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Comment by nlwhittemore | Hacker News Reader

Not to pile on, but the article also seems to somehow assume that passion and diligent practice/training/hard work are mutually exclusive

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The writer doesn't 'assume' that they're mutually exclusive; he explicitly makes that part of his argument:

"Passion? Has no place in the process at all. Yes, you can use it as a motivation – but it’s worse than useless if you want to actually succeed. Passion is fleeting, transient, momentary on the timescales that achievement requires. For motivation, you need something deeper and more permanent – and more, you need something that lets you be dispassionate at the same time as remaining motivated."

His argument is that 'passion' is detrimental to the kind of diligent practice necessary to acquire mastery of a subject. So you can disagree with the thesis of the essay, but you can't really claim that the author is ignoring such a critical aspect of the argument.

Okay then, I disagree with that critical aspect of the argument and dismiss as laughably false the following claim: Passion is fleeting, transient, momentary on the timescales that achievement requires.

I offer the following thought experiment to justify my position: Pick any ten people that everyone agrees have achieved something notable. They could be Olympic athletes, business people, and so forth. Now approach a control group of people who are ignorant of our argument and ask them: "Which of the following ten people are passionate about their sport/business/vocation/what-have-you?"

If on aggregate 25% or fewer of the ten are judged to be passionate, I will concede the point. If 75% or more are judged to be passionate, I claim that passion and achievement are not mutually exclusive.

Fair enough, but your thought experiment boils down to a survey of people's opinions on the definition of 'passion'. Essentially, you're arguing that the subordinate definition of 'passion' is more valid than the top-line definition of 'passion' (in my dictionary -- see below), and I think that's pretty unconvincing, as arguments go.

When we refer to 'passion' colloquially, we're usually referring to something so intense that it cannot last for long (e.g. 'passionate love'). Even if you, personally, don't believe this is true, it's become the basis upon which certain wankers in our industry exploit their youthful and naive employees. I think this is the core of the essay, and it's a valid observation, irrespective of the definition of 'passion' that you happen to prefer. So the definitional debate is a dodge for the real issue: there are a ton of "entrepreneurs" these days who are dressing up exploitation in a fancy suit, calling it sexy, and describing it with words that are conventionally used for love.

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Now, as promised, the definition rom my Mac-tionary:

passion (n): 1) strong and barely controllable emotion: a man of impetuous passion

I grant you that the third and fourth bullets below this definition concern 'enthusiasm', but it's still quite important that the derivation of the word is from Christian theology, and ultimately from the Latin 'pati', which is 'to suffer' (the implication being that 'passion' is a form of suffering for a cause). I think that's intersting, in the current context.

English is what people make of it. My blog was subtitled "passionate programming" for six years. Never once did I think of passionate programming as something one suffers for a few hours or days then burns out of with disillusion.

Have I been wrong all these years?

In any event, the second part of your reply is far more interesting, especially in conjunction with a recent HN front page page article suggesting that founders should give employees a bigger taste of early stage liquidation events.

For that reason, I am upmodding you.

No, I don't think you were wrong. (Unless you're one of those people who used the word to mean "willing to work really hard to make me rich", in which case, you're both wrong and evil. ;-))

I think that a lot of well-meaning people (like yourself) were using "passionate" in the 'enthusiasm' sense. My feeling of this essay is that the author was taking on the people who mean it in the other sense. Personally, I think they're much more common.

Well, it's rather contextual. If you tell me so-and-so is passionate about women, I am inclined to assume he or she has many temporary passions for many different women. If you tell me they're passionate about women's issues, I am inclined to think this is a matter of conscience that is likely to last a lifetime.

But just to be clear, if I was thinking passionate about making money in the business of software, I'd say that :-)

You are not piling on, you are making an incredibly important point. Are Olympic athletes passionate about their sports? To the exclusion of practice, training, and hard work? Come on.

What distinguishes Olympic athletes from enthusiastic athletes is that they don't have passion; they have dedication. Day in, day out, regardless of how they feel, they follow a structured training plan. Feeling enthusiastic on a day scheduled for resting? Tough, you rest. Feeling down on a day scheduled for training? Tough, you train. It's not about being passionate, it's about what our fathers tended to call stick-to-it-ivness.

Perhaps a better example is going for a doctorate. Everyone with a PhD will tell you the critical requirement for getting a PhD (if they're being honest) is neither raw intelligence (beyond what you needed for the primary degree), nor passion for the topic, but the dedication to spend four to six years of your life in the focussed, deliberate and pragmatic pursuit of a goal. Passion will do nothing but cripple your efforts - you have to remain objective, be able to drop an approach if it's not proving useful without a second thought, and not get married to the central thesis lest it distort your results.

Same principle applies to programming. Dedication, professionalism, these are the real virtues - passion just produces fanboys for whatever the method de jour is.

Actually, the Olympic athlete has it all. It is extremely rare to achieve greatness through stick-to-it-ivness without it having a meaning deep into your core. Lots of programmers work long hours week after week without wanting anything other than a paycheque. They write zillions of lines of COBOL or PL/1 or MUMPS or Visual Basic year after year. Yet they are mere worker bees, their contribution is to do as they are told and that's it.

Passion is not entirely orthogonal to the result. And further to your discussion of PhDs, there are many PhDs whose work contributes little of importance to history. The great dissertations are from those who are passionate and dedicated.

Sure, enthusiasm by itself is not helpful. Nobody serious about hiring hires passion without anything else. But I haven't read anybody saying "Hire people who are enthusiastic without accomplishing anything." So why argue that point?

The OP makes the point that passion correlates negatively with performance. This is bunk.

In the short run, there is a bit of tension between passion and "diligence", at least under some definitions of "diligence". This is because people with passion tend not to have the unconditional work ethic that is desirable in a grunt or subordinate, but counterproductive in a creative or a manager.

In the long run, some level of passion is required in order to maintain diligence. Not necessarily "work 80 hours per week because X will make me rich" passion, but a deep desire to do things well and correctly, and to learn the skills necessary in order to continue doing so.

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