Personally it sounds like a damn effective heuristic to me. I've found the folk who have a passion for their work are the best employees. Technical ability isn

Personally it sounds like a damn effective heuristic to me. I've found the folk who have a passion for their work are the best employees. Technical ability isn't the only factor in being productive - or hiring. Caring about your work is vitally important too. Ideally what I want is ability and passion of course - but the world isn't an ideal place. A technically excellent employee with no passion... well.... in my experience they tend to coast. They do what they're told, and do it well, but they're not the ones who bang on your door first thing in the morning and go 'Have you seen this?!'. The folk banging on the door are the ones that make money. Give me a passionate employee with a clue and I can coach them into technical excellence. I've yet to figure out how to coach passion into somebody who doesn't really care.