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Don’t Pursue Programming if You Aren’t Passionate About It

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Re: Don’t Pursue Programming if You Aren’t Passionate About It

#11

Post by Clanan »

The problem with focusing on passion as a driving force is that it reverses the direction of how professional "passion" is often developed - through experience. I can't find the source now[0] but I recall reading about research investigating professional passion in college administrators. It found that passion was directly related to work years. In other words, experience and advanced skills bred more confidence and passion over time.

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?

Re: Don’t Pursue Programming if You Aren’t Passionate About It

#15

Post by StClaire »

> If, like me, you have no interest in managing other people and want to just do coding for your career, then you’re eventually going to hit a ceiling in any organization

I can't think of one job where you won't hit a ceiling if you don't want to manage people.

Re: Don’t Pursue Programming if You Aren’t Passionate About It

#16

Post by xroche »

"If you are pursuing programming to become wealthy, you’d be better off pursuing a career in management"

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.

Re: Don’t Pursue Programming if You Aren’t Passionate About It

#17

Post by jasode »

As long as there is a market where pays a regular recurring paycheck for , that will attract people who are not particularly passionate about the job. This is ok.

That activity is different from 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.

Re: Don’t Pursue Programming if You Aren’t Passionate About It

#18

Post by gravypod »

RubenSandwich wrote: post #4

Articles like this seem to be promoting the Cognitive dissonance that most developers hold. Namely: 1. I need to be always learning about programming, even on my spare time! 2. Work/life balance is important. "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…

> I need to be always learning, even on my spare time!

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.

Re: Don’t Pursue Programming if You Aren’t Passionate About It

#19

Post by randcraw »

I agree completely. I became a pro dev 31 years ago when I had passion, and while I don't regret my career choice, my passion has waned, especially for dev (coding ways & means). I could never have survived this long in this business without passion in what I do -- even if it's no longer a passion for programming.

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.

Re: Don’t Pursue Programming if You Aren’t Passionate About It

#20

Post by zaptheimpaler »

The discourse on "passion" in the context of CS has gradually been poisoned by commercial interests.

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.

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