Don’t Pursue Programming if You Aren’t Passionate About It
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It started as a way of describing great programmers. Those who are at the top of the field probably are very passionate about it. Once "the best programmers are passionate" became established as a common meme, it was co-opted as a hiring signal since everyone only wants to hire the best. In response, all job-seekers are now obligated to being passionate, because after all thats what the companies are looking for and why wouldn't a company choose a passionate candidate over one who's not? Not to mention "passionate" is now abused as a euphemism for "60 hours of work at 40 hours pay! lucky you!"
The truth is the same as always - the majority of people have no passion for their jobs. That means they won't be as motivated as someone who loves the job, but they can do a good job nonetheless. If you do love your job, count your blessings.
Very frustrating.
I do think that many (most?) people would be able to learn to program to the point where they can make a good living, in an age where it's harder and harder to make a good living doing anything.
But I've been passionate, at least in some definitions, about programming since I was a young teen. Before that, even, if you count simple programming. Passionate may not be the right word, though. Obsessive might be better. Or driven. I can't not learn about programming.
But I try not to claim that everyone has to be passionate or obsessive or whatever. Yes, I am. And yes, I'm quite a good developer. But I've worked with and encountered plenty of people who get the job done and who clearly aren't passionate about code. And they're making a fine living at development.
Low-skill jobs are going away en masse over the next 50 years. Maybe new jobs will magically come in to replace them, but I don't think so. Not all of them; not this time.
And so discouraging people from learning to program may be discouraging them from learning the one skill they can pick up in a reasonable time frame that keeps them from collecting welfare while working at WalMart.
Everyone should write. Few become authors. It is the way of things. And programming will invade every corner of our essence. Much like this post, it is not the best, nor must it be for us to exchange information and better each other.
The real distortion in cs is the fact almost everyone needs a damn CS degree these days for mid-tier pay. Never mind needing to be under 30. (slight exaggeration to drive home the point)
Very few people are lucky enough to have their passions overlap with a career that's marketable.
What if your passion is woodworking? Making beautiful, detailed cabinets that sell for $16,000+ may sound profitable, but I took a class from a woodworker who did exactly that, and he said that the net pay after materials costs (which were less than $1000) came to about $7/hour. Passionate? Insanely so. Probably one of the best woodworkers on the planet; certainly top 100. Only reason he could afford to be a woodworker is that he was on disability and owned his home outright.
I know some passionate knitters. They would probably make about $3/hour, if they're lucky, selling their wares.
Renovating old cars? Maybe $8/hour.
Cooking? Opening a restaurant is a huge capital outlay, and 90% fail in the first year. Working at a restaurant can maybe get you $16/hour. At least we've gotten past starvation wages here.
Singing or other musical interests? Only the very top make a solid career out of it.
Many, many domains that people tend to be passionate about have a power-law distribution of money making. A few knitters make decent money by selling knitting books or videos; the rest do it just because they like it. The top musical stars make tons of money, and second tier stars can make a living, but you need the talent and luck to make it to the top.
A rather mediocre programmer with a couple of resume items courtesy FreeCodeCamp can make $25-40/hour, and then pursue their passion in their spare time. Top programmers make more, but for many people $40/hour is outside of their earning potential in any other field they're qualified for. For some people $25/hour is a serious pay raise at this point. So I totally wouldn't discourage them.
And sometimes you'll get stuck waiting tables on XMas because the restaurant you work for requires it.
Yes, it varies by job. But 2AM calls are hardly unique to programming.
FWIW I really do want a doctor that's passionate about medicine, for the same reason that I want my lead developer to be passionate: If it's "just a job" they may not be following current best practices, which do change rather rapidly.
To be honest, I think the "GP" doctor's days are numbered. A registered nurse with a really good AI medical reference would likely to a better job than the 80th percentile of doctors, maybe even match the 99th percentile. There's too much information that isn't in any doctor's head, and a GP is basically a human expert system. A really good AI expert system would do a better job, and a solid nurse following the directions could handle the human part of the interaction.
"Imagine a doctor who doesn’t actually like helping people with their health problems. Or an automotive engineer who actually thinks cars are stupid and boring."
Lots of doctors and automotive engineers just do their job and then come home, in fact most employees don't come home and continue to work on semi work related things on their spare time. My wife is a civil engineer and yet she doesn't build a 1/16 scale bridge in our basement when she comes home. Does that make her a bad civil engineer?
"If you aren’t passionate about programming I don’t think you should become a coder."
"... lifetime of constantly learning and working in your spare time ... to keep your skillset fresh and relevant."
I have asked a few programmers I know what makes a successful programmer and I have always gotten the answer of "passion". But what even is passion? Maybe they are super passionate about VB and FactoryFactoryObservers? Is that good passion? Okay our field changes a lot. but then shouldn't seek the ability and willingness to learn rather then some vague 'passion'. Employers should also set up our teams in such a way that learning is encouraged. (Work Time + Money for conferences/continuing education.)
Edit: Changed the first cognitive dissonance to include the term programming as that was my implied but not stated meaning.
You should always be learning even in your spare time. Maybe not always about programming but about something.
If you don't then you've relegated yourself to walking around like a robot repeating the same things you do every day not ever thinking about your actions.
Right now I have a huge facination with machining/metal working. I can't own any gear for doing such stuff but I wish I could and I devote a larger amount of my time to learning about machining just because I find it interesting. If I could get into, and start working at a, shop near me I'd be very happy with it as a hobby but I have no intention of being a machinist.
Why would I spend so much time learning about machining then? I enjoy it and it's something I've never seen. It has nothing to do with my programming ability and I'll never need the information in a practical sense but learning about it bings a sort of happiness to my life.
Learning is one of the few things that keeps us human. Always exploring ideas, possibilities, and how to solve problems even if they aren't directly applicable to us. When we stop doing that we just turn into vegtables in my opinion.
Actually, one of the most important things I learned 'the hard way', is that you should actually 'learn not to learn' (i.e. really rest), and let go of any anxieties that may urge you to 'always be learning'. This insight improved my joy in life and tech, and also my focus and productivity, by much more then an approach of anxiously trying to be learning all the time.
Maybe for others things work differently, but generalizing into 'everyone should always be learning' seems too strong a claim to me.
1) your own mind,
2) your ability to talk to people who work outside of your problem domain, and
3) your ability to think outside of the "box" that is held by your field.Also there is no reason why you can't rest. We dedicate ~8hr/day of our lives to resting. We also get full days on weekends. We also get about 7-12hr/day for doing whatever we want while awake.
In those 7-12hr you can sit and stare into the idiot box and laugh when the talking heads tell you to laugh or you can read a book, go out side, think about "how would I make X", prototype some code for doing something, talk to some people who are professionals in a craft and ask "how do you build X".
I think one is way more fun then the other.
Now don't get me wrong, I watch a lot of TV but most of the TV I watch is "What If". I like science fiction stuff and a lot of it is some social commentary put into a setting that makes it ok to talk about or even asking moral questions that are different all together. Thinking about those dilemas falls under the classification of "learning". This isn't technical knowladge but instead social.
>In those 7-12hr you can sit and stare into the idiot box and laugh when the talking heads tell you to laugh... >I watch a lot of TV but most of the TV I watch is "What If"
You can watch TV and be an idiot or you can watch the kind of TV I approve of and as such become a better human being.
I mean if you broaden the definition of learning to include watching sci-fi and pondering whatever social commentary you read into the script then great. I'm going to go learn super hard.
I have no quarrels with someone having side projects. But those side projects shouldn't be fueled by some existential dread related to one's job or position.
I have corrected the language to be more specific.
You are confusing 3 completely different issues and not accounting the enjoyment of learning new things.
This is exactly what I believe passion is. Passion isn't something that's 'vague' or that you have to search for. It's the simple joy of doing some activity or learning something related to that activity. No joy, no passion.
If you're looking at it like that then you're not going to have any interest in programming after work. If you look at it like "I am a tradesman and I can either pay someone to do this for me or I can just take a few minute and hack together solutions for myself then I can save time and money".
I write a lot of software for my own tasks to automate things I need to do like recently I made a remote Steam Streaming machine so I can finally fully migrate to linux and to do so I needed to write a control service on my machine and write a daemond that listens for a packet to run a `shutdown /h` on the windows machine. It was a bit of programming but it wasn't "existential dread" and it definetly wasn't in some attempt to bettering myself as an employee. It was because I wanted a product that doesn't exist so I made it and I think more software developers should be interested in that. Not for work reasons but because making things is cool and we live in a time where people are happy to give you perfectly good hardware that they think is "garbage" because it's 1 version out of date. This is the perfect time for the engineer to live, and not just the Civil or Software but any engineer.
Perhaps not the best example you could have chosen: Physicians and licensed engineers do have mandatory continuing education requirements that more or less require them to be learning for a lifetime.
And perhaps they chose the wrong profession. Perhaps they come home and think to themselves "gee, I wonder how my life would have been if I chose art school like I wished instead of engineering like my parents encouraged me.". Ideally people should work on jobs they (at least tangentially) enjoy.
> But what even is passion?
Enjoying what you do. A constant eagerness to experiment, learn, and build something. Passionate people will always be ahead of their peers. Because learning or practicing that activity makes them happy they are more inclined to spend their time honing their skills. And they spend their time practicing that activity not because of some "existential dread related to one's job or position", but precisely the opposite: they enjoy doing it.
I believe encouraging people to pursue carriers in domains they enjoy is a general good advice. The article touches on programming specifically because there is a current trend / hype to push people toward programming.
It's a great job, but I'm not passionate about it. I won't go home and work on a side project or pick up a book about.. any learning or reading I need to do happens at work. I have other hobbies I'm actually passionate about and I simply don't have time or willpower to do something that feels like work not at work. And there's no way pursuing my hobbies full time would lead to me being happier - I'd be much poorer and have a way worse lifestyle.
I also don't feel like I'm locked into programming as a career forever - it's a great gig now but should it become less desireable then you can bet I'll adapt to whatever allows me to have the lifestyle I want. If that means moving into management in 5 years, so be it.
But that also doesn't mean I don't accomplish as much as other more passionate programmers per hour worked. I don't think passion has nearly as much to do with that as much as being able to find your work fulfilling and wanting to do good work. But those aren't the same thing.
Let's agree to disagree and say "some people have passion, some people don't. If passion and job intersect, that's dandy. Either should be okay, just pay the bills and live your life the way you want.
The idea of "passion" for programming might or might not have originated on the hiring side, but that side sure seems happy to run with it.
[EDIT: Not disagreeing with the original post, though. Just responding to the above comment about where this word comes from.]
I meant what I said in the post; you really like doing it and have a lot of interest in it. I couldn't think of a better word for that, or I would have used it.
Most people do work in jobs they don't have any passion for and I think that's fine, but some fields are really hard to do well at without that extra level of enjoyment. More extreme than programming would be music. Pursuing a career in music without passion would be truly horrific, as it is so hard to build a career in that field.
That activity is different from <SPECULATIVE WORK> without a steady paycheck such as writing novels, composing a song, and painting original art. Those fields absolutely require passion because of the constant rejections and overwhelming odds that your work will not be a "hit."
Programming work is a very wide field that encompasses both maintenance work and the artistic work. The jobs that are mostly maintenance work can attract people who are competent but not necessarily passionate. They're not going to wake up in the morning and get excited about moving a zip code field 1 pixel on a shopping cart form. But they compartmentalize that 8 hours of that programming that companies need and then go home to play with their kids. The essay ignores that scenario which is probably the vast majority of programming jobs.
Then I came across this career advice which suggested choosing a job which's struggles you love to solve. I realized that I loved the struggles of self-discipline to get the last 10% of a project done, the struggles of dealing with bad clients and the struggles of marketing and acquiring the first ones. I realized the programming required in professional software engineering was not the struggles I wanted to deal with.
Later on, I met a startup founder who had struggles with their company. The founder told that it seems like the end is near. Despite all the efforts throughout the years with many ups and downs, it seems like a single mistake took the venture down. It seems like the years were wasted on not becoming rich and successful, but then added that despite not becoming rich, she was happy with her life all the long way down. She told me that as long as I am comfortable with my life, I should not worry about the risks of running an unsuccessful company. Ultimately, a greater regret would be to push forward a life in which you don't find yourself happy in.
Would I go back to be employed, I'd go after a product role.
The other problem with making passion a mandatory requirement is that it's selfish. Passion has nothing to do with providing value, which is largely what yields professional success. Most people are passionate about their fun hobbies, but that doesn't mean they should pursue them professionally. If an employee isn't passionate about coding but gets the job done, then what's the problem?
[0] Study Hacks blog by Cal Newport, maybe?
I'm a digital marketer and I love love love going deep on analytics, attribution, etc. as a part of that. However I wasn't even aware of half that stuff when I was first starting out.
Professional experience led to greater and deeper exposure of new areas of the discipline that were way more interesting to me than the fundamentals that first got me interested. I now engage in discussions on those topics with other professionals in my spare time because it interests me beyond my job.
Does it mean enjoying doing something all the time? Well, that's just unhealthy.
Does it mean you have a skill in something you constantly improve? Everybody needs to start from zero.
Does it mean you work on your pet projects in your free time? This will likely change throughout your life.
Does it mean the field excites you? That is not a good reason to work on something - I'm really passionate about books, but I'm not a writer and don't think I will ever be(or will want to be).
The only real metric for passion is sticking with something for a long time and being happy about it. How the hell would you know it before you start? How would you even know it a few years in? People burnout all the time.
Saying that you have to be passionate about something is terrible. It discourages people from actually trying. It makes them question their motives. It makes them think if they should start doing something instead of actually trying to do it.
You don't need passion to be a decent developer. Hell, sometimes you'll hate your job and it's normal too. What you need is talent, by which I mean cognitive ability to learn field's concepts. You won't know if you have it unless you try.
Yes, people shouldn't get into programming just because they think it is a good career - there is a lot of stuff that will turn people off which code schools do not mention - lots of stress, cognitive load, sedentary lifestyle. It's not for everybody. But TRYING to get into field because it's a good career is as good a reason as any. Time will tell if you stick around.
I think the author greatly underestimates software complexity and future development in complexity. IT is not a narrowing field, where any task soon can be solved by slinging some javascript. I agree, that some tasks are simpler than others and don't require a full computer science degree, however software development still does require that you know wth you are doing. I do not want my bank software written by a guy who just finished a 6-month javascript course.
I can't think of one job where you won't hit a ceiling if you don't want to manage people.
I also am not sure what to make of the Op's mention of starting to program at 10. I read my dad's copy of K&R and installed some Linux distribution at that age too, but I didn't make any real progress until I realized that it's just a job and started acting more like a professional.
I strongly hate this idea that programming is for passionate people only. I interpret this as "You want to find a job that will improve your living conditions significantly if you're willing to put the work in? Fuck you; stick to the coffee bar."
I encourage everyone who is interested in learning how to program and wants to make a lot of money to take this field up. Why? Because at the end of the day, programming is a device whose input is business needs and output is something that makes that business money. Maybe. Better programming saves money and makes those money-making machines cheaper to repair and fix, but if it still makes money, then it still makes money.
If they learn to become good at this stuff, then why shouldn't they take advantage of an amazing salary and usually fantastic working and learning conditions?
BTW: there are plenty of great doctors and lawyers who are in it for the cash. Why? As it so happens, getting better at one's field leads to better chances at making more money. So you get better.
I've also witnessed most/all of the points David offered, esp the ceiling in job growth and the tiresomeness of learning the latest fashion in coding that does the same old thing, just in a more complicated way.
My own solution has been to turn away from development as an end unto itself and to get more involved in the problem space du jour (social network analysis, data mining, image analysis, medical biomarker resolution, etc). This doesn't address either of the woes I echoed, but at least it motivates me better than fantasizing about category theory while I feed yet another database while sitting in my cube.
There's also no tragedy in being a doctor that just wants to do a good job. Not every case is going to be an interesting medical mystery. In fact, it's probably gotten more frustrating as people suddenly start trusting internet articles and you have to endlessly urge caution and explain anything they've got wrong.
I didn't know anything about programming until university - I took the courses CS majors had to take in my stats degree until the end of 2nd year, and I definitely wasn't "passionate" about it. Actually, I was quite convinced I didn't want programming to be in my career whatsoever. But after my first co-op term in a start-up where I got to see what actually could be done with a team of people who knew how to code, coupled with 3rd year classes being more interesting and relevant than the fundamentals, I gained my passion. I now run a SaaS that combines programming, statistics, and other passions.
If I read your article after 2nd year while applying for my first jobs and taken this advice, I would have said "screw it, life's too short" and not be in the situation now where so many more doors are open compared to my classmates. I'd be on track for pigeon holing myself into boring stats jobs that need SAS certifications, with none of the skills I have now for a career in modern data analysis in the tech industry.
Side note, I hate reading about developers who lament about the career trajectory compared to being a doctor/lawyer. Most good developers are smart enough to genuinely believe that being a doctor would have been attainable if you just switched another lever earlier in life. I think this is a valid regret if you had actually always wanted to dedicate your life to legally/medically advising people, but you chose programming for the money. But for almost all of these developers, the decision to choose their career wasn't 100% about money and being a doctor/lawyer was never a serious consideration past wishful thinking. You're just viewing the grass as greener on the other side without considering the cons and consequences of actually being a doctor/lawyer, and that type of negative mentality is not healthy.
Don't get me wrong; I enjoy programming. But it's far from my #1 passion in life. It's what pays the bills. I don't do side-projects (at least as of right now).
I'm actually inclined to agree with the author to a certain degree: being passionate about programming will make you a better developer. The same could be said for any field though.
Also, to his last bullet point about needing to constantly be learning: I think a person could learn a long-living language (e.g. Java, C++, C#) and expect to have a decent career. Sure if you're aiming to work for startup X, you'll probably need to be hip to newest (and therefore supposedly "best") tech. Even though Java has been the butt of many jokes, it seems like there's always a need for Java engineers!
The idea that all programmers are super-passionate about the craft and never have any other interests can lead people to assume that if you don't have that single-minded focus that you aren't a real programmer. This is an industry where many people deal with imposter syndrome already; they really don't need any additional help with questioning whether or not they have what it takes to succeed.
It's a common human tendency to assume that others in your group are exactly like you. The programmers with passion for the craft assume that everyone else who is a developer must share that passion. This is pretty short-sighted and exclusionary. Not every developer codes in their spare time. Not every developer learns new programming languages for fun.
I agree with the author that you need some level of enjoyment from the process of programming in order to succeed in it as a career, but I doubt that's specific to programming, either.
Not quite as passionate Monday morning as I am Wednesday morning.
Decidedly less passionate after forced marches on crappy projects or putting up with BS.
Pretty passionate when things are just interesting enough but not frustrating, and most especially when I feel value in what is being done.
But really I've always felt passion for tools was a bit misplaced. Passion for results is where it's at.
https://medium.com/@WordcorpGlobal/programming-doesnt-requir...
David Matteson's essay is talking about passion as a prerequisite for programming jobs to help with "happiness" and life satisfaction.
Of course, this is very different than companies trying to get more people into programming so they can have a cheaper workforce.
I am not passionate about programming, yet I program computers. I use the tools that programming algorithms provide in order to do the things that I want to do.
Sometimes that is for work. I model some bio-thingy in Matlab, or I use Arduino soft/hardware to generate said data, I do stats automatically, I manage the website and do fun stuff with it, etc.
Sometimes I program 'for fun'. I use Markov and RNN analysis for side projects, I do non-textual analysis on stuff I want to look at, I manage my home via smart-home hardware, I play video-games or sports games and then use various python programs to analyze stuff I want to look at.
I am not passionate about the act of programming anymore than the act of soldering or using a socket wrench. Programming is a method, a tool, that I use for my passions.
So what does this make me?
The term "passion" makes me think I'm required to passionately make love to a superclass while domain requirements strap me to a table of molasses and legacy code, crying "Yes! You filthy amalgamation of mixed paradigms, take me any which way you like! Procedural! Functional! I want it all! I want you to be my precious Ruby! My cup of hot Java! My serrated blade of C! A twisting tangle of Python! A furious steed of Fortran and assembly!"
You can burn yourself out to hell, being passionate in a shit environment that doesn't care.
In fact, you can lose your passion, in those circumstances.
Whatever you do, find a good environment for it. This is an integral part of enjoying what you do.
Passion and purpose are emotions that come after expertise and experience. The way to get them is to commit to the path of mastery, get great at something, and do great work."
Everyone who works on Scrivener, Reaper, the countless VSTs I use, Firefox, Windows, Android, Linux, all the backend and frontend technologies of the web, and all the hardware and software that makes it all work together are my heroes. They do the stuff that makes my eyes gloss over so I can crack jokes on Twitter, make music, and write.
Truly raising the standard of the development profession doesn't mean keeping out people who are less skilled, passionate or competent. There's a lot of room at all levels. What's most critical is that the people who form teams of developers, coordinate their work, judge their value and reward them are good at what they do.
This is hopefully false for interesting companies, otherwise, just flee! If you are working for an organization that does not value senior software engineers, this organization is just crap.
There are other factors to consider though. Generally speaking in most instances, even the interesting companies, management is going to be a faster, more reliable path to wealth. My observations lead me to conclude that:
1. Most technical staff is generally considered fungible by management, even at interesting companies, so layoffs can and do tend to impact non-management harder and more frequently, and this impacts long-term earnings.
2. Even at interesting companies management is generally compensated better in terms of salary, bonuses and (as management level rises) bonuses and stock grants. This generally isn't just a few percentage points difference in the pay, either: in most places outside those high-paying hotspots managers tend to be paid wages that are much closer to SV wages than programmers will ever see, so the difference is even greater there.
We need a better way to interview :)
An essay of PG's [1] is in agreement with this concept, but even it at least makes note of a certain important point:
"Some people are lucky enough to know what they want to do when they're 12, and just glide along as if they were on railroad tracks. But this seems the exception. More often people who do great things have careers with the trajectory of a ping-pong ball. They go to school to study A, drop out and get a job doing B, and then become famous for C after taking it up on the side."
[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/love.html
I think PG's essay was written with fairly privileged people as the audience, though. Most people are surviving, they don't really have room to study different things and juggle professions. What kind of people often do? Software developers. For all the bad rap that software gets, it still strikes me as one of the most mobile professions out there, and it's fairly easy to branch out into something else from it, and it provides enough money for a good buffer that such life changes need. Yet the blog suggests you shouldn't even touch software unless you're already passionate.
But, aside from that point, I have never seen any evidence that every single person on Earth has a passion deep inside of them that needs to be unlocked. That sounds very metaphysical, like some mysterious force out there is bestowing passions on people (especially ones that neatly fit into societal boxes called "jobs", and, yes, I know PG is not saying that, but the blog post author appears to imply it). I'm sympathetic to metaphysical ideas, but they need to have a reasonable basis, and this one just seems to be wishful thinking. You would at least hope that passions are more diffuse or that people can have multiple ones, because some programmers must have been born when computers didn't even exist yet!
This seems like a very dangerous idea to throw around, too, how are people without a passion supposed to feel? The implication seems to be that something is deeply wrong with them and they need to go fix it. Also seems to be ripe ground for impostor syndrome.
My guess is that single point passion is likely a genetic or early developmental trait, and is an uncommon thing, especially since the average person usually needs to do lots of different things at varying skill levels. I imagine it's also somewhat associated with impulsive behavior because a characteristic of a passionate person is that they can't stop themselves from engaging with their passion. Most people are not like this and can't understand it, from what I've seen. Most people want to do multiple different things, hence hobbies. I would like to have 3 professions, just not do them all 8 hours each, and preferably ones not really related to each other. Like programming, martial arts, and cooking. Really, I'd like to do 10-20 things, and the list can get bigger than that, but I'd be pretty happy with 3.
There is someone that this idea really benefits - that each person will pick just one thing, and work almost exclusively on that one thing and little else - but I don't think that someone is the person themselves.