don't actually improve the end product, like toolchains, design patterns, the latest and greatest frameworks and transpilers, the "correct" way to do OOP, etc. > people tend to be happier when they get more done with less effort. That is true, but it doesn't necessarily follow that a team of passionate developers equates to less development effort. It certainly can, but it's not a guarantee. If you get people who are so passionate that they must die on every hill when it comes to a the team not agreeing over something as simple as tabs-vs-spaces (just an example), that can result in more effort that an individual developer needs to make in order for their code to be approved. Developers who care to the point that every rule needs to be carried out to a tee, even when it sacrifices code clarity and developer happiness, can make everyone including themselves miserable. That's the point I was attempting to make, not that developers should work hard a few years and then kick back and stop caring at all, like a certain other individual in this thread (not you btw) believes. > maybe management is your calling? Good heavens, no. lol But the suggestion is appreciated.

rektide 3y ago

It sucks that so often the various troubles here are true, but it also sucks that we are so hopelessly fatalistic & degrading about passion. This post covers most of the typical angles, and they're all bad, all roundly degrade everyone with passion. The possibility of the Joyous Warrior (who isn't also a hopeless mess to work with or a terrible bore with no life or otherwise awful) isn't permitted. I personally like to temper myself with a little more optimism. Leaving the box open for hope, too, seems reasonable. And I feel like I've met so many people who might not be as maximally obsessed, but who do really relish the incredible fantastic wide open world in which software devs get to tred & lead the ways.

000ooo000 3y ago

I agree with your thoughts, particularly passion being leveraged against the worker. It's not my favourite book but Work Won't Love You Back talks about this a bit. IMHO the problem with passion at work is that usually when companies say they value passion, they really mean that they want workers who are passionate about doing exactly what the company wants all of the time. When you're green, it's easy and feels good to believe all the BS rhetoric about how we're One Team, working together to benefit society, etc, so you channel your passion into your work. But after one spends a few years in the corporate environment, one learns how rarely a craftsman's passion aligns with the goals of a profit driven entity. I don't hold much passion for using shit tools to quickly pump out mediocre software employing user-hostile patterns that will probably be binned in a few years because someone certified as clueless decided so. The changes required to modern development to make me passionate at work are just a total nonstarter. So I withhold my passion for my personal life.

okbuddylol 3y ago

Some people aren't cut out for this kind of work, exhibit A. It's offensive for you to offer this kind of negative advice with not even ten years under your belt, you know nothing about industry arcs and what makes a sustainable long career. Treating 29 (or 30) as an age cutoff for serious professional effort as an IC screams immaturity and total unawareness of the breadth and depth of the field. With your background, you could only have scratched the surface by that age. Selfishly I'd like you to continue dispensing this kind of advice because attrition reduces competition, but I have to wonder, why are you even here commenting? Shouldn't you be walking your son or something worthy of the gravitas of three whole decades' life experience?

ravenstine 3y ago
> Some people aren't cut out for this kind of work, exhibit A. Interesting that I'm not cut out for work that I voluntarily partake in, have an interest in, and am continually paid for. > It's offensive for you to offer this kind of negative advice I'm not one of those people who cares about whether people are offended more than calling a spade a spade, so don't waste your breath telling me that I'm offensive. It's one thing if you're personally insulted for some specific reason, but I'm not sorry if you or anyone else are offended because I have a perspective. By the way, if you carefully reread my comment, you'll see that I didn't state that all passionate developers are bad or are suckers. Passionate developers can be the best asset or the worst asset on a team, and some people believe that passion is of upmost importance without considering whether their expectations of the 68.3% of software developers is reasonable; there's nothing wrong with being an adequate developer, and overly passionate developers tyrannizing others with their standards is a form of douchebaggery. If telling passionate developers to question whether their passion is making things worse for themselves and those around them is offensive, then offensive I shall be. > not even ten years under your belt You were that offended that you had to find me on GitHub in order to find my LinkedIn to figure out how long I've been in the industry? Wow. That's some real motivation you have. As if a resume can accurately represent how much actual experience someone has programming, interacting with other programmers, or working with passionate people in any industry in general. Maybe you should stop hiding behind that throwaway account so we can dig into your history, bub. At least I'm open about mine. > you know nothing about industry arcs and what makes a sustainable long career. Oh, yeah? At what point does one finally know anything about industry arcs or sustainable careers? 15 years? 20 years? 30 years? Is it when I finally get a gray pube? > Treating 29 (or 30) as an age cutoff for serious professional effort as an IC screams immaturity and total unawareness of the breadth and depth of the field. Where did you get the idea that I was suggesting an age cutoff for serious professional effort? Effort is related to passion, but they are not the same thing. One can be a dispassionate about programming but still put in serious professional effort because they code to live, not live to code. The point of the "29" thing is that nobody is young forever, and that life will not wait for you; there are lifestyles that are may be appropriate for young people but not necessarily for someone who is no longer that young. Being a "passionate" programmer can lead to workplace stress and reduced time living outside of the world outside of software, and while young people are going to pay their dues more or less, aged programmers should question whether intentional passion is a diminishing return at their experience level. Unnecessary stress isn't associated with prolonged lifespan, to say the least, and having good relationships with your coworkers is usually more important than whether code is elegant (a codeword for intellectually satisfying). Life outside of software shouldn't be postponed forever. Like I said in another comment, if I maintained the same passion as I did when I got started, my life in my 30s would be a lot less rich and vibrant than it currently is, and life is full of opportunities that present themselves only once. > With your background, you could only have scratched the surface by that age. Gee, I'm really sorry I didn't go into engineering targeting systems for Raytheon, or AAA console games, or LLMs for OpenAI, or some mass psychological experiment for Facebook. If I had, then I'd have real passion! > Selfishly I'd like you to continue dispensing this kind of advice because attrition reduces competition, but I have to wonder, why are you even here commenting? One could ask you the same pointless question, but I'll neither do that or dignify it with an actual response. > Shouldn't you be walking your son or something worthy of the gravitas of three whole decades' life experience? I could have made different choices in life that would have lead to me having children by now, yes, but what the purple fuck does that have to do with whether career passion can be counterproductive or harmful? To recycle your verbiage, you are exhibit A of why passionate careerists can suck. Is the way you responded to me how you treat your coworkers when they don't meet your standards? Do you review their LinkedIn profiles when they don't use your favorite design patterns or don't code enough outside of work? All you did was attack me without addressing whether what I said was valid, regardless of my experience level. The fact that you seem to care almost solely about the prestige of years spent coding, which is a number, says a lot about you. Passionate coders should consider whether their view of coding makes them insufferable; do you agree?

Fire-Dragon-DoL 3y ago

I agree with everything except with the over 29 statement. People should be able to be passionate about whatever they want, even coding 24/7 if that's what they love.

ravenstine 3y ago
They certainly should be and have the autonomy to make that choice. At the same time, as I get older (and I'm not even that old), the more that I think that people generally would benefit from being able to step aside from their work momentarily to have other experiences. There will be the exception of the person who really just wants to do nothing but code until they die and find no fulfillment in anything else, but they are outliers. If someone is going to figure out that their life really should just be about coding passionately, they should do so sooner rather than later so they don't end up wishing they'd done more with the youth they no longer have and can never obtain again. Life can be cruel that way and, on the contrary, I think suggesting that people not treat their life in their 30s the same way as they did in their 20s is more likely to lead to sustained happiness than telling them to indefinitely follow their passion with blinders on.