Counterpoint: In my experience as an interviewer (for peer positions) there's no benefit. It's vaguely amusing to read people imagine what the position might be

Counterpoint: In my experience as an interviewer (for peer positions) there's no benefit. It's vaguely amusing to read people imagine what the position might be like and try to spin it to sound like what they want to do, or to hear them talk about changing the world or getting all excited about our industry. It seems like if you're not a principal in a business (i.e. a YC hacker) you're a cog in a business: your primary task is to do what your boss wants you to do. I'd rather see professionalism that results in being good at your job (and going home at the end of the day) than hell bent on some quest to find life satisfaction at work. This topic has blown through a couple times in the past few weeks and there's definitely been a lot of "YOU MUST DO THIS", "it doesn't matter", but I still don't have a feel for how as an candidate it might help me, and I find rationalizing my desire to do geek stuff as a passion for working at a specific company very disingenuous. If I'm finding positions on monster.com, I'm looking because I want a different job, not because I'm passionate about improving peoples lives with $company_brand widgets. Maybe employers that are expecting these are getting their resumes from elsewhere?