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Life should NEVER be about others who randomly value some ephemeral stuff that has no bigger meaning to you. NEVER.

Your life should be about what YOU value. If you want to work at a company which carefully selects for "passion programmers" you will hopefully also value that life style and it will be a natural match. If you value programming to that extent you will naturally be driven to do that and that's beautiful but not a life plan for everyone in IT.

Life is hard enough in all of its aspects - no one has the obligation to serve some sort of purpose that somebody pulled out of their ass since most of use probably don't live in Zerg states like China or North Korea where the consequence is some sort of punishment.

I strongly recommend that people live according to what they value themselves instead of making some billionaire richer in trade for burnout and your own well-being.

People must survive and some just want to get done their 9am-5pm shift everyday to get the bills paid because moving to a job that you love may even be impossible for some.

THAT'S FINE. People aren't obligated to work with a true fire of passion for Hewlett-Packard or burn with life and energy when programming the next ad-tracking feature for Facebook.

I agree but then you must acknowledge that by chosing to restrict yourself, you may lose competitive edge againts those who have no such restriction.

It proobably depends on the company, and the type of role.

Also, the fact that you describe it as a restriction probably reveals a bit about your age =). (I don't meant that in a bad way).

I think a lot of it comes down to life stage.

If you're 24, with no family or commitments, life is easy and you can stay at work late, or code till 3am if you want to - the worst is your room-mate (or parents) might complain about the noise.

Hypothetically, if you're older, and have a wife and 3 kids...well, those things are going to take priority (and they should). Of course, they can provide an immense amount of joy and fulfilment - at least for me, far more than my work can (although I do really enjoy my work as well).

I have worked in IB, algo-trading, and now in tech - and none of them compared to the pure ecstatic joy I get from coming home, and making dinner for the kids, or reading to them, or helping them brush their teeth.

I do still code in my spare time - but honestly, with a family, there may not be that much free time (assuming you still want to keep other hobbies and pursuits as well).

What if you're 24 years old with a two person family and limited commitments, except for your drive to see the mountains on the weekends, to watch the sunsets during the week, to keep up with your old friends online and read history in the evenings?

I've seen the hypothetical comparison above made elsewhere, and it seems to imply choosing one category of "ephemeral stuff that has no bigger meaning to you" (the kids and the family) over another (work til 3am).

Not to denigrate anyone's joy of parenthood at all, much less the notion that people feel as though they're driven by it! I just wish our culture could foster more appreciation for the ecstatic joy of sipping a cup of tea at 6:30PM on the patio. As it is, I frequently wrestle with self-doubt that my mindset is out to lunch and I may inadvertently restrict myself from the greatest joys available in the future, including the joy of personal professional success, by not spending more evenings coding til 3 in the morning. But that's just a couple hours away from brewing the morning coffee to watch the sunrise! That's the time I have to read about the longitude problem!

There is the small matter that you do real and permanent damage to yourself if you keep an unsustainable pace for too long.

Yes! I'd just be careful to assume that people who are smart enough to program aren't smart enough to knowingly do so.

Competitions in modern times are nearly always an artificial construct. Who cares if you coast at your job as long as you do what you are paid for? There is no award ceremony at your funeral for having achieved a manager position higher than your neighbors.

A competition only exists if you agree to take part in it and I am willing to bet that's usually a conscious choice. If you can provide for yourself and your family to enjoy the things you like - why introduce competition if all it does is annoy you?

Some people just don't care about being able to afford luxury products because other things already give them fulfillment.

Others need more money and/or more power to get a maxed out Tesla or a house in their dream area (or simply to stroke their ego). All is fine.

There just isn't some sort of obligation to anything other than maybe the people directly around you (SO, kids, parents, friends...).

Invest time in what you like. Life doesn't allow that to always be the same as your job.

Not even tesla or dream house, sometimes to just coast and provide minimum for your self and your family require you to compete with other.

> I agree but then you must acknowledge that by chosing to restrict yourself, you may lose competitive edge againts those who have no such restriction.

And by choosing to restrict yourself by only focussing on your job, you're losing out on other areas of life.

Yes, whatever you choose there is always trade off.

Do you really want to work for a company which values that "competitive edge" as a social signal over humane hours and relaxed professional competence?

Reality is you will probably burn out by your late 20s. And so will most of the off-hours coders.

Sure, but for you to get hired in such company you may still have to compete with other for the position.

You may have to code outside work in your current job in order for you to have that competitive edge over other applicant when you apply for such company that value "humane" hour.

9-to-5 coders don't need to aim for passion companies though, a job maintaining a logistics program for a pharmacy chain is good enough for them. The pay isn't amazing but if it sustains your life passion of raising a family or becoming an award-winning ice sculptor or whatever then who cares?

Yes, even for such non passion company you still have to compete. It doesn't matter if the job if "easy", if there are 2 applicant which both are sufficiently qualified, the one which have that extra edge is the one who will get hired.

The point is you have to compete a lot less though. With passion companies you have to compete with Stanford graduates who have a +1000 commits in the Linux distro, whereas at your local supermarket headquarters you're just competing with people who need a desk to park themselves at for 8 hours while they daydream about fishing. It's a lot easier to compensate for lack of experience with soft skills/connections in the latter types of jobs than it is for the former.

Yes but there is more and more programmer these days, not to mention increasingly easy to be outsourced to anyone in the world. If you are not doing extra then you are going to be outcompeted.

By design nobody is trying to maximize their competitive edge. Since people just think they are. What everyone is doing is finding the right balance for them.

By not sabotaging your competitive peer's cars, or sectetely breaking up their marriages, or deciding not to have a family of your own you're giving up a competitive edge. Again that doesn't mean you should do those things to improve your chances for advancement at work.

Nobody is maximizing their competitive edge - everyone is just looking to find the right balance. The fact that something doesn't maximize an edge doesn't mean you shouldn't do it. Often times you should.

> Life should NEVER be about others who randomly value some ephemeral stuff that has no bigger meaning to you. NEVER.

In theory no but when the hiring process at your potential next job involves people that believe they must value that ephemeral stuff, then suddenly even though it has no value for you, your life is very much about this at this point in time regardless.

If companies who don't looks passion programmers paid equally we would be fine.

We strive for higher paying jobs, see that they want passion programmers, so we fake being a passion programmer.

And to put even more of a punch to it, I spend 2 hours a day streaming Rust development (heh heh... inexperienced rust development :-) ) and it will buy me precisely nothing at work. There's another guy on my team that seemingly spends every waking moment working on code for work -- because that's what he enjoys doing. He will very rightly get more recognition for his efforts at work than I will.

Although it's never guaranteed, you general get what you put into it. I'm going to learn about Rust development in my spare time and maybe that will be useful to my career someday. Compared to someone who is concentrating on spending time with their kids, I might get some benefits. But, my Rust development will never throw me a surprise birthday party when I'm 90. My buddy at work enjoys the time he spends and gets lots of deserved plaudits at work. He'll get raises and promotions that I likely won't. I could do the same as him, but I don't want to. Similarly, had I chosen to settle down and have kids when I was of an age to do it, I could have. I decided not to and I'm totally happy with my choice. You don't get to benefit from the road you didn't choose. That's just life.

> There's another guy on my team that seemingly spends every waking moment working on code for work

Work out your hourly rate after he gets a promotion and see who does best.

I think you're confusing two things - the "nonstop hobbyist programmer" and "the person with provable excellence in their field". My contention is that a lot of the motivation for a nonstop hobbyist programmer is that contributions you do at work are often buried in closed-source projects, or, even if in open-source projects, are relegated to some corner of some huge project. Or both! So it's hard to prove that you're really any good.

By contrast, if you initiated a project and have a public profile - whether in your spare hours or in your day job - you have demonstrated something and you will command a premium.

I think conflating these two attributes is dangerous as it suggests that the best way of dealing with it is overwork (i.e. "add another job to my job") rather than negotiation (i.e. "try to figure out how at least some of my day job isn't just work that 'vanishes into the BigCo closed source void'"). That might mean a hard negotiation, or even switching jobs, but it's a lot more time-effective than starting your second shift at 5pm.

I should note that first - saying you're "confusing" is a bit obnoxious and I should have said "conflating" throughout, which is what I meant - and second - nothing I said is meant to imply that "nonstop hobbyist programmers" is somehow disjoint with "the person with provable excellence in their field".

>I think you're confusing two things [...] I think conflating these two attributes is dangerous as it suggests that the best way of dealing with it is overwork (i.e. "add another job to my job")

No, you're misinterpreting what I'm talking about.

I'm not suggesting to anyone to artificially create the appearances of the passionate weekend hobbyist programmer by adding more undesirable after-hours programming work. Doing anything like that is unsustainable and will just make one miserable.

The 2 types of programmers I have in my head are these:

(1) the programmer who genuinely treats coding as "play", a "game", a source of "joy" such that coding only at a 9-to-5 job is not enough of an outlet to express his true self. For this type of person, programming is more like "art" such as playing guitar or painting. Therefore, constantly creating new side projects on github during non-work hours is a completely natural way of spending free time.

(2) the programmer who treats coding as a "job". Sure, the programmer may also "like" to code but only up to the limits of a 9-to-5 job. The programmer would rather do something else after 5pm and the weekends such as hiking or taking kids to soccer games.

The so-called "problem" is that the group (2) programmers feel it's unfair that so many influential companies and hiring managers in the industry prefer group (1). My point is that this blog post doesn't address that. Just exclaiming "it's ok to code only at work" is just preaching to the choir instead of educating you on the underlying industry forces that can make one doubt that self-affirmation.

Again, the real affirmation should be: It's ok to let other employers prefer the extra-curricular programmers so don't let it bother you if you _sometimes_ lose jobs to them.

That's the affirmation that would explicitly highlight what the tension is about: You want to restrict yourself to programming only 9-to-5 for your mental health but the software industry -- which you don't control -- doesn't want to cooperate with your ideals for a balanced life! Many people in the tech industry have hiring preferences and this blog essay doesn't change that. You can either let that irritate you -- or -- you can be at peace with it.

As others said, the best you can do is try to find employers that align with your work/life preferences.

The point should also be that the programmer in (1) may not actually be any better for your business than the one in (2), and the programmer in (2) may be doing it because they think they have to, and may be a burnout as a result.

OK, I now understand what you're saying. That being said, I don't believe you - I don't think someone in your category (1) has all that much of an advantage over someone in my "your achievements are publicly known and not locked away in someone's proprietary code base" category.

I think most of the "passion programmers" advantages are due to how public their achievements are, not due to the fact that they are putting in more than the 9-to-5. Further, most of the people I've met in this category don't have particularly interesting or programming intensive 9-to-5s, which is how they can have the appetite to program in the evenings.

Back during the most intensive period of working on Hyperscan, when we were really doing tons of interesting stuff during the day, I had zero interest in going home and doing Even More coding on some other project. It would have been seriously reaching into the "You Are No Longer Productive" number of hours/week.

I started my professional career in 2003, and switched jobs many times. Never have they asked about hobby projects or github code or whatever. Nobody in the professional world cares about your hobby code. If you would say "I have experience with this framework from my hobby project", that translates into "no experience".

Maybe it's different in US, but in Belgium, they require a degree and professional experience, nothing else.

Do you know why? Because middle management and hr don't have such passion projects. They can't imagine doing the same (but different) work at home for fun.

Nobody has ever cared according to my experience.

I don't believe the non-stop hobbyist is necessarily any better than the 9-5 guy.

I think in our industry hiring managers have failed and continue to fail to identify talent and good hires (it's a hard problem). As a result they use proxy-metrics, this may just be another one.

I've worked with the obsessives, and the dedicated, I've also worked with talented people who aren't like that. Those that 'live to code' have not always distinguished themselves.

You need passion and interest to be great in this industry. I'm, far from convinced that to be in the top performers you need to be spending your whole life outside of work dedicated to it too. You also need to be a good communicator, innovative and open minded, as well as productive and tech savvy, and you need not to be exhausted and burned out.

Most of the really good people I know do some coding outside of work, but it's usually not constant and is usually incidental to trying to achieve something ("hey, I automated the garden path lights!", "I made a security cam system!" Etc). Like a couple of generations back they'd be tinkering in their garden shed. Rather than driving themselves to constantly pick up the new hot language/framework/technology.

Employers want skilled professionals. They don't actually care about passion, they care about getting things done.

Since it's very hard to quantify programming talent and passion is easy to signal, passion is used as a false correlative variable for skill.

Both employers and employees love passion since it's so easy to signal.

Having a passion for something may or may not convert to career competence, depending on the person.

I think that resentment stems from a bit of imposter syndrome, preferences for potential employees are not new, but it does feel like the industry as a whole expects programmers to mostly be passionate nerds whose main/only focus is this one thing related to their job. It's a good thing that so many are passionate and have the opportunity to make a living out of it, but even those may be searching for contentment in their own abilities when comparing to how society as a whole views the profession. 'Where' you work being a measure of how successful you are as a programmer.

It isn’t true in any profession that working weekends is indicative of performance. Somehow they managed to dup people in technology to think that’s okay.