Comment by Fargren
2 days ago
As someone who does this because it's a decent paying job, I don't think this comment is fair. I think I'm quite skilled, and I've been told so consistently. I don't have passion; I have discipline and professionalism. I take my job seriously. It pays well, and I make sure that I deserve that paycheck.
Passion for me is a nasty world, in the mouth of bosses. It's almost always a way to ask people to work unhealthy hours, and it results in bad work being done, which I have to fix later. If people talk live their own passion, it's fine, but whenever I hear someone appeal to the passion of someone else, it's to sell them into doing something that's not in their best interest.
I find it hard to believe that your discipline and professionalism doesn't come from, or go hand in hand with passion. Or maybe you are passionate about being disciplined on itself?
Sure. I'm passionate about turning off my computer at 18:00. And I'm passionate about not hurting our customers. These two go hand in hand: I work very hard to avoid prevent doing things that are likely to cause incidents, as those hurt customers who are not at fault, and they often mean I have to stay late.
I guess you could say I'm passionate about testing and observability, though that doesn't really describe how I feel. It just puts me in a sour mood when something breaks and we could have prevented it with better practices from the start.
Is it that hard to believe that certain people simply have the skill to apply themselves? That's what discipline kind of is.
But do you think you wouldn't be more skilled if you had passion for it? Sounds implausible to me.
The amount of times I've seen passionate people make bad technical decisions in the name of trying something exciting is too many to count. I obviously agree that passion is valuable, but not without faults. I think I'm better in some ways and worse in others due to the way I approach the job.
Have you ever met certain singers at talent shows? Even if they'd be better at it than if they wouldn't have the passion, there's also a certain bar one should be able to reach.