4 ms·

No my passion isn’t my job. I have a long list of things I do for fun. Sitting at a computer is not one of them. My job is transactional - an exchange of labo

No my passion isn’t my job. I have a long list of things I do for fun. Sitting at a computer is not one of them. My job is transactional - an exchange of labor for money. I can’t exchange “passion” for food clothes or shelter. I’m 51 now and can afford to choose work life balance over money. But if I were younger and it’s advice I give all younger graduates in CS is to “grind leetCode and work for a FAANG (or equivalent paying company)” and by pay I mean cash and RSUs in publicly traded companies not “equity” that will statistically be worthless.

moregrist 1y ago
If you’re in an interview, you’ve already agreed to an hour of your time talking to someone. Few technical interviewers expect their problem to be your passion. But I think it’s concerning if you can’t show interest in a specific problem and have a good technical discussion about solutions for an hour.
- scarface_74 1y ago
  I don’t think I’ve ever even proffered “passion” about software development or whatever random B2B SaaS vertical the company was doing. I show proficiency, professionalism, expertise, and the ability to bring that to a job. I’ve had 10 jobs everything from startups, random big enterprise, and BigTech. Am I suppose to show passion about - bill printing? Field services sending technicians to people’s houses? Railroad car repair? Admittedly my first job as an architect was for a company that managed sending nurses to the homes of special needs kids and the next two were in the health care industry, but after that it was dealing with cloud consulting (full time jobs) first at AWS directly then other consulting companies (currently a staff architect at a 3rd party cloud company) I can talk about technical solutions, be a post sales architect, lead implementations and do system design and coding all day long without being “passionate” about the business. It’s just professionalism and my addictions to food and shelter
  - godelski 1y ago
    Passion can show itself in many ways. Why did you pick programming of all things? There's something there, right? If you can dig into a topic, that's a form of passion. If you're willing to put in hard work, that's a form of passion. These may not be the same thing as the person who gets excited about these problems, but something did drive you. And no one is so excited about coding that they are never dispassionate and never frustrated. The thing you're looking for is why should I trust that you have these skills? If there's nothing you can rant about, then I'd find that odd, even if you see it as a paycheck.
    - scarface_74 1y ago
      I picked programming because I was a short (still short), fat (I got better) kid with a computer in the mid 80s. You can “trust” I have those skills because I can talk about my past experiences, you can throw any architectural or business problem at me and I can talk through it including tradeoffs and why I made the decisions I made. How I deal with organizational challenges, etc. My being able to dig into a topic is not “passion”. It’s my job. I get paid to know my subject matter deeply and to be able to ramp up fast on technology and the business domain. The deal is if I work at your company, you agreed to give me $x amount of money, benefits and for me remote work and in exchange I agreed to give your company all of my expertise gained over 30 years of working for 40-45 hours a week. You need me to code those 40 hours a week? You got me. You need me to be on a zoom call or fly to a client site? No problem. You want me to do pretty diagrams and spit out 40 page requirement documents or business proposals? I can do that too. Along with leading projects, cloud architecture, etc. Just understand, you get 40-45 hours a week. You don’t get late nights, you don’t get on call, you don’t get weekend work, and my bullshit tolerance level is relatively low before I am looking for another job - ask my last nine employers.
      - godelski 1y ago
        Okay, so it seems like for the most part we agree in concept but disagree about the words used to convey them? Do I have that right? I laid out what __I__ consider different forms of passion and while explaining yourself you met some of that criteria. So I'm not sure where the anger is coming from. I hope you're doing okay and I really hope we can have fewer abusive employers. I'm really empathetic to that, and have quit several jobs because situations like you mention.
dilyevsky 1y ago
That's cool and all but you do realize that with this attitude you really need to blow interviewer's socks off with how good you are or be like really really cheap, right? Especially in this market. Probably not the best advice to median candidate applying...
- lisbbb 1y ago
  I'm 52 and as soon as they figure that out it is pretty much over, anyways. I'm not looking right now, even. I think my career is closed down, but not totally sure yet. I was passionate about my work for a long time, but after awhile I realized the same issues were grinding me down repeatedly and one of them was the average quality of new staff was becoming pretty bad. There would be like one truly inspired developer amongst 10 or 20 so-so ones and that inspired one usually had some kind of work ethic issues, e.g. serious apathy about everything in life. I'm not saying I'm great, because I had times where I wasn't too motivated, either, but I bounced back from burnout 2-3 times and was truly on point for a lot of years at some pretty un-charming companies. So it goes, so it goes.
- JustExAWS 1y ago
  Then don’t be the median candidate? If you are the median candidate in today’s market randomly submitting your resume to an ATS and trying to get by based on your ability to grind leetCode and reverse a btree on the white board, you’re screwed anyway.

moregrist 1y ago

If you’re in an interview, you’ve already agreed to an hour of your time talking to someone. Few technical interviewers expect their problem to be your passion. But I think it’s concerning if you can’t show interest in a specific problem and have a good technical discussion about solutions for an hour.

scarface_74 1y ago
I don’t think I’ve ever even proffered “passion” about software development or whatever random B2B SaaS vertical the company was doing. I show proficiency, professionalism, expertise, and the ability to bring that to a job. I’ve had 10 jobs everything from startups, random big enterprise, and BigTech. Am I suppose to show passion about - bill printing? Field services sending technicians to people’s houses? Railroad car repair? Admittedly my first job as an architect was for a company that managed sending nurses to the homes of special needs kids and the next two were in the health care industry, but after that it was dealing with cloud consulting (full time jobs) first at AWS directly then other consulting companies (currently a staff architect at a 3rd party cloud company) I can talk about technical solutions, be a post sales architect, lead implementations and do system design and coding all day long without being “passionate” about the business. It’s just professionalism and my addictions to food and shelter
- godelski 1y ago
  Passion can show itself in many ways. Why did you pick programming of all things? There's something there, right? If you can dig into a topic, that's a form of passion. If you're willing to put in hard work, that's a form of passion. These may not be the same thing as the person who gets excited about these problems, but something did drive you. And no one is so excited about coding that they are never dispassionate and never frustrated. The thing you're looking for is why should I trust that you have these skills? If there's nothing you can rant about, then I'd find that odd, even if you see it as a paycheck.
  - scarface_74 1y ago
    I picked programming because I was a short (still short), fat (I got better) kid with a computer in the mid 80s. You can “trust” I have those skills because I can talk about my past experiences, you can throw any architectural or business problem at me and I can talk through it including tradeoffs and why I made the decisions I made. How I deal with organizational challenges, etc. My being able to dig into a topic is not “passion”. It’s my job. I get paid to know my subject matter deeply and to be able to ramp up fast on technology and the business domain. The deal is if I work at your company, you agreed to give me $x amount of money, benefits and for me remote work and in exchange I agreed to give your company all of my expertise gained over 30 years of working for 40-45 hours a week. You need me to code those 40 hours a week? You got me. You need me to be on a zoom call or fly to a client site? No problem. You want me to do pretty diagrams and spit out 40 page requirement documents or business proposals? I can do that too. Along with leading projects, cloud architecture, etc. Just understand, you get 40-45 hours a week. You don’t get late nights, you don’t get on call, you don’t get weekend work, and my bullshit tolerance level is relatively low before I am looking for another job - ask my last nine employers.
    - godelski 1y ago
      Okay, so it seems like for the most part we agree in concept but disagree about the words used to convey them? Do I have that right? I laid out what __I__ consider different forms of passion and while explaining yourself you met some of that criteria. So I'm not sure where the anger is coming from. I hope you're doing okay and I really hope we can have fewer abusive employers. I'm really empathetic to that, and have quit several jobs because situations like you mention.

dilyevsky 1y ago

That's cool and all but you do realize that with this attitude you really need to blow interviewer's socks off with how good you are or be like really really cheap, right? Especially in this market. Probably not the best advice to median candidate applying...

lisbbb 1y ago
I'm 52 and as soon as they figure that out it is pretty much over, anyways. I'm not looking right now, even. I think my career is closed down, but not totally sure yet. I was passionate about my work for a long time, but after awhile I realized the same issues were grinding me down repeatedly and one of them was the average quality of new staff was becoming pretty bad. There would be like one truly inspired developer amongst 10 or 20 so-so ones and that inspired one usually had some kind of work ethic issues, e.g. serious apathy about everything in life. I'm not saying I'm great, because I had times where I wasn't too motivated, either, but I bounced back from burnout 2-3 times and was truly on point for a lot of years at some pretty un-charming companies. So it goes, so it goes.
JustExAWS 1y ago
Then don’t be the median candidate? If you are the median candidate in today’s market randomly submitting your resume to an ATS and trying to get by based on your ability to grind leetCode and reverse a btree on the white board, you’re screwed anyway.