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Passionate people are emotionally fickle. They dont make as good hires as you think. The ups and downs in productivity, engagement and team cooperation make them unreliable over the long term. 90%+ of passionate people cant see through long term projects due to burn out or boredom. I prefer people who come in to do a job, get paid, then go out to their families or party or whatever they do that's not work. They keep themselves in check, enjoy stability and take nothing personal. Honestly, they're adults compared to the passionate kids you have to babysit. Passionate people are easy to hire because they're cheap. Dangle a carrot and they'll jump as high as you want. Adults demand stacks of money to build a tower to reach the carrot.

Source: I've subcontracted and hired folks in both tech and infrastructure.

>> Passionate people are emotionally fickle. They dont make as good hires as you think. The ups and downs in productivity, engagement and team cooperation make them unreliable over the long term.

This is prejudice, nothing more. In the literal sense of the word "preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience". You simply can't say what people are like in advance.

EDIT: a more appropriate definition: preconceived judgment or opinion.

What part of I've hired both kinds of people didnt you get? That's considered actual experience.

Edit: Not preconceived either. This developed after almost 7 years of hiring people directly for me. People I had to then work with everyday. I dont have a hiring manager.

That would apply if you were thinking of rehiring those same people, but not if you were to hire someone new you had no exposure to right?

Otherwise, it is pretty much the textbook definition?

People use proxies for latent variables all the time. And you can absolutely get better results over uninformative priors.

  > Adults demand stacks of money to build a tower to reach the carrot.

Such "adults" also check out whenever there's a problem they can't immediately see how to solve. They lack curiosity and creativity and are definitely NOT interested in mentoring juniors and activities like onboarding. On the other hand, these folks ARE good at stuff like project management, ERP's, working with vendors like Oracle and SAP.

To be fair, everything I just wrote is merely a crass characterization-- just like everything you wrote.

You really need both kinds of people to make an organization run smoothly. You need people who enjoy the nose-to-the-grindstone stuff and you need people that are dreamers.

Agreed. If I were hiring pharmacists and had two candidates, I'd hire the one who read up on their field outside of work and participated in industry organizations, etc. Passion is not required in any field, but in every field you are a better employee if you love your craft (and I'd venture, as long as with proper work/life balance, a happier individual for yourself and others).

The problem isn't that we don't care at all. A lot of us were drawn to software engineering for some reason or other, maybe we can call it "passion." But I resent that my "passion" is only being exploited to make other people more money. If I do something over the weekend, it's not because of any sort of financial motivation. But when it's framed in the employment perspective, obviously, people would prefer to hire those who are going to do more work for less money, and those who spend time studying in their off hours. Why wouldn't they? Now your passion has been taken over and corrupted as a means for somebody else's profit (and chances are you aren't even going to get a cut of the spoils). If you're not spending your weekend learning the latest framework, who even are you? Of course people are going to become cynical when this kind of perversion happens - it's usually only those straight out of college who haven't realized they're being taken advantage of yet.

It's actually sad because once you've been around the block a few times with these kinds of managers, your passion starts to feel like a dimming light bulb until it's totally put out. And at that point you're only in it for the paycheck while you're mentally checked out. Just look at the videogame industry and its famous burnout stories to see what happens when you hire a bunch of passionate programmers.

Speaking as someone who has had similar types of burnout type reactions happen (apologies if that is not the case here, I'm reading between the lines) - you don't need to participate in this.

It takes more risk, but you could do your own thing, or join a company that has different types of leadership that won't exploit you this way (or in a way that is mutually beneficial in it's exploitation, as it were). These have tradeoffs.

Being resentful of it (especially in a hiring context) comes across about as well as someone who goes on a date and rants about how much their ex sucks. It isn't about the company you're interviewing with (though if you see the same things you would like to avoid, then please avoid it and feel free to tell them why respectfully! In my experience it's just pissing in the wind though.) - it's more about frustration and pent up unresolved emotional baggage.

No one's perfect. Employers/employees are trying to find a match and work out a deal they can both agree with. An employer looking for 'passion' who is abusing it isn't any different than someone dating who is looking for someone to enable their alcoholism or whatever.

It sucks, but you're not going to change the alcoholic by ranting at them on your first date. You will almost certainly never change the alcoholic - and in fact, not your job. Even going as far as a public shaming tirade MIGHT help, but most people are just going to wonder why you care so much and discount you, until it's an army of folks like you.

It's about finding something that works for you. And that means taking care of yourself too.

I do appreciate the looking out. Fortunately I have already left my own personal toxic situation, and went somewhere that respects my boundaries much better - and life is indeed much better. I'm not particularly resentful of it either, I learned a valuable lesson (and sometimes you need to touch the hot stove to realize that it'll burn you).

What my prior experiences with this have done is hardened my resolve that my own personal time is indeed 100% my own time. How I choose to spend it is none of the companies' business. Though it does seem like I'm still somewhat triggered by the word "passion" - it just seems like a nice way to beat around the bush for exploitation, especially when coming from those who stand to gain the most from your passion. My attitude now is a bit more cynical in that "what's in it for me" is front and center, and if I'm not satisfied with the answer I will move on.

I feel like anyone who gets popular just suddenly leaves behind the world where you're having to apply via resumes. Github profiles were that personal portfolio for programmers but some people never get theirs looked at. So why is Ben's portfolio better than someone's Github? The answer is likely because people are lazily proxying their assessment of someone through popularity (a successful youtube channel). There is some safety in this (the internet is often a harsher critic than our employers). Popular Github repos have a similar effect though. Plus Valve and Google can afford the time to assess candidates more in depth by actually watching videos or reading code. Other companies cannot, and yet they're asking for passion from you. This is mostly what the author wants to stop.

I appreciate the parent commenter's post and agree with his conclusions. However, I feel like your point is often overlooked. I'm not as passionate about software development as I would like to be. I enjoy it, but I find other hobbies and interests take up too much of my time outside work to devote the time I would like to programming.

I'm semi-passionate, but probably not passionate enough to get a job at somewhere like Valve. That's fine. However, if the local software shop wants a passionate developer but isn't willing to provide the pay and benefits commensurate with their demands, that's a problem. Employers can't expect to hire passionate, experienced developers when they pay well under market rates and only want to offer 15 days of PTO starting out.

100% of people with side projects are passionate. That's why folks put a lot of emphasis on side-projects because it predicts passion almost perfectly.

The opposite, that people without side projects aren't passionate, simply doesn't hold true. I've met and worked with engineers that were extremely passionate about programming but who had better things to do on the weekend than code (outdoors, sports, spending time with their kids). Their passion showed in continuously learning, often about things that were related to what they were working on, and an interest in computing. They'll make out time to learn or better use any time you set aside for that at work to improve their skills or mentor. They exclusively code from 9-5 but it's a completely different mindset than the folks who only treat is as a job or worst that actively try to stop coding.

The later are probably the people that you really want to filter out of any hiring pipeline, and I've met my share. Learning a new codebase is to be avoided, reading code is a waste of time and so on. A lot of them try to get in management as soon as they can, and you can imagine the results.

I fully agree with you, and I'd like to add one more argument, which is culture fit.

The original article says "Programming is not a calling. It is not a way of life." and I'm willing to believe that to be true for most people.

But for me, building cool stuff IS my way of life. And for most of my friends, too. If I ask in our group chat "what did you do on the weekend", I'll get replies like "I wrote for my book", "I tailored XY", "I built VFX in Unity", "I did an online game jam", "I 3d-printed Z".

Every one of my friends and everyone in my close programming group has his/her own stories about the time when they could only barely finish a really cool hobby project. In line with that, cool stuff that people built is one of our Slack channels at work. If we would ever hire someone who's not passionate about coding or engineering, I'm not sure they would be able to fit in.

Plus, being genuinely interested in the engineering work that other people are doing can open a lot of doors for you.

I would add, a contrario, that being too passionate is a serious risk for burn out.

Strongly agree. I programmed for a living and as my almost exclusive hobby for years. Then crashed and hated both. I forced myself to stop programming at home and re-invigorated my musical hobbies and I've been so much happier. I can now program for fun in moderate amounts too but I took about 6 months - a year hiatus.

There are plenty of jobs where passion is necessary because some practical aspect of the job sucks -- low base pay, crunch times and long hours in startups and the video game and movie/special effects industries, for example. Some folks make a career of this; others will switch specializations and have fun war stories to share with their coworkers at their new 9-to-5.

Passion also matters if you don't demonstrate the skills required for the role but get hired anyway. Being hired as a PFY, or unpaid high school/college internships, or "boss's son/daughter cleans the office" type jobs, especially since some of these roles aren't standing hires, but are "created" for the right candidate.

I think that the value a "paychecks are ok" sort of piece is two-fold. (1) For people who think that they have to pretend to be passionate because their employer cares, we want you to know that other kinds of jobs exist. There are trade-offs; maybe you'll be working in ad-tech, or some other boring cog of business logic, but they exist. (2) For young people (especially minorities) who think that "programming is not for them" because they're not thinking about it 24/7, we say, "there are places here where you can belong".

The folks I've met who are most passionate about designing circuits for fun on the weekend are the 9-to-5, spend-time-with-the-kids types. You don't have time to design circuits on the weekend if you're doing 80-hour work weeks. Don't believe recruiting sites that say "we hire people with passion" when they really mean "we want unpaid overtime", ugh.

> Most of these essays about "passion not required" are missing the point.

I'd argue that they're aiming for the idiots who are selectively hiring for someone's passion for software development.

So long as these people exist, these essays have value. If only one person is convinced that maybe, just maybe, selecting for passion is a bad idea when hiring, the essay has done its job admirably.

I agree, in hospitality you see a lot of passionate chefs, most burn out due to working insane hours as they are passionate about: that dish, that prep, that service, that function, covering and ensuring that service runs when the shift is short.

I left for teaching English, and I see the same thing. Every advert wants someone passionate, and then once they are in oh we need this covered, this extra work 'think of the children' style, and the same burn out occurs.

I'm passionate about one particular sub-sect of software, but I've learnt my lesson. I most certainly won't get a job doing it. I'll continue to tinker in my free time, and keep it for myself.

And just because you don't program outside of work hours, doesn't mean you're not passionate.

You're allowed to be passionate about something during work hours, and then different things after work.

Engineers like Ben are unicorns, one out of Billions of people.

For most engineers, competition are non existent. Just simply keeping up with tech stack and delivering solutions is enough to place in top 1% of engineers.

Yes, 1x engineers are just as valuable and rare as 10x or 100x engineers. Because vast majority of engineers, including engineers in FAANG companies, are negative producers.

Simply being in it for paycheck and being 1x engineers will have long lucrative career.

> Because vast majority of engineers, including engineers in FAANG companies, are negative producers.

Can confirm from 2 decades of experience as a dev. It's not rare to find negative ROI devs. I used to be one even.

As a matter of fact, current team is still fixing tech debt left by 2 previous devs.

It's infuriating because most of the tech debt is related to lazyness, not lack of competence. They had all the time in the world, all attention whenever necessary, PRs reviews from senior devs and still decided to cut corners most of the times. Some got past Pull Request reviews and we are left to deal with the mess.

On the other hand some devs that are not very technically experienced but are proactive and have positive personality makes great additions despite not knowing much.