Ask HN: How often do you get rejected for “lack of passion”? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How often do you get rejected for “lack of passion”?

10 pointsfilterdoesit14 comments

So I've been interviewing with some companies lately (London) for software development position. All I managed so far is get rejected from a bunch of places. I'm not a "rockstar dev", but I've got ~5 years under my belt and have never been fired, so I think of myself as average I guess. Most companies either ghost you after the interview or give some bullshit feedback. 2 out of 3 latest ones however stated something along the lines of me "having lack of passion", "enthusiasm" for their product. These companies were not exactly startups either.

Now I worked in a bunch of boring industries such as web agency, insurance company and lately finance. I have no passion whatsoever for either of these and yet I manage to do my job just fine. Is "lack of passion" just a code word for "you don't seem too eager to bust your ass and do unpaid overtime for us"?

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Frankly, no, it's not a codeword for unpaid overtime, it means "you will likely just make everyone depressed with your attitude."

You don't need to be passionate about insurance, but you need to be able to show some enthusiasm about building software for insurance, which likely has a lot of exciting challenges (in addition to 90% boring work, as does almost any job). You don't need to be passionate about web agencies, but you need to at least understand what's cool about working at an agency (in addition to what's not). Finance is "boring" to you? There are tons of interesting tech challenges in finance. If you describe every job as boring then the problem might be you.

Nobody is going to hire you just because you can code if you have a negative attitude about what everyone there spends their days doing. Why would they?

You make it seem like not being excited equals having a negative attitude that brings everyone down. There are many shades of grey between those two.

I've worked on boring stuff that I wasn't excited about, but I didn't have a negative attitude at work. Every day I just came in, did what had to be done, went home. AFAIK my past co-workers and managers all appreciated my work.

I can empathize with what OP is saying. I've never been rejected myself for "lack of passion", but I know people who have interviewed perfectly fine candidates in terms of logic reasoning and technical aptitude and rejected them for this bullshit reason.

I don't understand this current expectation that you can't just do a good job at what you do, no, you have to be all starry eyed about it and thinking of it even in your dreams. There's more to life than work.

There's a QI (UK show) clip about this topic. Although the discussion is geared towards customer service, I think it still fits here. It's 45 seconds long.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LiDTKEF1ek

Here's more David Mitchell on the subject of passion. I think the OP will probably agree!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bz2-49q6DOI

I think you're right, it's just as bullshit as they come.

I'm working for an ISP that also sells IPTV, both to end-users (along with settopboxes) and to other ISPs (as a service they sell to their users). I couldn't care less about the television in general and IP-based one in particular. I don't watch TV, I don't even have a TV set and the closest thing to one that I have is the screen of my laptop. Yet I take pride in how our infrastructure for providing TV channels works, especially when compared to how it looked like when I got hired.

In other words, it can be perfectly healthy if you don't care about the product itself, as long as you care about the quality of the product and craftsmanship used to build it.

On the one hand, pretty bullshit (https://www.google.com/#q=at+*+we+are+passionate+about+ is a fun search). And often code word for "unpaid overtime".

On the other hand, companies do legitimately want people who will care about their work. So maybe next time:

1. Spend a bit more time reading about companies' business and then ask more questions at interviews. Even if you're not passionate you do want to make sure they're not going to have redundancies in 6 months, and it will give better impression :)

2. Emphasize your pride in work you do, so even if it's not "HEART EYES INSURANCE I LOVE INSUARNCE" at least it's "I will do good work."

3. Try to get better sense of company culture (e.g. unpaid overtime), so you can better calibrate rejections and so you can get better sense of if you want to work there. Ideally if they say "not enough passion" you should already know whether this is code for unpaid overtime based on what you learned in interview.

4. This is another reason getting jobs through someone you know is better, you can get better sense of company culture in advance.

Some ideas on filtering out companies that suck: https://codewithoutrules.com/2016/10/14/job-you-dont-hate/

Some resources I wrote up on finding jobs with a sane workweek: https://codewithoutrules.com/saneworkweek/

I think this is slowly becoming one of the last acceptable forms of discrimination.

We know that terms like "Cultural Fit" can be used a proxy to cover up for all kinds of discrimination which is illegal / socially unacceptable.

I think "Passion" has become of those terms. It allows you to exclude a whole raft of people without admitting the real reason.

Socially awkward? Not passionate. Bad at public speaking? Not passionate. Suffer from depression or anxiety? Not passionate. Find it hard to show emotion in front of people you just met? Not passionate.

Here's a revolutionary idea: interviewers could just evaluate candidates based on their technical aptitude, skills and experience.

Sorry you're having a hard time.

I think software development is murky. In my experience, fixing a customer problem with software can take 10 hours if you're excited about it and interested enough to come up with a creative solution or 40 hours if you're bored and just robotically building to a spec.

Likewise, I haven't met a programmer who was very good at something they hated. I'm guessing you actually enjoy some parts of your work -- maybe steer the conversations to that.

Yes, but there are tons of "passionate" people out there, so they are looking for them. Here in my country (Brazil), we are nearing a ridiculous situation. Most startups set stupid hiring metrics managed by people ignorant about technology and most of them (if not barely all) fail badly. And then the CXO's all blame their "passionate" programmers and leave with the pockets full of money.

> Yes, but there are tons of "passionate" people out there, so they are looking for them.

Are there really be people passionate about building boring business software or is it just a case of rewarding the liars?

I don't think anybody is passionate working for others in the long term. And mostly young and inexperienced people are passionate until they get the full picture.

Be passionate about the problem space the job and code exists in.

Look at it as they are filtering themselves out for you.

I'd imagine that's exactly what they're looking for. And if they can somehow find someone so passionate, they can only benefit. So why not look for that (from their perspective)?

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