Comment by the_af

Your overall opinion might be true, but it's also unfair to competent people who treat it like their day job, and do it competently (but maybe without being amazing).

There is a place for this kind of people, among which I count myself nowadays -- I used to be way nerdier, learning new programming languages and embarking on projects just because, until life got in the way, my interests shifted, etc.

> I think intellectual curiosity and being a 9-5 person are inversely correlated, again in my experience.

I think this is objectively false. I've seen plenty of terrible coworkers -- terrible at their jobs, that is -- who I later found to have hobbies they were passionate about. One was an excellent standup comedian in her spare time. Another did lots of sports and took them seriously. They just weren't very good at software, and they also "phoned it in". One was essentially a "used car salesman" personality, I'm sure he would have excelled at selling used cars! But his code was awful, and he was very combative towards the rest of the team during code reviews, resisted testing his stuff in any way, shape or form, etc. A friend of mine is a middling developer (not bad, but he's the first to admit he's average), but is an awesome guy, funny, and also an outstanding magician.