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Programmer Passion Considered Harmful

224 points by jamescostian 12y ago

omg guys front page

smt88 12y ago
Actually what he's arguing (rightly) is that burnout is harmful. That's not the same as "programmer passion". Creating an environment where you expect or force people to burn out is going to harm your business in the long-run. There are people who can thrive in that environment, but there aren't many. But, contrary to the mixed message of the article, passion is a necessary ingredient for a great employee in any position. Passionate people are happier to wake up in the morning, come to the office, and do work that others don't enjoy. Suggesting that liking your work is bad (as the title does strongly and the article does very weakly) is absolute fucking nonsense.
- adamc 12y ago
  I think the article was also implying that "passion" is often used as employer-code for "willing to work grueling hours". To the extend that is true, I think the article is right about it being a bad thing. I'm not sure about the rest of your argument either, particularly "Passionate people are happier to wake up in the morning, come to the office, and do work that others don't enjoy." In most people, passion blows hot and cold over periods of time (because other aspects of their life affect their mood), but that doesn't mean they don't come to work and do their jobs. In my experience (more than two decades of work as a software dev), curiosity might be a better indicator than passion.
- Dewie 12y ago
  > Actually what he's arguing (rightly) is that burnout is harmful. That's not the same as "programmer passion". What I've been wondering about lately, though, is if what looks like passion can all of a sudden turn on you and manifest itself as burnout? That's why I feel a bit wary about "if I like to do it, then it's fine". What if I'm just deluding myself, and the burnout ends up hitting me even harder? My biggest problem though, which is obvious and doesn't require much self-reflection, is that I have a pretty unbalanced lifestyle.
  - smt88 12y ago
    I'll tell you my story, which may or may not be relatable. I've always loved all aspects of developing software products: brainstorming, research, programming, designing, and marketing. Even the boring parts are so motivating to me that I can work for 20 hours at a time. And because all of the ideas and opportunities around me are so enjoyable and exciting, I used to have a lot of trouble saying no. I tried to pile more and more stuff onto my plate, often justifying it by under-estimating the time it takes to do each one. I eventually saw my less of my girlfriend, family, and friends. I almost entirely stopped drinking even a single drink because of the small decrease in productivity. I slept 4 hours a day in 2-hour shifts. I hadn't burned out yet, but I became an example of the popular research finding that productivity is greater if you work at sub-burnout levels. In my case, I get as much done working on and off for 10 hours a day as I did working for 20. I get more sleep, though still little, and I force myself to take miniature "vacations" (sometimes an evening, sometimes a day or two) to focus on things other than work, no matter how much is piling up. I'm still extremely busy, and I'm still not doing everything I want to do. But I'm more productive than I was, and I'm not missing out on all of the other things in life. There will always be people who are willing to sacrifice everything for work. I think that's a small minority, and even in that minority, very few of them will end up happy in the long term. I always like to say that no one lies on their death bed and says, "I wish I would have worked more and seen my loved ones, traveled, and relaxed less!" In fact, a recent NY Times article[1] about this exact subject concludes with a deathbed quote that supports the anti-burnout movement very well. 1. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/14/business/dealbook/when-employee-engagement-turns-into-employee-burnout.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/14/business/dealbook/when-emp...
tux3 12y ago
So much vitriol, anger, suffering in this article. I think that the author does have a point, and I agree that you shouldn't sell yourself off as a slave just because you're passionate, but that point is being pushed a tad too far. There's nothing wrong with enjoying your job.
- jeremy6d 12y ago
  I'm glad to be on a site where we can be complete human beings, and not sacrifice feeling out frustration and anger on the altar of professionalism.
reidrac 12y ago
I don't think being passionate about programming, or your job or anything else, means it has to be at the expense of something else that is valuable. It's more about preference and priorities. I don't watch TV, for example. Being obsessive about something can be unhealthy in some cases, but I'm not sure if that's what the post is about. Because the author talks about himself in the post, I found interesting that he defines himself at the bottom of the page as "SF author, software developer, occasional blogger. Buy my books and help me quit my day job.". So his passion is perhaps being a SF author and wants to quit his day job, which makes me think he's not very passionate about it. Well, that's all right. Like being passionate about programming.
- s73v3r 12y ago
  The "passion" he talks about isn't real passion, but the "passion" that employers tend to ask for, which really means, "Is willing to work insane hours for no extra compensation."
dannypgh 12y ago
Yeah, I think I program with a lot of passion. However, after I've worked for not-too-much-more-than 8 hours in a day I force myself to go home. And when I'm home I make an effort to stop thinking about whatever problem was on my mind. Sometimes having an open source side-project can help with this tremendously. The author is definitely establishing a false dichotomy here. Just because you would enjoy doing something for 16 hours straight, doesn't mean you have to.
amagumori 12y ago
i think in most cases it's harmful to give one single iota of a fuck about whatever it is you do for work, unless you work for yourself. 40 hours of every week of your life, at a minimum, is being used to further someone else's goals, and you have no choice in this because you have to survive. don't ever work hard unless it's on something that matters to you or something that's altruistic. if you're in tech and aren't specifically working towards helping people, your job, company, and product don't matter. at all. stack your money, smile, nod, and GTFO as soon as you can.
- fennecfoxen 12y ago
  I dunno. Sometimes working towards someone else's goals is a reasonably pleasant experience: if they're paying you well enough to help you save up the cash meet your goals, if the work itself is interesting, and if you have the latitude to do your job the way you want to. Then as long as you don't get too attached to it and you remember that you'll walk away from the code someday, caring is much more fun than the alternative.
  - cssmoo 12y ago
    On that basis you're only giving a shit about their goals for the money. If that went away, which it occasionally does from experience, does your care persist? Nope. I've learned not to get attached to anything unless I'm in control of it.
- cssmoo 12y ago
  I couldn't agree more with this. I've developed the same approach to work. In fact I go out of my way to avoid doing any work where possible now and balance everything in favour of, for lack of a better analogy, collecting slack. Life is in the most part, pretty bloody good since I switched to this mode of working and stopped giving a shit about my day job. During the day, I spend my entire time cranking the cogs on enterprise crap that really doesn't do anything other than top slicing some cash off some data flying around. I really don't care if the product burns in hell. That doesn't mean to say I don't do a good job, but I don't use the best of my energy on something I don't enjoy and aren't passionate about. The company on the other hand suggest that passion is mandatory and that you're owned by them and you will attend every social event and be part of the "family", which a self professed narcissistic control freak manager explained is simply their control method and they don't give a fuck either. In fact everyone wouldn't piss on the place if it was on fire but hey everyone is making some cash and until that happens, who cares? This is a recent development due to two separate medical near miss on myself and my wife. When shit gets put into perspective, your priorities are corrected. Before that I bought into it all and was the 80 hour a week slave. Now; 20-40 hours a week expended. If it all goes to hell, as you say, smile, nod and GTFO, then do the same elsewhere. Now for something I really enjoy, I spent a couple of hours writing some deduplication software for Google Drive in python the other day. It solved a real problem I had and was interesting. Note: I've even contracted out giving a shit about files to Google. Anyway back to learning postgresql (something I am interested in) and watching the tomatoes grow on my window sill instead of cranking out Java EE model classes which is what I'm supposed to be doing. They can wait for the people who do care or have a large enough ego to pile-drive each other in the meeting rooms.
bluedino 12y ago
If you want to be among the absolute best at something, you are going to do need to dedicate a good part of your life to it. 8 hours a day just isn't going to cut it. Did Michael Jordan go home the second practice was over? Do you think Thomas Edison only put 8 hours in at his lab? Did Linus only work on Linux for 8 hours a day? Steve Wozniak has a story bout staying up 4 nights in a row working on the Apple computer. Should you burn yourself out on 20 hour days because your employer forces you? Hell no. But if you truly love something to allow it to complete takeover your life, that could be the way to create something very special.
- some_furry 12y ago
  > Did Wozniak not Did Linus only work on Linux for 8 hours a day? Steve Wozniak has a story bout staying up 4 nights in a row working on the Apple computer. Heh. > Should you burn yourself out on 20 hour days because your employer forces you? Hell no. Agreed.
- BSousa 12y ago
  Except most pro athletes train 3-4 hours a day, not 16. If I'm not mistaken (been a while since I read the book), Michael admitted he would get up early to practise, but before school, not before normal practise. When he turned pro, he would be (according to the coach) the most hardworking guy there, but he would leave with the rest of the team and do whatever he had to do. Can't remember where, but recently read that pro football/soccer players train on average 26 hours per week, which seem about right from reports I have from friends that play. Boxers also practise at around 3-4 hours per day as well.
  - bluedino 12y ago
    >> Except most pro athletes train 3-4 hours a day, not 16. We're talking about the best. Even in pro athletes there is a huge margin from 'good' to 'best'. Peyton Manning (NFL quarterback) is known for studying hours and hours of game footage. http://nypost.com/2014/01/30/peyton-mannings-film-study-obsession-is-stuff-of-legend/ http://nypost.com/2014/01/30/peyton-mannings-film-study-obse...
jasode 12y ago
This article is low-quality ranting. The author has a certain definition of "passion" and therefore taints it to be negative to fit his list of complaints. Tellingly, his whole essay is focused on "passion" == "time expenditure wasted". There's another type of "passion" where it's equal to "extreme interest in subject matter" or "pursuit of intellectual puzzles". Since the author uses "passion" as "time wasted", his view of programming comes off as a white-collar version of bricklayer. Don't lay any more bricks and cement than is necessary for the construction foreman. Punch in the clock at 9am. Punch out promptly at 5pm. It's all about time. See the relevant phrase excerpts: > put in a solid eight hours > spending twelve to sixteen hours a day in the office > forsake everything else to spend more time coding as a badge of honor. > programmers who spend all their waking hours on the job > working several weeks of twelve-to-fourteen hour days with only Sundays off > spend all night on the job > Put in a solid eight hour day, and then get the hell out. G >, once you have worked a solid eight hour day, leave the office and silence your phone >, and ignore your bosses when they bitch about you only working nine-to-five. Being driven like a slave for 12 to 16 hour days is a legitimate gripe but harping on the word "passion" (or the fact that his superiors label it as "passion") is blaming the wrong thing. I concede that there are many enterprise companies who need trying to recruit "passionate" programmers to maintain boring CRUD apps. Sure, a lot of these programming jobs are soul-crushing bricklaying work. Their use of "passion" is self-serving and rightfully triggers a jaded reaction. However, a lot of startups need "passionate" programmers who genuinly enjoy algorithms, solving graphs, etc that are relevant to the companies unique technical challenges. Yes, even this type of "passionate" programmer will tend to spend more than 8 hours on the job. It's because they like the work they do. Jony Ive at Apple spends 12 hours at work because he's passionate and not because he's being chastised by Tim Cook. (Jony Ive is already a multi-millionaire and can quit if he feels he's being exploited.) That's the kind of passion many hiring managers are looking for and the author's one-dimensional essay ignores it.
- pjmlp 12y ago
  I have been in the industry for a while, almost every time I see "passion" coming from HR, it is as an euphemism for "we like devs that crunch and don't complain". Never saw it otherwise, not even in startups.
lmm 12y ago
I agree with much of this. I work a solid eight hours and go home. When people are impressed at my abilities, I wonder how much of the difference is simply that I get a full night's sleep and so many people don't. But I write code at home. Not work-related code, and not to the exclusion of other hobbies. But coding is something I enjoy, something I sometimes like to do for its own sake. I won't apologise for that.
- gretful 12y ago
  my biggest f-up happened during a 4AM call - I deleted an entire filesystem... twice...
- deaconblues 12y ago
  I was wondering the other day: is it possible to enjoy coding, be good and employable, and still leave your work at work? I code at home too, but yeah, other passions take priority. You rarely hear about programmers who don't live and breathe code, but there must be a huge number of them.
  - noir_lord 12y ago
    80/20 principle probably applies. I've known lots of programmers who turn up, do a good job then go home, they don't blog, follow frameworks or languages or any of the other stuff that isn't directly required for work.
  - BSousa 12y ago
    Yes! If you hang around HN or the trendy hipster blogosphere, then no. Seems those developers are the scum of the earth and shouldn't be allowed near a computer, but in the real world, those are the ones doing important development in medicine, banking, military, etc, while keeping normal work hours. Just because they don't create the 389th Javascript frontend MVC fully reactive template based framework and create 50 blog posts about it, doesn't mean they aren't good at their jobs.
  - collyw 12y ago
    Yes. Actually most programmers I work with seem to be 9-5ers without any passion. I am a 9-5er with some passion about the languages and tools I use.
some_furry 12y ago
I'm passionate about programming. But not for my employer. I work as a web developer. In my off-time, I like to play with technology. Usually, that involves writing code. This code is not meant to be perfect or useful for anyone else, so I never share it. It's my own work of crappy art, made for the fun of writing it.
sklogic 12y ago
I keep repeating (and keep getting downvoted for this obvious truth) that even 8 working hours are too much. One can only keep decent levels of concentration on a mentally challenging task for no more than 4 hours a day. Good if you have something less mentally challenging to fill the remaining 4 hours with, but even better if you do not need to.
- zo1 12y ago
  I'd agree with this to an extent. Rather than "4 hours per day" we should rather look at it as a case of "after X units of time, one needs to recharge/rest/break". I often find myself mentally drained after a task, and I just need a few minutes to "recharge". Sure, I can push forward without the break, but I find myself not motivated to do it (and quite drained if I do it multiple times per day). Whereas, if I get a bit of a reprieve, I'm fine with the next task at hand. Not sure if it's like that for anyone else, though. Right now, I'm writing on HN because I'm taking a bit of a break after solving a production issue that was baffling me for the last hour.
  - sklogic 12y ago
    Yes, that's reasonable, schedules may be more complex. This aspect (required rest schedule) was not very well researched. The only data I've got was collected by the IT and engineering companies, and they could only measure working-day-long spans.
- Silhouette 12y ago
  I would prefer not to pick a number at all. There are days when I'm really into something and can write (good) code for 12 hours straight, but those days don't happen very often. There are days when I have grunt work to do but other people keep distracting me, and if I write 1/10 the amount of useful code on those days I'm doing well. Usually it's somewhere in between. I probably average around 5-6 hours of productive coding per day on any given project, not counting break times, but with very wide variance. Also, although different projects aren't completely independent, I do find that after taking a significant break (read: probably multiple hours) I can work productively on something else for a while. For example, if I've got some main feature I'm developing but also need to investigate and fix some bugs, I might spend a few hours on the main work, but I might still be quite comfortable tracking down and fixing a few bugs later in the day. So quite often, I will actually split my working time into 2 or even 3 main sessions during a day, doing other things in between, though I have the advantage here of not being someone else's employee with standard office hours.
BasDirks 12y ago
This article conflates passion for programming with working insane hours for an employer. This is pretty dumb. "It’s one thing to suffer when you’re an obscure artist, or a spurned lover, or a soldier facing his death, or even Jesus H. Christ himself. But don’t suffer for a paycheck unless you’re the CEO." There is some room between Jesus and your CEO.
- s_kilk 12y ago
  Agreed. I'm passionate enough about programming to have several side-projects on the go at one time. However, when quitting time rolls around I drop my pickaxe and go home.
- Draiken 12y ago
  IMO it's how companies perceive "passionate programmers". The article just highlights how that's harmful.
- s73v3r 12y ago
  "This article conflates passion for programming with working insane hours for an employer. This is pretty dumb." That's generally how "passion" is defined. I can't count the number of job postings I saw that said they wanted people "passionate" about what they do. Where "passionate" was defined as being willing to work insane hours.
peteypao 12y ago
You can never be great at whatever you do if you aren't passionate about it, and put in the necessary hours. This article is pretty dumb.
- elihu 12y ago
  Unfortunately, most programmer positions do not require you to be great at what you do, or passionate. In fact, being either of those things may be a disadvantage. Most programming is just doing stuff that isn't really all that interesting, but it needs to get done. There are also a lot of interesting meaningful problems that desperately need to be solved by creative, capable people, and if your job is to work on one of those, then great, but for many programmers, those kinds of problems are the ones we work on on our own time, if we're so inclined. I think it's strange that the article didn't make a distinction between code-for-work and code-for-fun.
segmondy 12y ago
The article is poorly written, he never once talked about passion, instead he talks about obsession, over working or burning out. Passion is not harmful. Lack of passion on the other hand? I wish the world had more passionate programmers.
robalfonso 12y ago
I never viewed being "passionate" about programming as the author has. I want passionate employees working for me. To me that means you like the work, you are interested in the field, and it means you continue to build your body of knowledge either through on the job research or on your own time as a hobby. Doctors as an example spend a significant amount of time keeping abreast on the latest procedures and developments. But he is right when he describes the idea of 16 hour days as obsessive. That is unhealthy and it leads to mistakes, some business can tolerate it, others can't ymmv.
ThrustVectoring 12y ago
You can't reliably get more stuff done by working longer hours. All that does is burn your long-term resources for short-term gain - and even that it does badly, since you can quickly start stacking up mistakes. If you need to get more done, you have to be efficient about it.
HaseebR7 12y ago
Go To Considered Harmful http://www.u.arizona.edu/~rubinson/copyright_violations/Go_To_Considered_Harmful.html http://www.u.arizona.edu/~rubinson/copyright_violations/Go_T... Coincidence?
- Ygg2 12y ago
  Coincidence? Considered Harmful considered harmful[1]. [1]http://meyerweb.com/eric/comment/chech.html http://meyerweb.com/eric/comment/chech.html
  - HaseebR7 12y ago
    Ahh, I get it now. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Considered_harmful http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Considered_harmful Considered harmful is a phrase used in the titles of at least 65 critical essays in computer science and related disciplines. It was popularized by Edsger Dijkstra's letter Go To Statement Considered Harmful.
euske 12y ago
I have to confess. I consider myself a passionate programmer. I love coding. I believe that I'm changing the world by coding and I'm communicating with the users through the UI design. And yet I can only code for two hours maximum a day. For the rest of a day I'm mostly goofing (a.k.a. "researching"). Sorry, Boss.
- thirdtruck 12y ago
  Almost certainly a factor of your environment and your work assignments. If someone came over and poked you every five minutes, would you expect to get several hours of focused work done every day? The same applies to all the many smaller distractions with which we suffer.
logfromblammo 12y ago
Sometimes I see job postings from companies looking for passionate programmers. And then the entire remainder of the post gives detailed reasons why anyone with genuine passion would never, ever, ever want to work there. Passionate people don't want to work for people who do not share their passion. And they have opinions, which they feel strongly about. If I were an employer, faced with the choice between the person willing to put in 40 a week doing whatever damned fool thing it is I tell him to do, and the one who will voluntarily burn 60 or more per week frantically rewriting the entire code base, trying to make it beautiful, and constantly pushing back on everything, I know which one I'd pick. You're not going to get a person willing to work 60 a week just following orders, unless they are hopelessly naive or downright stupid.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
carapat_virulat 12y ago
Passion is just an easy term to romanticize and build narratives around that makes you feel warm inside when you read about it. Chances are that most of the great programmers you ever meet followed a sensible schedule, slept well at night, didn't disassemble any electronic device in their childhood to see how it worked and lived a pretty average middle class life without any huge sacrifice required to achieve success. Chances are you won't read about that because it would make for pretty boring stories. Regular, progressive learning doesn't sound as cool as caffeine fueled 4-day programming sprees. Then again, people with a truly passionate temperament exist, which is usually great to have around and brighten the mood, but doesn't tell much about actual programming skills.
facepalm 12y ago
I've been wondering if it is really possible to be passionate about front-end development if you have a CS degree?
- ac2u 12y ago
  Sure it is. Dive deep enough into anything and you'll find the Computer Science. Diffing trees is an integral part of React and other virtual DOM implementations. Profiling and finding out where time is being spent in your application can lead to you having to choose data structures and algorithms which have more favourable Big-O characteristics.
- 3minus1 12y ago
  Are you kidding? Read Javascript: the Good Parts if you haven't.
cowardlydragon 12y ago
((?) Considered Harmful) Considered Harmful
DanielBMarkham 12y ago
It's a spectrum. Don't be a clock-puncher and don't code to exhaustion to satisfy some sort of Asperger's or OCD issues. But however you slice it, you cannot get past this one fact: it is an unnatural thing to sit in front of a glowing box for 4, 6, 8 hours a day pecking on little things with your fingers. This type of work has never existed before in the history of our species, and we were not made to do it. I think that's why we have to be very careful not just about the amount of time we code, but all the other things that go with it. The job needs to be important. The code can just be the code. So if you've spent all week punching the clock and suddenly wake up early Sunday morning with an idea about how to refactor that solution to work 100x better? Sounds good to me. If you code 90 hours a week and produce crap? Don't need you so much. The problem is that because it's so unnatural, all of us who do and manage this work confuse activity with progress. So the guy putting in the long hours pecking away looks like he's doing something of greater magnitude -- both to himself and others. But it doesn't work that way. Have passion for the job and for the problem you're solving. Programming is just one of many tools you need to accomplish that. Other tools are a good night's sleep, exercise, interacting socially with others, and so on. But if you don't have passion? I really don't want to work with you. Life's too short to spend 40 hours a week doing stuff you are apathetic about or with other people who are just going to drag you down.
- Bahamut 12y ago
  I've worked with some people with passion that caused issues - put two people with passion on the same team who have differing approaches? The recipe is ripe for a powder keg, and just needs a match lit to cause sparks to fly. Passion needs to give way to humanity.
  - DanielBMarkham 12y ago
    Absolutely. But this is a solved problem. The creative community has been dealing with this issue for some time. There are a couple of slogans that come to mind. "Strong opinions, lightly held" and "intellectual humility" Passion does not equate to inflexibility.
    - 12y ago
flurpitude 12y ago
When my company hires, we look for programmers who show curiosity, interest and creativity. This, I suppose, is what some PR person somewhere decided would be called "passion". But we're not looking for some crazy evangelist and we don't expect people to devalue other things in life to prove their interest in programming. Someone mature, intelligent and curious is ideal. There's definitely a difference between that person and someone who does the bare minimum required to get the job done because they're not that interested. Your curiosity will lead you to discover new ways of doing things, to keep an eye on how others are doing things, and to persist when you can't immediately solve a problem. You'll write better code because you're interested in discovering the best ways of doing things. But you needn't be obsessive. We have seen employees who don't initially have that curiosity, and their code generally isn't very well designed and doesn't improve. It doesn't matter how many hours they work. If someone can succeed in sparking that curiosity in them, then we see their code improve. What you don't want is the attitude of "how I code right now is fine for me, and I'm not really interested in learning better ways." That's associated with "ho hum, it's just a day job" but not everyone working standard hours has an unhelpful attitude like this. It's quite possible to work 9 to 5 while being interested, curious and proud of good work.
- jeremy6d 12y ago
  > But we're not looking for some crazy evangelist and we don't expect people to devalue other things in life to prove their interest in programming. Well, of course you can't _say_ that. That's the whole point of the article: that "passion" is a euphemism for the signaling companies do. We want passionate developers, and we get to define "passion" for you. What makes hiring so hard is that it's a gamble. Human beings don't come with specs you can evaluate to know whether or not they will help or hurt your mission. But, you know what, companies don't come with specs that will tell an applicant whether the job will enhance or stifle one's life. I wish we could stop playing these word games that imply there are rigid patterns to what makes a successful employment relationship, and instead put that energy into getting to know human beings as they are.
  - stcredzero 12y ago
azurelogic 12y ago
The author has a good strong point about leaving work at work when you leave. Unfortunately, he makes a logical error in thinking that this generalizes to any sort activity that resembles your work. Would anyone berate a mechanic who likes to go home to work on the classic Camaro he is restoring for fun? Just because the guy does similar things for work and fun doesn't make him absolutely wrong or necessarily worse at his job. When I leave at 5, I don't worry about work. I go home, have dinner with my family, play with my kid, etc. Then, while I'm watching TV, I sometimes sneak in coding on some side project or open source fix, writing a blog post, or organizing a meetup. This doesn't make me a fool or bad at my job. If anything, I'm continuing to develop and retool to keep my competitive edge so I can keep getting paid well for work that I don't hate. That's smart. I've worked with guys like this, and they drive me crazy. If you hate your career path, that's a you problem. Don't make it mine.
chojeen 12y ago
There are days when I love what I'm working on and I don't want to go home. But I still force myself to leave, because that work will still be there tomorrow, and I'll go in the next morning with renewed passion.
hasenj 12y ago
He has a point but I think the title is misleading. Am I passionate about programming? I don't know. I hope I am. Do I focus on code for 8 hours straight? No. I can't do that. I would burn out. This makes me think that I'm a fraud sometimes. I'm not talking exactly about the imposter syndrome. I do see my achievements. But I also see that I don't always put in the "8 hours" I'm supposed to put. Sometimes my brain just stops functioning, and I have to distract myself with something other than coding.
markbnj 12y ago
I started learning to program in 1976, and in the 1980's I was one of those young, single guys who stayed up all night and wrote C for 14 hours a day. But it was never a _job_ when I did that. It was a hobby. The whole area of interest was new and not that many people were getting paid to write code. It was entirely a different era, but somehow this notion that real programmers code until they drop has hung on through the evolution of the art into an commercial trade craft. There are times when it may make sense to throw that much energy into a project, but those times are exceptional, and to consider it a regular feature of the practice is absurd and serves interests that do not have the practitioner's welfare at heart.
dbbolton 12y ago
>“passion” is a translation of the Greek word πάσχειν paschein, which means ‘to suffer’ A word's etymology has no bearing over its current usage. It just tells you where it came from. Assuming that the original Greek meaning is somehow "correct" and the modern usage is an adulteration is a prescriptive fallacy.
- mturmon 12y ago
  I felt like the link between "passion" and suffering was quite poetic and worth thinking on. People claim to be passionate about various things, but this root is a reminder that this passion, if it's genuine, is likely to be connected to suffering in some way. You work so hard that you suffer, you are so devoted to a cause that you suffer. Passion isn't free. Passion may not be controllable, but insofar as it is, maybe some caution is advised around it? Especially when "passion" is becoming a job requirement, and people are being asked to find a passion. I've seen lots of home pages and twitter summaries claiming "passion" about the oddest technical sub-areas. "Passionate" about web standards? "Passionate" about DevOps? Maybe so, but make sure it's a price worth paying.
  - dbbolton 12y ago
    I wasn't arguing against this particular instance because it was just reinforcing an analogy, rather than actually prescribing an obsolete definition (which is sadly frequent).
gdulli 12y ago
Do we need articles that (1) pick a straw man/hyperbolic image of an obviously dysfunctional stereotype (that I've never encountered to this degree) (2) pretend that these qualities are a typical end result of having passion (3) talk down to readers with obvious statements about avoiding dysfunction (4) assume that women are less prone to having passion for their jobs than men, etc? Am I special for being engaged with my job and having a good work/life balance and having a good employer that also allows it? No, I hope not.
humanarity 12y ago
"Anything that becomes sufficiently popular eventually becomes diagnosed as an illness." -- laws of humanity [in the early 21st century] #512
alixander 12y ago
Passion implies things other than working longer than everyone else. For example, people passionate about programming often are better at debugging in those 8 hours than someone who wants to just get out. Also, I don't understand the use of images here. Your first one is basically the equivalent of a cliche speech starting with, "The Marriam-Webster dictionary defines passion as..."
- cstoner 12y ago
  > Passion implies things other than working longer than everyone else. Not to a lot of managers and bosses, it doesn't. My team has weekly rewards for the people that work the most hours. Several people on the team regularly claim to put in 60-80 hours. Personally, I feel that those same people are making the work environment worse. One of them in particular has created over 200 Bamboo build plans (and the corresponding deployment plans to 7+ environments). It's an unmaintainable mess with little-to-no logic involved. None of it is re-usable -- hence why there are over 200 build plans. That guy gets praise several times a day for how hard he works. The bosses don't care about how much passion (in our sense of the word) their employees have. They care about how much passion (in the "work 80 hours a week" sense of the word) their employees have.
peterchon 12y ago
I agree to a certain degree - I think the biggest problem that the author had was the unrealistic expectation of the employer. Way I see it, it's always going to be a struggle between what the company wants (more for less) and what the employee can produce. It's like when you hire someone to do something for you - you expect them to do the best job, on-time, for the best price. Passion is writing code knowing that it's not perfect but another step towards becoming better. What really is crap code anyways?
octatoan 12y ago
Where's the moaning about "considered harmful"?
golergka 12y ago
This article makes a great case against itself: the author confuses working for the sake of "working for the man" and working for the love of code. It seems that he just throws the 80-hour crunch weeks into the same pile as hackathons on weekends and hobby projects in the evenings, while these things couldn't be more different.
mikepk 12y ago
This article makes me sad. There is a mode of thought that "work" has to be the other. Work is not your time, but that thing you have to do. Work is another "four letter word" according to the author. This is partially an artifact of history and partially conflating all kinds of 'work' together. We're living in interesting times where there's a shift of what's valuable from simple mechanical and repetivtive skills (industrial revolution type jobs) and knowledge workers and digitial creatives. We have a unique and amazing opportunity, where it is our collective creativity that is what's valuable and not merely our presence or ability to be turn a mechanical crank. If you follow this advice, and engage in purely a value exchange for the 8 hours a day in something you don't care about and have no real interest in, you're selling 8h/d * 5d/w * 50w/y * 40y = 80k hours. That's a hell of a lot of your life to give over for merely a paycheck, especially when you don't have to. It's that last part that makes me sad, we are in am incredibly unique industry and point in history (which may not last) where you can find a job that engages your whole self while simultaneously making a good living. I recommend "Drive" by Daniel Pink, about how to think about human motiviation and the opportunities that we currently have to reshape work. Where things like Autonomy (being self directed, choosing your hours and what you work on), Mastery (becoming great at something), and most importantly missing from the rant in this article, Purpose are what really lead to greater happiness and overall better results. "Purpose" was why I left a high paying job where I was respected to spend 10 years starting companies that (until very recently) meant I made radically under what I was "worth". Would I trade those years? Hell no. Because even if I hadn't had the recent success with Smarterer, I knew I was working towards a bigger and more important purpose, one that could really make a dent in the universe. Being able to do that, and still eat and satisfy all my basic needs is a pretty amazing thing, and one that's totally missed by a rant like this. When I think about passion, and look for passion in people I want to work with, I look for people who care about what we're doing. Because I don't want "butts in seats" I want people thinking creatively about how we can change the world together. That could mean a day of thinking deeply without banging out any code at all. It could be a crazy "in the shower idea". It could mean long hours one night to hit some big milestone. It also means that if you've been pushing hard on something and you need to take days off to recenter, I trust you because you care about what we're doing together.
cdelsolar 12y ago
But I like going home and coding because it's fun. I also like doing other things. Why is he telling me to not code at home?
rmanolis 12y ago
First of all, I disagree. Being passionate is not bad, It becomes bad when you dont consider improving other parts of yourself. For example, there was a time where I was working a lot and then when I looked myself in the mirror, I felt horrible because I was fat and ashamed of myself. That alone burned me out. However, studying about diet and fitness. I fixed this problem with Intermittent Fasting, bodyweight workout (4 days a week) and vegeterianism. Now I dont feel bad, and I work straight for months without feeling burned out.
scolfax 12y ago
Unless you are working for yourself or equity if the work can't be done in 40 hours a week it's a management problem, not a programmer problem. Programmers who consistently work over 40 hours a week are enabling management to misrepresent how much work can be done over a time period and are covering for management's flaws, and paying for it with their uncompensated time. Management has perpetuated the mindset that if the tasks can't be completed with the resources _they_ have allocated (including time) then the problem is a lack of programmer skill, and insecure, young, and inexperienced programmers pay for it with their time and ego. Experienced programmers who want to take advantage of this will trade their time for respect, pride, and influence. Management should respect programmer's free time, but doesn't have to as long as there are programmers willing to sell the others out by giving it away.
3minus1 12y ago
Was he fired because he deleted the production database or because he didn't tell them what he did and they found out themselves?
- Gigablah 12y ago
  Looks like he didn't realize it until after they had found out.
- 6t6t6 12y ago
  In any case, I don't expect anyone taking rational decisions at 5 in the morning, after being all night awake trying to solve an incidence because "boss said so".
moru0011 12y ago
The author has choosen wrong profession. As work makes up a good part of your life, you better enjoy it. Actually programming "business stuff" is quite different from tinkering with e.g. the newest machine learning algorithm, so talking of "programming" is a over simplification and indicates the author never got a grasp of what other people actually enjoy when "programming".
- mgraybosch 12y ago
  I chose the wrong day job, too, but it seemed like a good idea when I was 18 and my family's idea of a good job was bartending. I was a failed musician who took up writing, and I had just enough sense to realize that I'd need a day job. If cleaning toilets paid $25/hour I'd still be doing that. Somebody has to do it.
ad-hominem 12y ago
Another piece of "journalism" regarding tech ruined because we can't talk about anything programming-wise without getting into a nuts-and-bolts breakdown of "gender in STEM".
ad-hominem 12y ago
Another piece of "journalism" regarding tech ruined because we can't talk about anything programming-wise without getting into a nuts-and-bolts breakdown of "gender in STEM".
ChikkaChiChi 12y ago
Sometimes I code for work. Sometimes I code for fun. Sometimes I'm even lucky enough that my coding for work is fun. I think that "programming" can be as broad of an over-generalization as "you spend too much time on the computer." Don't mistake the glyphs on one screen for being the same to me as those you saw a moment before. At any point you may find the same machine that causes me to work to be used to learn new things, or to adventure into new worlds. I understand that not everyone is built like that; but don't set up a false premise that drawing a parallel to old world thinking somehow applies to all of us.
atlih 12y ago
I have a female intern that leaves on the clock, she gets more done than me. Probably because of it. The owners of the company ask me why does she leave so early, and I ask them back, why do your people in other apartments that stay late get nothing done?
jqm 12y ago
I didn't get into programming for money. I got into it because it's something I really like doing. If this isn't you... I feel bad for you. Life is too short to spend your working days doing something you don't care for. The money (beyond an amount needed to live) simply isn't worth it. If I ever don't like programming, I simply won't do it anymore.
EnFinlay 12y ago
I really dislike this trend of strongly written blog posts that don't try and make a logical point, and instead describe the irrational opposite of what the author dislikes.
sampattuzzi 12y ago
I would be interested to see if this phenomenon is more prevalent among US based companies. I worked for a company with offices in Cupertino and Cambridge UK and the difference in culture was noticeable. The american office seemed to demand a lot more devotion from their workers, this didn't seem the case with the brits. There was a distinction for me between coding for somebody and coding for myself. The latter always being more enjoyable. This is why I think so many programmers work on side and open-source projects.

224 points by jamescostian 12y ago

omg guys front page

smt88 12y ago

Actually what he's arguing (rightly) is that burnout is harmful. That's not the same as "programmer passion". Creating an environment where you expect or force people to burn out is going to harm your business in the long-run. There are people who can thrive in that environment, but there aren't many. But, contrary to the mixed message of the article, passion is a necessary ingredient for a great employee in any position. Passionate people are happier to wake up in the morning, come to the office, and do work that others don't enjoy. Suggesting that liking your work is bad (as the title does strongly and the article does very weakly) is absolute fucking nonsense.

adamc 12y ago
I think the article was also implying that "passion" is often used as employer-code for "willing to work grueling hours". To the extend that is true, I think the article is right about it being a bad thing. I'm not sure about the rest of your argument either, particularly "Passionate people are happier to wake up in the morning, come to the office, and do work that others don't enjoy." In most people, passion blows hot and cold over periods of time (because other aspects of their life affect their mood), but that doesn't mean they don't come to work and do their jobs. In my experience (more than two decades of work as a software dev), curiosity might be a better indicator than passion.
Dewie 12y ago
> Actually what he's arguing (rightly) is that burnout is harmful. That's not the same as "programmer passion". What I've been wondering about lately, though, is if what looks like passion can all of a sudden turn on you and manifest itself as burnout? That's why I feel a bit wary about "if I like to do it, then it's fine". What if I'm just deluding myself, and the burnout ends up hitting me even harder? My biggest problem though, which is obvious and doesn't require much self-reflection, is that I have a pretty unbalanced lifestyle.
- smt88 12y ago
  I'll tell you my story, which may or may not be relatable. I've always loved all aspects of developing software products: brainstorming, research, programming, designing, and marketing. Even the boring parts are so motivating to me that I can work for 20 hours at a time. And because all of the ideas and opportunities around me are so enjoyable and exciting, I used to have a lot of trouble saying no. I tried to pile more and more stuff onto my plate, often justifying it by under-estimating the time it takes to do each one. I eventually saw my less of my girlfriend, family, and friends. I almost entirely stopped drinking even a single drink because of the small decrease in productivity. I slept 4 hours a day in 2-hour shifts. I hadn't burned out yet, but I became an example of the popular research finding that productivity is greater if you work at sub-burnout levels. In my case, I get as much done working on and off for 10 hours a day as I did working for 20. I get more sleep, though still little, and I force myself to take miniature "vacations" (sometimes an evening, sometimes a day or two) to focus on things other than work, no matter how much is piling up. I'm still extremely busy, and I'm still not doing everything I want to do. But I'm more productive than I was, and I'm not missing out on all of the other things in life. There will always be people who are willing to sacrifice everything for work. I think that's a small minority, and even in that minority, very few of them will end up happy in the long term. I always like to say that no one lies on their death bed and says, "I wish I would have worked more and seen my loved ones, traveled, and relaxed less!" In fact, a recent NY Times article[1] about this exact subject concludes with a deathbed quote that supports the anti-burnout movement very well. 1. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/14/business/dealbook/when-employee-engagement-turns-into-employee-burnout.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/14/business/dealbook/when-emp...

tux3 12y ago

So much vitriol, anger, suffering in this article. I think that the author does have a point, and I agree that you shouldn't sell yourself off as a slave just because you're passionate, but that point is being pushed a tad too far. There's nothing wrong with enjoying your job.

jeremy6d 12y ago
I'm glad to be on a site where we can be complete human beings, and not sacrifice feeling out frustration and anger on the altar of professionalism.

reidrac 12y ago

I don't think being passionate about programming, or your job or anything else, means it has to be at the expense of something else that is valuable. It's more about preference and priorities. I don't watch TV, for example. Being obsessive about something can be unhealthy in some cases, but I'm not sure if that's what the post is about. Because the author talks about himself in the post, I found interesting that he defines himself at the bottom of the page as "SF author, software developer, occasional blogger. Buy my books and help me quit my day job.". So his passion is perhaps being a SF author and wants to quit his day job, which makes me think he's not very passionate about it. Well, that's all right. Like being passionate about programming.

s73v3r 12y ago
The "passion" he talks about isn't real passion, but the "passion" that employers tend to ask for, which really means, "Is willing to work insane hours for no extra compensation."

dannypgh 12y ago

Yeah, I think I program with a lot of passion. However, after I've worked for not-too-much-more-than 8 hours in a day I force myself to go home. And when I'm home I make an effort to stop thinking about whatever problem was on my mind. Sometimes having an open source side-project can help with this tremendously. The author is definitely establishing a false dichotomy here. Just because you would enjoy doing something for 16 hours straight, doesn't mean you have to.

amagumori 12y ago

i think in most cases it's harmful to give one single iota of a fuck about whatever it is you do for work, unless you work for yourself. 40 hours of every week of your life, at a minimum, is being used to further someone else's goals, and you have no choice in this because you have to survive. don't ever work hard unless it's on something that matters to you or something that's altruistic. if you're in tech and aren't specifically working towards helping people, your job, company, and product don't matter. at all. stack your money, smile, nod, and GTFO as soon as you can.

fennecfoxen 12y ago
I dunno. Sometimes working towards someone else's goals is a reasonably pleasant experience: if they're paying you well enough to help you save up the cash meet your goals, if the work itself is interesting, and if you have the latitude to do your job the way you want to. Then as long as you don't get too attached to it and you remember that you'll walk away from the code someday, caring is much more fun than the alternative.
- cssmoo 12y ago
  On that basis you're only giving a shit about their goals for the money. If that went away, which it occasionally does from experience, does your care persist? Nope. I've learned not to get attached to anything unless I'm in control of it.
cssmoo 12y ago
I couldn't agree more with this. I've developed the same approach to work. In fact I go out of my way to avoid doing any work where possible now and balance everything in favour of, for lack of a better analogy, collecting slack. Life is in the most part, pretty bloody good since I switched to this mode of working and stopped giving a shit about my day job. During the day, I spend my entire time cranking the cogs on enterprise crap that really doesn't do anything other than top slicing some cash off some data flying around. I really don't care if the product burns in hell. That doesn't mean to say I don't do a good job, but I don't use the best of my energy on something I don't enjoy and aren't passionate about. The company on the other hand suggest that passion is mandatory and that you're owned by them and you will attend every social event and be part of the "family", which a self professed narcissistic control freak manager explained is simply their control method and they don't give a fuck either. In fact everyone wouldn't piss on the place if it was on fire but hey everyone is making some cash and until that happens, who cares? This is a recent development due to two separate medical near miss on myself and my wife. When shit gets put into perspective, your priorities are corrected. Before that I bought into it all and was the 80 hour a week slave. Now; 20-40 hours a week expended. If it all goes to hell, as you say, smile, nod and GTFO, then do the same elsewhere. Now for something I really enjoy, I spent a couple of hours writing some deduplication software for Google Drive in python the other day. It solved a real problem I had and was interesting. Note: I've even contracted out giving a shit about files to Google. Anyway back to learning postgresql (something I am interested in) and watching the tomatoes grow on my window sill instead of cranking out Java EE model classes which is what I'm supposed to be doing. They can wait for the people who do care or have a large enough ego to pile-drive each other in the meeting rooms.

bluedino 12y ago

If you want to be among the absolute best at something, you are going to do need to dedicate a good part of your life to it. 8 hours a day just isn't going to cut it. Did Michael Jordan go home the second practice was over? Do you think Thomas Edison only put 8 hours in at his lab? Did Linus only work on Linux for 8 hours a day? Steve Wozniak has a story bout staying up 4 nights in a row working on the Apple computer. Should you burn yourself out on 20 hour days because your employer forces you? Hell no. But if you truly love something to allow it to complete takeover your life, that could be the way to create something very special.

some_furry 12y ago
> Did Wozniak not Did Linus only work on Linux for 8 hours a day? Steve Wozniak has a story bout staying up 4 nights in a row working on the Apple computer. Heh. > Should you burn yourself out on 20 hour days because your employer forces you? Hell no. Agreed.
BSousa 12y ago
Except most pro athletes train 3-4 hours a day, not 16. If I'm not mistaken (been a while since I read the book), Michael admitted he would get up early to practise, but before school, not before normal practise. When he turned pro, he would be (according to the coach) the most hardworking guy there, but he would leave with the rest of the team and do whatever he had to do. Can't remember where, but recently read that pro football/soccer players train on average 26 hours per week, which seem about right from reports I have from friends that play. Boxers also practise at around 3-4 hours per day as well.
- bluedino 12y ago
  >> Except most pro athletes train 3-4 hours a day, not 16. We're talking about the best. Even in pro athletes there is a huge margin from 'good' to 'best'. Peyton Manning (NFL quarterback) is known for studying hours and hours of game footage. http://nypost.com/2014/01/30/peyton-mannings-film-study-obsession-is-stuff-of-legend/ http://nypost.com/2014/01/30/peyton-mannings-film-study-obse...

jasode 12y ago

This article is low-quality ranting. The author has a certain definition of "passion" and therefore taints it to be negative to fit his list of complaints. Tellingly, his whole essay is focused on "passion" == "time expenditure wasted". There's another type of "passion" where it's equal to "extreme interest in subject matter" or "pursuit of intellectual puzzles". Since the author uses "passion" as "time wasted", his view of programming comes off as a white-collar version of bricklayer. Don't lay any more bricks and cement than is necessary for the construction foreman. Punch in the clock at 9am. Punch out promptly at 5pm. It's all about time. See the relevant phrase excerpts: > put in a solid eight hours > spending twelve to sixteen hours a day in the office > forsake everything else to spend more time coding as a badge of honor. > programmers who spend all their waking hours on the job > working several weeks of twelve-to-fourteen hour days with only Sundays off > spend all night on the job > Put in a solid eight hour day, and then get the hell out. G >, once you have worked a solid eight hour day, leave the office and silence your phone >, and ignore your bosses when they bitch about you only working nine-to-five. Being driven like a slave for 12 to 16 hour days is a legitimate gripe but harping on the word "passion" (or the fact that his superiors label it as "passion") is blaming the wrong thing. I concede that there are many enterprise companies who need trying to recruit "passionate" programmers to maintain boring CRUD apps. Sure, a lot of these programming jobs are soul-crushing bricklaying work. Their use of "passion" is self-serving and rightfully triggers a jaded reaction. However, a lot of startups need "passionate" programmers who genuinly enjoy algorithms, solving graphs, etc that are relevant to the companies unique technical challenges. Yes, even this type of "passionate" programmer will tend to spend more than 8 hours on the job. It's because they like the work they do. Jony Ive at Apple spends 12 hours at work because he's passionate and not because he's being chastised by Tim Cook. (Jony Ive is already a multi-millionaire and can quit if he feels he's being exploited.) That's the kind of passion many hiring managers are looking for and the author's one-dimensional essay ignores it.

pjmlp 12y ago
I have been in the industry for a while, almost every time I see "passion" coming from HR, it is as an euphemism for "we like devs that crunch and don't complain". Never saw it otherwise, not even in startups.

lmm 12y ago

I agree with much of this. I work a solid eight hours and go home. When people are impressed at my abilities, I wonder how much of the difference is simply that I get a full night's sleep and so many people don't. But I write code at home. Not work-related code, and not to the exclusion of other hobbies. But coding is something I enjoy, something I sometimes like to do for its own sake. I won't apologise for that.

gretful 12y ago
my biggest f-up happened during a 4AM call - I deleted an entire filesystem... twice...
deaconblues 12y ago
I was wondering the other day: is it possible to enjoy coding, be good and employable, and still leave your work at work? I code at home too, but yeah, other passions take priority. You rarely hear about programmers who don't live and breathe code, but there must be a huge number of them.
- noir_lord 12y ago
  80/20 principle probably applies. I've known lots of programmers who turn up, do a good job then go home, they don't blog, follow frameworks or languages or any of the other stuff that isn't directly required for work.
- BSousa 12y ago
  Yes! If you hang around HN or the trendy hipster blogosphere, then no. Seems those developers are the scum of the earth and shouldn't be allowed near a computer, but in the real world, those are the ones doing important development in medicine, banking, military, etc, while keeping normal work hours. Just because they don't create the 389th Javascript frontend MVC fully reactive template based framework and create 50 blog posts about it, doesn't mean they aren't good at their jobs.
- collyw 12y ago
  Yes. Actually most programmers I work with seem to be 9-5ers without any passion. I am a 9-5er with some passion about the languages and tools I use.

some_furry 12y ago

I'm passionate about programming. But not for my employer. I work as a web developer. In my off-time, I like to play with technology. Usually, that involves writing code. This code is not meant to be perfect or useful for anyone else, so I never share it. It's my own work of crappy art, made for the fun of writing it.

sklogic 12y ago

I keep repeating (and keep getting downvoted for this obvious truth) that even 8 working hours are too much. One can only keep decent levels of concentration on a mentally challenging task for no more than 4 hours a day. Good if you have something less mentally challenging to fill the remaining 4 hours with, but even better if you do not need to.

zo1 12y ago
I'd agree with this to an extent. Rather than "4 hours per day" we should rather look at it as a case of "after X units of time, one needs to recharge/rest/break". I often find myself mentally drained after a task, and I just need a few minutes to "recharge". Sure, I can push forward without the break, but I find myself not motivated to do it (and quite drained if I do it multiple times per day). Whereas, if I get a bit of a reprieve, I'm fine with the next task at hand. Not sure if it's like that for anyone else, though. Right now, I'm writing on HN because I'm taking a bit of a break after solving a production issue that was baffling me for the last hour.
- sklogic 12y ago
  Yes, that's reasonable, schedules may be more complex. This aspect (required rest schedule) was not very well researched. The only data I've got was collected by the IT and engineering companies, and they could only measure working-day-long spans.
Silhouette 12y ago
I would prefer not to pick a number at all. There are days when I'm really into something and can write (good) code for 12 hours straight, but those days don't happen very often. There are days when I have grunt work to do but other people keep distracting me, and if I write 1/10 the amount of useful code on those days I'm doing well. Usually it's somewhere in between. I probably average around 5-6 hours of productive coding per day on any given project, not counting break times, but with very wide variance. Also, although different projects aren't completely independent, I do find that after taking a significant break (read: probably multiple hours) I can work productively on something else for a while. For example, if I've got some main feature I'm developing but also need to investigate and fix some bugs, I might spend a few hours on the main work, but I might still be quite comfortable tracking down and fixing a few bugs later in the day. So quite often, I will actually split my working time into 2 or even 3 main sessions during a day, doing other things in between, though I have the advantage here of not being someone else's employee with standard office hours.

BasDirks 12y ago

This article conflates passion for programming with working insane hours for an employer. This is pretty dumb. "It’s one thing to suffer when you’re an obscure artist, or a spurned lover, or a soldier facing his death, or even Jesus H. Christ himself. But don’t suffer for a paycheck unless you’re the CEO." There is some room between Jesus and your CEO.

s_kilk 12y ago
Agreed. I'm passionate enough about programming to have several side-projects on the go at one time. However, when quitting time rolls around I drop my pickaxe and go home.
Draiken 12y ago
IMO it's how companies perceive "passionate programmers". The article just highlights how that's harmful.
s73v3r 12y ago
"This article conflates passion for programming with working insane hours for an employer. This is pretty dumb." That's generally how "passion" is defined. I can't count the number of job postings I saw that said they wanted people "passionate" about what they do. Where "passionate" was defined as being willing to work insane hours.

peteypao 12y ago

You can never be great at whatever you do if you aren't passionate about it, and put in the necessary hours. This article is pretty dumb.

elihu 12y ago
Unfortunately, most programmer positions do not require you to be great at what you do, or passionate. In fact, being either of those things may be a disadvantage. Most programming is just doing stuff that isn't really all that interesting, but it needs to get done. There are also a lot of interesting meaningful problems that desperately need to be solved by creative, capable people, and if your job is to work on one of those, then great, but for many programmers, those kinds of problems are the ones we work on on our own time, if we're so inclined. I think it's strange that the article didn't make a distinction between code-for-work and code-for-fun.

segmondy 12y ago

The article is poorly written, he never once talked about passion, instead he talks about obsession, over working or burning out. Passion is not harmful. Lack of passion on the other hand? I wish the world had more passionate programmers.

robalfonso 12y ago

I never viewed being "passionate" about programming as the author has. I want passionate employees working for me. To me that means you like the work, you are interested in the field, and it means you continue to build your body of knowledge either through on the job research or on your own time as a hobby. Doctors as an example spend a significant amount of time keeping abreast on the latest procedures and developments. But he is right when he describes the idea of 16 hour days as obsessive. That is unhealthy and it leads to mistakes, some business can tolerate it, others can't ymmv.

ThrustVectoring 12y ago

You can't reliably get more stuff done by working longer hours. All that does is burn your long-term resources for short-term gain - and even that it does badly, since you can quickly start stacking up mistakes. If you need to get more done, you have to be efficient about it.

HaseebR7 12y ago

Go To Considered Harmful http://www.u.arizona.edu/~rubinson/copyright_violations/Go_To_Considered_Harmful.html http://www.u.arizona.edu/~rubinson/copyright_violations/Go_T... Coincidence?

Ygg2 12y ago
Coincidence? Considered Harmful considered harmful[1]. [1]http://meyerweb.com/eric/comment/chech.html http://meyerweb.com/eric/comment/chech.html
- HaseebR7 12y ago
  Ahh, I get it now. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Considered_harmful http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Considered_harmful Considered harmful is a phrase used in the titles of at least 65 critical essays in computer science and related disciplines. It was popularized by Edsger Dijkstra's letter Go To Statement Considered Harmful.

euske 12y ago

I have to confess. I consider myself a passionate programmer. I love coding. I believe that I'm changing the world by coding and I'm communicating with the users through the UI design. And yet I can only code for two hours maximum a day. For the rest of a day I'm mostly goofing (a.k.a. "researching"). Sorry, Boss.

thirdtruck 12y ago
Almost certainly a factor of your environment and your work assignments. If someone came over and poked you every five minutes, would you expect to get several hours of focused work done every day? The same applies to all the many smaller distractions with which we suffer.

logfromblammo 12y ago

Sometimes I see job postings from companies looking for passionate programmers. And then the entire remainder of the post gives detailed reasons why anyone with genuine passion would never, ever, ever want to work there. Passionate people don't want to work for people who do not share their passion. And they have opinions, which they feel strongly about. If I were an employer, faced with the choice between the person willing to put in 40 a week doing whatever damned fool thing it is I tell him to do, and the one who will voluntarily burn 60 or more per week frantically rewriting the entire code base, trying to make it beautiful, and constantly pushing back on everything, I know which one I'd pick. You're not going to get a person willing to work 60 a week just following orders, unless they are hopelessly naive or downright stupid.

deleted 12y ago

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carapat_virulat 12y ago

Passion is just an easy term to romanticize and build narratives around that makes you feel warm inside when you read about it. Chances are that most of the great programmers you ever meet followed a sensible schedule, slept well at night, didn't disassemble any electronic device in their childhood to see how it worked and lived a pretty average middle class life without any huge sacrifice required to achieve success. Chances are you won't read about that because it would make for pretty boring stories. Regular, progressive learning doesn't sound as cool as caffeine fueled 4-day programming sprees. Then again, people with a truly passionate temperament exist, which is usually great to have around and brighten the mood, but doesn't tell much about actual programming skills.

facepalm 12y ago

I've been wondering if it is really possible to be passionate about front-end development if you have a CS degree?

ac2u 12y ago
Sure it is. Dive deep enough into anything and you'll find the Computer Science. Diffing trees is an integral part of React and other virtual DOM implementations. Profiling and finding out where time is being spent in your application can lead to you having to choose data structures and algorithms which have more favourable Big-O characteristics.
3minus1 12y ago
Are you kidding? Read Javascript: the Good Parts if you haven't.

cowardlydragon 12y ago

((?) Considered Harmful) Considered Harmful

DanielBMarkham 12y ago

It's a spectrum. Don't be a clock-puncher and don't code to exhaustion to satisfy some sort of Asperger's or OCD issues. But however you slice it, you cannot get past this one fact: it is an unnatural thing to sit in front of a glowing box for 4, 6, 8 hours a day pecking on little things with your fingers. This type of work has never existed before in the history of our species, and we were not made to do it. I think that's why we have to be very careful not just about the amount of time we code, but all the other things that go with it. The job needs to be important. The code can just be the code. So if you've spent all week punching the clock and suddenly wake up early Sunday morning with an idea about how to refactor that solution to work 100x better? Sounds good to me. If you code 90 hours a week and produce crap? Don't need you so much. The problem is that because it's so unnatural, all of us who do and manage this work confuse activity with progress. So the guy putting in the long hours pecking away looks like he's doing something of greater magnitude -- both to himself and others. But it doesn't work that way. Have passion for the job and for the problem you're solving. Programming is just one of many tools you need to accomplish that. Other tools are a good night's sleep, exercise, interacting socially with others, and so on. But if you don't have passion? I really don't want to work with you. Life's too short to spend 40 hours a week doing stuff you are apathetic about or with other people who are just going to drag you down.

Bahamut 12y ago
I've worked with some people with passion that caused issues - put two people with passion on the same team who have differing approaches? The recipe is ripe for a powder keg, and just needs a match lit to cause sparks to fly. Passion needs to give way to humanity.
- DanielBMarkham 12y ago
  Absolutely. But this is a solved problem. The creative community has been dealing with this issue for some time. There are a couple of slogans that come to mind. "Strong opinions, lightly held" and "intellectual humility" Passion does not equate to inflexibility.
  - 12y ago

flurpitude 12y ago

When my company hires, we look for programmers who show curiosity, interest and creativity. This, I suppose, is what some PR person somewhere decided would be called "passion". But we're not looking for some crazy evangelist and we don't expect people to devalue other things in life to prove their interest in programming. Someone mature, intelligent and curious is ideal. There's definitely a difference between that person and someone who does the bare minimum required to get the job done because they're not that interested. Your curiosity will lead you to discover new ways of doing things, to keep an eye on how others are doing things, and to persist when you can't immediately solve a problem. You'll write better code because you're interested in discovering the best ways of doing things. But you needn't be obsessive. We have seen employees who don't initially have that curiosity, and their code generally isn't very well designed and doesn't improve. It doesn't matter how many hours they work. If someone can succeed in sparking that curiosity in them, then we see their code improve. What you don't want is the attitude of "how I code right now is fine for me, and I'm not really interested in learning better ways." That's associated with "ho hum, it's just a day job" but not everyone working standard hours has an unhelpful attitude like this. It's quite possible to work 9 to 5 while being interested, curious and proud of good work.

jeremy6d 12y ago
> But we're not looking for some crazy evangelist and we don't expect people to devalue other things in life to prove their interest in programming. Well, of course you can't _say_ that. That's the whole point of the article: that "passion" is a euphemism for the signaling companies do. We want passionate developers, and we get to define "passion" for you. What makes hiring so hard is that it's a gamble. Human beings don't come with specs you can evaluate to know whether or not they will help or hurt your mission. But, you know what, companies don't come with specs that will tell an applicant whether the job will enhance or stifle one's life. I wish we could stop playing these word games that imply there are rigid patterns to what makes a successful employment relationship, and instead put that energy into getting to know human beings as they are.
- stcredzero 12y ago

azurelogic 12y ago

The author has a good strong point about leaving work at work when you leave. Unfortunately, he makes a logical error in thinking that this generalizes to any sort activity that resembles your work. Would anyone berate a mechanic who likes to go home to work on the classic Camaro he is restoring for fun? Just because the guy does similar things for work and fun doesn't make him absolutely wrong or necessarily worse at his job. When I leave at 5, I don't worry about work. I go home, have dinner with my family, play with my kid, etc. Then, while I'm watching TV, I sometimes sneak in coding on some side project or open source fix, writing a blog post, or organizing a meetup. This doesn't make me a fool or bad at my job. If anything, I'm continuing to develop and retool to keep my competitive edge so I can keep getting paid well for work that I don't hate. That's smart. I've worked with guys like this, and they drive me crazy. If you hate your career path, that's a you problem. Don't make it mine.

chojeen 12y ago

There are days when I love what I'm working on and I don't want to go home. But I still force myself to leave, because that work will still be there tomorrow, and I'll go in the next morning with renewed passion.

hasenj 12y ago

He has a point but I think the title is misleading. Am I passionate about programming? I don't know. I hope I am. Do I focus on code for 8 hours straight? No. I can't do that. I would burn out. This makes me think that I'm a fraud sometimes. I'm not talking exactly about the imposter syndrome. I do see my achievements. But I also see that I don't always put in the "8 hours" I'm supposed to put. Sometimes my brain just stops functioning, and I have to distract myself with something other than coding.

markbnj 12y ago

I started learning to program in 1976, and in the 1980's I was one of those young, single guys who stayed up all night and wrote C for 14 hours a day. But it was never a _job_ when I did that. It was a hobby. The whole area of interest was new and not that many people were getting paid to write code. It was entirely a different era, but somehow this notion that real programmers code until they drop has hung on through the evolution of the art into an commercial trade craft. There are times when it may make sense to throw that much energy into a project, but those times are exceptional, and to consider it a regular feature of the practice is absurd and serves interests that do not have the practitioner's welfare at heart.

dbbolton 12y ago

>“passion” is a translation of the Greek word πάσχειν paschein, which means ‘to suffer’ A word's etymology has no bearing over its current usage. It just tells you where it came from. Assuming that the original Greek meaning is somehow "correct" and the modern usage is an adulteration is a prescriptive fallacy.

mturmon 12y ago
I felt like the link between "passion" and suffering was quite poetic and worth thinking on. People claim to be passionate about various things, but this root is a reminder that this passion, if it's genuine, is likely to be connected to suffering in some way. You work so hard that you suffer, you are so devoted to a cause that you suffer. Passion isn't free. Passion may not be controllable, but insofar as it is, maybe some caution is advised around it? Especially when "passion" is becoming a job requirement, and people are being asked to find a passion. I've seen lots of home pages and twitter summaries claiming "passion" about the oddest technical sub-areas. "Passionate" about web standards? "Passionate" about DevOps? Maybe so, but make sure it's a price worth paying.
- dbbolton 12y ago
  I wasn't arguing against this particular instance because it was just reinforcing an analogy, rather than actually prescribing an obsolete definition (which is sadly frequent).

gdulli 12y ago

Do we need articles that (1) pick a straw man/hyperbolic image of an obviously dysfunctional stereotype (that I've never encountered to this degree) (2) pretend that these qualities are a typical end result of having passion (3) talk down to readers with obvious statements about avoiding dysfunction (4) assume that women are less prone to having passion for their jobs than men, etc? Am I special for being engaged with my job and having a good work/life balance and having a good employer that also allows it? No, I hope not.

humanarity 12y ago

"Anything that becomes sufficiently popular eventually becomes diagnosed as an illness." -- laws of humanity [in the early 21st century] #512

alixander 12y ago

Passion implies things other than working longer than everyone else. For example, people passionate about programming often are better at debugging in those 8 hours than someone who wants to just get out. Also, I don't understand the use of images here. Your first one is basically the equivalent of a cliche speech starting with, "The Marriam-Webster dictionary defines passion as..."

cstoner 12y ago
> Passion implies things other than working longer than everyone else. Not to a lot of managers and bosses, it doesn't. My team has weekly rewards for the people that work the most hours. Several people on the team regularly claim to put in 60-80 hours. Personally, I feel that those same people are making the work environment worse. One of them in particular has created over 200 Bamboo build plans (and the corresponding deployment plans to 7+ environments). It's an unmaintainable mess with little-to-no logic involved. None of it is re-usable -- hence why there are over 200 build plans. That guy gets praise several times a day for how hard he works. The bosses don't care about how much passion (in our sense of the word) their employees have. They care about how much passion (in the "work 80 hours a week" sense of the word) their employees have.

peterchon 12y ago

I agree to a certain degree - I think the biggest problem that the author had was the unrealistic expectation of the employer. Way I see it, it's always going to be a struggle between what the company wants (more for less) and what the employee can produce. It's like when you hire someone to do something for you - you expect them to do the best job, on-time, for the best price. Passion is writing code knowing that it's not perfect but another step towards becoming better. What really is crap code anyways?

octatoan 12y ago

Where's the moaning about "considered harmful"?

golergka 12y ago

This article makes a great case against itself: the author confuses working for the sake of "working for the man" and working for the love of code. It seems that he just throws the 80-hour crunch weeks into the same pile as hackathons on weekends and hobby projects in the evenings, while these things couldn't be more different.

mikepk 12y ago

This article makes me sad. There is a mode of thought that "work" has to be the other. Work is not your time, but that thing you have to do. Work is another "four letter word" according to the author. This is partially an artifact of history and partially conflating all kinds of 'work' together. We're living in interesting times where there's a shift of what's valuable from simple mechanical and repetivtive skills (industrial revolution type jobs) and knowledge workers and digitial creatives. We have a unique and amazing opportunity, where it is our collective creativity that is what's valuable and not merely our presence or ability to be turn a mechanical crank. If you follow this advice, and engage in purely a value exchange for the 8 hours a day in something you don't care about and have no real interest in, you're selling 8h/d * 5d/w * 50w/y * 40y = 80k hours. That's a hell of a lot of your life to give over for merely a paycheck, especially when you don't have to. It's that last part that makes me sad, we are in am incredibly unique industry and point in history (which may not last) where you can find a job that engages your whole self while simultaneously making a good living. I recommend "Drive" by Daniel Pink, about how to think about human motiviation and the opportunities that we currently have to reshape work. Where things like Autonomy (being self directed, choosing your hours and what you work on), Mastery (becoming great at something), and most importantly missing from the rant in this article, Purpose are what really lead to greater happiness and overall better results. "Purpose" was why I left a high paying job where I was respected to spend 10 years starting companies that (until very recently) meant I made radically under what I was "worth". Would I trade those years? Hell no. Because even if I hadn't had the recent success with Smarterer, I knew I was working towards a bigger and more important purpose, one that could really make a dent in the universe. Being able to do that, and still eat and satisfy all my basic needs is a pretty amazing thing, and one that's totally missed by a rant like this. When I think about passion, and look for passion in people I want to work with, I look for people who care about what we're doing. Because I don't want "butts in seats" I want people thinking creatively about how we can change the world together. That could mean a day of thinking deeply without banging out any code at all. It could be a crazy "in the shower idea". It could mean long hours one night to hit some big milestone. It also means that if you've been pushing hard on something and you need to take days off to recenter, I trust you because you care about what we're doing together.

cdelsolar 12y ago

But I like going home and coding because it's fun. I also like doing other things. Why is he telling me to not code at home?

rmanolis 12y ago

First of all, I disagree. Being passionate is not bad, It becomes bad when you dont consider improving other parts of yourself. For example, there was a time where I was working a lot and then when I looked myself in the mirror, I felt horrible because I was fat and ashamed of myself. That alone burned me out. However, studying about diet and fitness. I fixed this problem with Intermittent Fasting, bodyweight workout (4 days a week) and vegeterianism. Now I dont feel bad, and I work straight for months without feeling burned out.

scolfax 12y ago

Unless you are working for yourself or equity if the work can't be done in 40 hours a week it's a management problem, not a programmer problem. Programmers who consistently work over 40 hours a week are enabling management to misrepresent how much work can be done over a time period and are covering for management's flaws, and paying for it with their uncompensated time. Management has perpetuated the mindset that if the tasks can't be completed with the resources _they_ have allocated (including time) then the problem is a lack of programmer skill, and insecure, young, and inexperienced programmers pay for it with their time and ego. Experienced programmers who want to take advantage of this will trade their time for respect, pride, and influence. Management should respect programmer's free time, but doesn't have to as long as there are programmers willing to sell the others out by giving it away.

3minus1 12y ago

Was he fired because he deleted the production database or because he didn't tell them what he did and they found out themselves?

Gigablah 12y ago
Looks like he didn't realize it until after they had found out.
6t6t6 12y ago
In any case, I don't expect anyone taking rational decisions at 5 in the morning, after being all night awake trying to solve an incidence because "boss said so".

moru0011 12y ago

The author has choosen wrong profession. As work makes up a good part of your life, you better enjoy it. Actually programming "business stuff" is quite different from tinkering with e.g. the newest machine learning algorithm, so talking of "programming" is a over simplification and indicates the author never got a grasp of what other people actually enjoy when "programming".

mgraybosch 12y ago
I chose the wrong day job, too, but it seemed like a good idea when I was 18 and my family's idea of a good job was bartending. I was a failed musician who took up writing, and I had just enough sense to realize that I'd need a day job. If cleaning toilets paid $25/hour I'd still be doing that. Somebody has to do it.

ad-hominem 12y ago

Another piece of "journalism" regarding tech ruined because we can't talk about anything programming-wise without getting into a nuts-and-bolts breakdown of "gender in STEM".

ad-hominem 12y ago

Another piece of "journalism" regarding tech ruined because we can't talk about anything programming-wise without getting into a nuts-and-bolts breakdown of "gender in STEM".

ChikkaChiChi 12y ago

Sometimes I code for work. Sometimes I code for fun. Sometimes I'm even lucky enough that my coding for work is fun. I think that "programming" can be as broad of an over-generalization as "you spend too much time on the computer." Don't mistake the glyphs on one screen for being the same to me as those you saw a moment before. At any point you may find the same machine that causes me to work to be used to learn new things, or to adventure into new worlds. I understand that not everyone is built like that; but don't set up a false premise that drawing a parallel to old world thinking somehow applies to all of us.

atlih 12y ago

I have a female intern that leaves on the clock, she gets more done than me. Probably because of it. The owners of the company ask me why does she leave so early, and I ask them back, why do your people in other apartments that stay late get nothing done?

jqm 12y ago

I didn't get into programming for money. I got into it because it's something I really like doing. If this isn't you... I feel bad for you. Life is too short to spend your working days doing something you don't care for. The money (beyond an amount needed to live) simply isn't worth it. If I ever don't like programming, I simply won't do it anymore.

EnFinlay 12y ago

I really dislike this trend of strongly written blog posts that don't try and make a logical point, and instead describe the irrational opposite of what the author dislikes.

sampattuzzi 12y ago

I would be interested to see if this phenomenon is more prevalent among US based companies. I worked for a company with offices in Cupertino and Cambridge UK and the difference in culture was noticeable. The american office seemed to demand a lot more devotion from their workers, this didn't seem the case with the brits. There was a distinction for me between coding for somebody and coding for myself. The latter always being more enjoyable. This is why I think so many programmers work on side and open-source projects.