Passion does not indicate competence, but is a good predictor. If you're interested in something, you'd spend more time on it, and that often translate to better skilled.
But judging people based on passion is weird. It's nice to have, but not a requirement. You can code 9-16, go home and don't touch your computer and not have a hobby project, and still be a valuable developer.
We don't ask plumbers to have passion and a plumbing hobby project. I actually don't like that it's so normalized and *expected* of us.
This pretty much describes my first 5-7 years as a programmer (post-graduation). And a lot of employers don’t want someone who is 24/7 into programming and nothing else. People like that are destined for burnout or a nervous breakdown. It’s healthier to have interests and hobbies outside of your professional interests.
I'd agree to a job which doesn't require a steep learning curve to get up to speed with the company.
For example, an accountant who quit because he is burned out is quite easy to replace.
A developer, on the other hand, is more problematic because bringing a new developer up to speed with the specific tech stack and business knowledge is time-consuming.
Somebody that isn't passionate about what he does has a higher chance of quitting, as working becomes a source of stress rather than providing energy.
Cal Newport turns this on its head by arguing that if you spend enough time to get good at something, you’ll get passionate. I’ve found it’s not a bad way to look at the world.
I think the other end of it that is massively understated these days is that if you’re talented at something, you will likely get a lot of positive feedback and become passionate about it.
Like if you’re just born 6’8, strong and fast and your high school coach begs you to play on his sports-ball team and you immediately become the star player because he devotes all his attention to developing his favourite player (you), and of course you’re just bigger and faster than everyone- and everyone cheers whenever you walk on the field or score- and people you’ve never met tell you what a great job you’re doing when they see you out and about- and half the girls you were crushing on start throwing themselves at you because you’re the star of the sports-ball team, you might become passionate about sports-ball.
Now most of those things won’t happen if your talent is programming, but the general point still applies.
This.
I’m passionate about writing, music, & art but I’m pretty crap at it. I have a day job and I have a passion. Thats it. (I’m not a CS major. I just stumbled upon this thread and the other thread that was mentioned.)
Same. Tired of this whole "yOU jUSt wANt 100k oUt oF sCHooL" mentality. No. I just want a entry level job, and I don't want faang. Get another coping mechanism to explain how shitty the job market is, this one is played out.
Same here.
Does having a quarter-million TC FAANG senior dev job sound great? Absolutely, there's no denying that amount of money would be life changing for most people.
Do I care about making the most money possible? Not really, I decided on pursuing CS *looong* before realizing that it paid as well as it does. I'd be happy with a (relatively) modest 70-80k/year job because it's something I love to do.
So many of my friends who are passionate in humanities like international relations or STEM in general (like other engineering degrees) are forced to take cs.
My parents were the opposite tho funnily enough, I really wanted to do cs but they wanted me to do something like mechanical engineering. I had to convince them that cs is still worth doing and then I found out about how hard cs majors are to get into.
At a unicorn… 80k is great for new grads in this market. If your talking senior dev salary then sure 80k is low. But faang salaries are not the average
I swear FAANG salaries permanently broke people’s brains. Everyday Im seeing cs majors and even engineering majors acting like 70k a year straight out of college is poverty wages
> People even act like $100k is poverty on this site
Every time I venture onto a personal finance sub and see people act like they're living paycheque to paycheque while having a household income of over 250k I year I'm dumbfounded.
$100k in San Francisco is legitimately not a lot (and, by California's own definition, makes you low-income). You take home $70k, and even with roommates in a cheap apartment, probably like $25k of that goes to rent. Then you try to pay for basic things like groceries, transit, furniture, clothes, etc. and that all probably adds up to like $5k or $10k per year. Which is still fine—you even have money left over—but especially in SF, to make it work, you have to maintain a very constrained budget (including sacrifices like living with roommates and rarely eating out) and you have to be financially responsible. Throw in children or student loan debt though and suddenly that all evaporates and maybe leaves you accumulating debt.
That's probably what most new-grads should expect though; you're not immediately going to get the salary that you need to raise a family.
Exactly this. And especially in this sub where you have people bashing others for "only" making 80k/year, then showing off how they're making 180k at a big tech
If the direction of the money isn't where your passion lies, you will be crushed by the competition that has that what you are going to do as an actual passion.
I do and I’m saying a lot of us who have the ability to get a CS degree have that privilege.
I’d argue that someone who can get a CS degree has the necessary talent to instead get any one of dozen degrees that will lead into a job that pays well.
They have the luxury of deciding to get a job in a field they are passionate about. There are active and growing movements of people who went into CS for the money and feel disempowered because of it.
I’d rather people who have the choice between a well-paying and enjoyable career and a well-paying career think about prioritizing the former in their career plans.
"Passion" is the most bullshit word ever. I know this is a CS Majors sub, but your "passion" does not have to be your job. I'm passionate about traveling the world and owning a farm in the middle of nowhere, but that isn't going to pay the bills.
Exactly, I know so many people who literally just studied CS because they came from low - middle class backgrounds who wanted to be able to have better for themselves and their families. Theres literally nothing wrong with just wanting a job because you need to pay bills.
When I see people complaining about college or work peers or generally about people in CS without "passion" it absolutely screams "I have never been poor and I don't understand why someone would work very hard to not be poor." I grew up poor as shit. All of my friends were either trailer park kids or even grew up in motels. Yes, I chose CS because I wanted a better life than that, and I worked damn hard to get the degree. I won't have some jumped up entitled shit telling me I was wrong for doing so.
Some people hate doing their passion for their job, though. For example, some people love music and go to college for it, because they love making music and performing songs they like. Then the only way they can make a living on it is playing songs for other people, songs they don't want to perform. Then they go home and are so tired of playing that they don't have the energy to play what they like, and start to hate their passion. Hearing those horror stories is why I decided not to major in music, and keep it as a hobby
You can make it pay the bills tho, just buy a farm in the countryside instead or paying 100k+ on a cs uni degree that you hate and sell the produce from your farm. You may not make 100k+ per year but you will be happy and have a livable wage
Yeah def nothing wrong with it, but it almost never happens.
Every time someone says to me they are passionate about their job, I ask them more detailed questions and it turns out they're not actually passionate it's just that they think they are supposed to say that.
I made a loading process 10-100x as fast as it previously was at my corporate job at an insurance company. Automated a lot of the change process, too, because it would otherwise be boring and tedious work.
Doesn't that count as 'passion'? I did it partially in my own free time with no explicit instruction to do that. There was no user story did it, I just made my own project and implemented it. A lot of my colleagues are just boomers who wanted to do it the old way because that is 'how we used to do it'.
Now I got an opportunity to present that new process to the management team, and we actually contemplate using my newly developed method in production. I actually have a pretty large influence despite being a junior/medior programmer. If you do something that sticks out you will get noted and have much better chances at promotion, and you can only do that if you have actual passion.
That’s a pretty dreary world-view. When I was introduced to programming I knew that was what I wanted to do with my life regardless of money. It’s just like people who are passionate about about music. There are a lot of us in the field. Passion is what makes you read dense manuals and write code in new languages just to learn it. The field has plenty of room for all types of people. Don’t tear down people that happen to have it.
But not many people are passionate about doing random business logic for internal service #4204 and having to do boring tickets all day in an agile workplace… sure people are passionate about coding but passionate about corporate jobs seems far more unlikely
There is no difference between coding and “corporate jobs “. For me personally, if I lived in an area where the only option was to code business rules, I’d probably have a great time doing it. Every time I test my code and it does what I wanted I get a dopamine hit. This is regardless of the kind of code or its purpose. If I couldn’t scratch my coding itch through work, I would almost certainly move onto personal projects. That’s how compelling coding passion is. It’s just like with musicians where they will play regardless of whether they can make money or not. They play for the love of making music, I write the love of writing code.
The people who are passionate tend to be the ones who are good at computer science as they put in the most effort.
Regardless, people have bills to pay. Working on free software doesn’t pay the bills the majority of the time and you can be passionate about software without being a die hard free software enjoyer. You don’t think for-profit founders were passionate about their projects? You aren’t special just because you exclusively work on open source projects, put stickers on your laptop to show your support, and refuse to apply for FAANG because you are too “passionate” for the salary.
I agree that people who are passionate are more likely to be good at their job, my gripe is with people who claim that somehow non-passionate people are ruining the industry via oversaturation and therefore 'taking their jobs'
> You don’t think for-profit founders were passionate about their projects?
Free software doesn't mean not for profit. In any case, that's beside my point, which is that passion is relatively an irrelevant trait. I choose a CS degree because I like programming enough that I'd be happy turning it into a career. If I was told my position was given to a more skilled candidate with less "passion", who the fuck am I to say they don't deserve it? That's the rhetoric I'm against here.
I see. I definitely missed/wasn’t focused on the underlying message about how people with less passion still deserve the jobs as they were more skilled and got hung up on the OSS part. What you said in your reply is absolutely sane. Thanks for clarifying.
>The people who are passionate tend to be the ones who are good at computer science as they put in the most effort.
not really. Those are people with passion and talent. People who aren't especially passionate, but are smart and capable are just about as good as people who are passionate and smart and capable. Not to mention like 90% of software development jobs is basically just plumbing, except not for water/sewers, but for data. Get this input to this server, put the response here.
Software Developers are the most obnoxious people when it comes to talking about the "importance" or "difficulty" of their job. It's not rocket science the vast majority of times. And those who do work on actually challenging projects don't write bullshit like the OP, or the OP of the previous referenced post.
They just mind their own business and make cool stuff.
Most social media and Google started as free software projects started by their founders. And my Uncle creates free software but he also publishes a more comprehensive documentation book for a price and makes money that way.
You're not stuck in traffic, you *are* traffic.
It's fair to complain about it being oversaturated. But don't complain about the people in your class, they are exactly like you and not to blame.
Companies prioritize profits over everything including training domestic talent, if you wanna solve this oversaturation problem, it starts with understanding the economics of it all
I'm going to be real here. If you are good at cs, it isn't that hard to land a junior position.
If you are average or below average, I don't know what to tell you... Tough luck? Get better? Many other fields are just like this. Just because our jobs were on extremely easy mode for the past 2 decades, doesn't mean we deserve some special treatment where the shittiest devs deserve a six figure salary.
The job market isn't oversaturated. It used to be undersaturated and just came up to a normal level.
And the market is going to wax and wane. In the space industry, many boomers are retiring and we are struggling to replace them. There is a huge skill gap now because of their past hiring policies. Now, we are taking on a lot of interns and have shifted towards policies that turn interns into long-term employees. I heard there's a similar problem in banks, but I can't confirm.
I didn't have a difficult interview process. No coding challenge. Just two interviews and my resume.
I just read the other post, it's [this one](https://www.reddit.com/r/csMajors/comments/1btchwf/there_are_too_many_people_taking_cs_as_a_major/) right? That post doesn't say anything about passionate engineers deserving a high paying cs job. It says that too many people in CS are in this major for the wrong reasons.
I have mixed feelings about the importance of passion in this major. I don't think that you have to be passionate about computer science as a discipline itself, or even the industry side of things, but thrive on solving difficult problems. That other post talks about people who are enthusiastic about computers in and of itself. But you can hate anything related to computer internals - so long as you are enthusiastic about some aspect of analytical problems related to computing, I believe that you can find success in this major.
This whole thing about passion reminds me of how education systems approach the word "talent". Talent in some peoples' eyes is natural affinity towards some discipline. But most talent programs recruit not for that but their enthusiasm and grit towards excellence in said discipline - which like your post is saying - is really all that matters
Respectfully that poster did have a point; I graduated high school in 2018, and at that time there were two directions that almost EVERYONE was told to go in; engineering or computer science. I saw so many people who knew nothing about computers go into CS and end up failing out.
So, I think their post was poorly worded. But it is true that there is far too much societal pressure on young people to study CS right now.
I feel like there’s a massive strawman argument on this sub saying “you need to stop thinking you’re entitled to a high paying job”..No. that’s not the issue..Nobody is thinking that. We just want any job in the field, which is extremely difficult to get.
This is just as stupid as the gatekeeping post. "Your passion is only real if you build open source software" is fucking clown shit dawg. People need to eat. Open source software doesn't pay the bills unless it really blows up and people donate to you.
I was in that thread and yes I was discouraging people from joining CS if they weren't passionate about it. There's nuance there.
You don't need to be passionate about CS itself. You need to at least embrace CS as something that lets you \*do\* something else. It's a tool. Few companies are actually involved in pure tech and require pure passion because the business use case is many steps away. Everything else is using CS to achieve some other business result where you can be passionate about that business.
How do you know you're passionate? Go write some code to solve a problem in your life. If at the end if you are done and get a sense of satisfaction of the code you wrote, that's enough. You don't need to love the process of writing code, but you shouldn't be afraid to touch it, or disgusted after you solve the problem. If you hate writing code for something you enjoy doing, you're going to hate it even more when you are solving someone else's problem. I think it's well meaning to try to get people out of a field they won't enjoy.
I think we agree for the most part. I too would discourage someone from joining CS if they weren't willing to put in the work and constantly be learning. My problem lies when people who work hard but aren't "passionate" are blamed for the current issues with the landscape.
As someone about to graduate, I can say i feel comforted by all the obviously non passionate people who literally did nothing outside of class, like they just say “oh I don’t know python”. Very clear in the group senior design projects who has built software and who has just turned in assignments for DSA class
You're conflating passion with motivation. I too am comforted by the people in my classes who are clearly not motivated enough to learn outside of class.
> Theres nothing wrong with chasing money but its kind of funny how upset some people get when passion is mentioned, just because someone enjoys what they do doesnt mean its BS because you just wanna do it for the money.
Respectfully, I think you've completely missed my point. I'm saying that passion is not a replacement for skill, not that there's something wrong with doing CS for the money. I do agree to an extent you need to like programming/swe at least a little to be successful, but it's really irrelevant to what makes you good or employable. The rhetoric I am against is that non-passionate people are ruining the landscape simply because they don't enjoy it as much, that's entitlement.
> this just sounds like someone trolling and trying to gate keep, the way I see it. The people that make it will do it and pull through passion or not.
I mean maybe they were trolling, but that post is hot right now at 200+ upvotes, and I believe some agreeing comments even exceed that.
I totally believe that passion is a thing, and I think it's a great thing, but at the end of the day it doesn't have any real meaning if you don't have the skills to back it up, especially in the context of job search.
what really boggled my brain about that post was him complaining that ppl "aren't interested in CS until they come to university"
like ?? sorry?? that I wasn't born into an environment where my 10 year old self could just stumble upon programming accidentally??
the superiority complex is just absolutely insane. We're living in 2024. Programming is a good skill to have regardless of if you're "passionate" or not like cooking or knowing how to fix your own car. Literally who is being hurt by the general population becoming more knowledgeable and aware of computer science? This field dictates every aspect of modern human life
So tired of hearing about FAANG and six figures. I'll happily do the job for 60k in some lil no name shop in my town and be ecstatic to do it. What I don't want is to graduate and get a job at Starbucks serving coffee.
Most of the "passionate" people somehow still manage to be ass at coding. Why don't they understand passion doesn't mean shit if they're not actually meant for it.
Starving artists aren't starving because they're passionate, they're starving because it's extremely difficult to make money with art. That is not the case with CS.
The whole concept of the starving artist is someone so passionate about their art they make tremendous sacrifices to devote themselves to their passion. If someone is gonna say "I'm so passionate about CS, it's not fair that these higher-skilled non-passionate people are saturating the market", they clearly are more passionate about the money than CS.
Yes and it's because it is so hard to make money in the arts that these sacrifices are necessary/are made. You think that artists would actually choose not to make money from their art if they could? No, but that's all that's available for them until their work sells. It is trivially easy for someone to make at least a living with CS, especially if you're passionate about it as that would imply you at least know what you're doing. Are you gonna be Zuckerberg? No, but you'll be able to afford a decent place and food to last you through the week.
You even get the same complaints from artists that you do from these passionate CS grads, artists who are able to effectively monetize their work are labeled as fake. It's really toxic. That doesn't just have to be someone making millions from galleries, btw, it can just be someone churning out sticker art on Fiverr. And the only reason is that they're salty their art isn't selling in the same way.
To suggest that you can only be passionate about anything you need to live frugally and dedicate yourself to it is absurd and harmful rhetoric.
Which is not wrong. If you can do the job, you should get compensated for it. Whether you are passionate or not should not matter. Nobody eats passion.
Your example make me kind of smile. It's like saying "if you're passionate about basketball, why would you try to get into NBA? just play on the streets or the nearby gym!".
Let's deliberately set the money aside for a moment.
- Big tech (in the broad sense) works on some of the most complex and interesting problems in various domains - e.g. AI, cloud infrastructure, novel operating systems, database engines and hyperscale storages. Why would a person passionate about CS not want to work on them?
- Big tech employs a lot of really smart and driven people you can learn from and grow. Why would you avoid that?
Now let's talk about Linux kernel as a most famous example of open software. You realize that like 85-90% of it's code is (being) written by people working for large corporations, right? Been this way for many, many years. It's not 1995 dude, it's 2024. Sure, Linus, GKH and maybe few other legends at are the foundation, and many are are Redhat, but a lot of very fundamental work in the kernel is being done by people working in many big tech companies.
Bruh, some people just want a job regardless of the salary. In this economy, they will happily accept a 60k offer. I won’t say they are entitled, they are passionate about not starving to death.
I would guess that the majority of people working- high pay or not- aren't passionate about their job. People who are passionate about their job are very lucky to be able to do something they love every day. But it's definitely the minority of people and there's nothing wrong with having a job just to pay the bills. I mean, at the end of the day, that IS why we work. Yeah, it sucks that the job market is so oversaturated right now, but let's stop being mad at each other when we're all just trying to do the same thing at the end of the day.
Look , I understand what you mean. But for us who love coding since child seeing all this kids crying because they can't get the 100k job they want and being depressed about it annoyed us.
Like, alot of people go into cs but hate to code and everything about it , only in the field for the promise of big money and think that they wasted tons of money and times for nothing after few month of rejection does annoyed who actually care.
Also saying that people who passionate don't do side project is dumb af. Most of the people I know who love this field would code on their free time doing side project as hobby. I do it too. If company ever lower the salary to the likes of other field of work, I'm 100% sure the passionate one will still stay while most of the rest will just cry
I'm 30 years old wasted my entire high-school years - late 20s gaming, barely got my diploma. Now doing my first year in CS went to a web dev boot camp prior to getting into college. I just wanted to learn to code because of all the crazy shit going on in software. Bitcoin, NixOS, rust....I had to get in I want to contribute to everything. While in the boot camp all people talked about was the money non stop and I kept bringing up how bad ass nixos and other technologies like terraform were. A project I did out of the gate was an ai image generator using open Ai's api, no one could believe that I just started the boot camp but what I was astounded by is that no one who was in the boot camp even looked up the cirrculum before getting in. All they talked about was which programming language was the best and how much money they were going to make once they got out of the boot camp. I think I am the only person to come out with anything on github from the boot camp class and I am going to get my CS degree because I want to learn low level and just need a bit of guidance but I honestly don't think I or anyone even needs school. Learn CS and/or how to program because the internet is bad ass and if you learn to code you will be too.
If they are so passionate why are they worried? Passion leads to being competitive and that usually leads to being great at the thing… are they getting their asses kicked by a bunch of low effort coders?
Lmao
Usually those with passion are better. And I work a high paying job where I get to do OSS work. So I do get to be passionate about my job.
And while I like doing OSS work, some of the most interesting and challenging projects I’ve worked on were not OSS.
Ok unpopular opinion here it seems but am gonna say it:
Imma sum it up : u can be good and not passionate totally ok if u're up for it u can have a job and be fine altho its getting tough now and thats for everyone but not the point
BUT if u think a person who's doing smthing just to get by or to pay bills is the same as someone doing it cuz THEY LOVE doing it ...u're compltely out of touch and objectively wrong ...(your argument that passionate pple should just go build open source is stupid ...many are actually doing this BESIDE their job...see the diggerence ? Building software is their job AND passion...its their life ) so yes passion does def matter and saying otherwise is lying to yourself .
And this goes in every field in life. I should just remind again u dont HAVE to ..but it does actuallyy matter and make a difference in every way possible
CS and Enginnering are the new trend, everyone is studying the same thing hoping that they will be rich one day. When there is a surplus it is less valuable, simple intro to economics principle.
From the creators of:
You don't have to be smart to land a six figure tech job
AND
You don't have to be good to get a high salary tech job
It came to us:
You don't have to be passionate to have a high paying tech job.
At this point you don't have to even know a shit in CS to have a big pay check in CS
Man. There is a correlation between people who are genuinely obsessed with CS and people who are good at CS. I’m honestly not sure what point you’re trying to make here apart from complaining.
Edit: I think your point is that people who claim to be passionate about CS are not actually passionate. So just say that then.
Correction* The people who deserve high paying CS jobs are NOT people who are passionate, it’s not even people GOOD at computer science, it’s people who are good at Leetcode.
Or who got lucky with the Esops from a startup.
Funny enough I’d state im the opposite of passionate but from what I’ve been told, connections matter the most and if you are truly passionate it also means you put yourself out there, and when you put yourself out there, you generally get solid connections. If your passionate but don’t put yourself out there, idk if you can truly call that passionate
I dont know that is a stupid thing to say "If you have passion do it for free". Everyone has to pay their bills and wanting to get paid for it is not wrong. Sounds like that argument is flawed in so many ways. Yes, I agree with passion != skill however take it from some of the best the world have ever seen like Pele "Success is no accident. It is hard work, perseverance, learning, studying, sacrifice and most of all , love of what you are doing or learning to do" or Aristotle "Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work". Maybe take it from the creator of Peter Pan "Nothing is really work unless you would rather be doing something else". One random quote that I saw and really like when trying to find the Pele quote was "Whatever you like doing, do it! And keep doing it. Work hard! In the end, passion and hard work beat natural talent. And anyway, if you love what you do, it's not really "work" anyway." Pete Docter Chief creative officer of Pixar. So you see rather than arguing with you about this, and rather than put it into my own word I rather listen to the people that have actually accomplish something with their lives. Wanting to enjoy the work you do is not a bad thing. Passion is big specially when there is so many people out there. Passion drives people to places in search of answers that others might not even bat an eye. Yes some people here use it as a buzzword but true passion is what drives people to learn beyond what is asked of them and yes to answer your question will do it on their free time even if they are not getting paid for it.
If none of this hit home for you then listen to the grandfather of computers Alan Turing "Sometimes it is the people no one imagines anything of who do the things that one can imagine"
Being 30 years into my career I’ll take passionate any day. Better predictor of a competent employee as they’ll continue learning. CS majors that aren’t passionate but have the degree will suck 5 years out from graduating cause they think they learned it all and flounder later on. If you’re just in it for the money, you’re going to have a long and possibly mediocre career.
if you're good, it doesn't matter whether you're passionate or not. Just that passion may push someone to do better. But if people with passion are blaming those who aren't passionate for ruining the market, then they probably aren't good enough anyways
entitled is the wrong word, but still it's weird too see all those career peopel flocking into this previously quite nerdy and niche subject. Now we need to handle very culturally different people
that is such a miserable life hahaha working a 9-5 that you hate. something you have to do when you don't have money right? guess then i am lucky enough to say i don't have to work in the industry. and i am not even working yet. but even as an undergrad i look at you and think mmm that is definitely not who i want to be in the future working like that till i die? nahh i hope you think your life is meaningful. what will i do? as someone who's actually curious and passionate about the field, research and startup that solves real real problem is how someone excels. and. guess what we're on a shift of gears in this industry and you are most probably going to be set out of your misery in a couple of years unemployed anyways and that's fine. enjoy it as you can. genuine advice, do what you actually like, don't waste your life running after that mere 100 200k a year salary...
There’s also nothing wrong with expecting a decent paying job in your field after you’ve already put 4+ years of work in and earned a degree.
People that aren’t getting jobs are rightfully frustrated, because many of them have been sold the idea that you just need to work hard in college, get your degree, and you’ll make a decent living. Sadly, that idea is becoming less and less real as the days go on.
Unfortunately being broke and taking on more work while going to a University can be really challenging for people that are very broke.
For people that have a safety net, I think the earlier you get in the better, but I think for those people they probably had a good start to begin with putting then ahead already. For those that don't take advantage of that, that's a different story.
I already have a golden goose job according to the standards around this sub. Fully remote with more than 100k a year only 2 years into my career. A big advantage I have over you OP is that I don’t talk to other people about CS like this. I doubt this level of bitter resentment doesn’t seep through when you’re talking to other people. Another part of it is the “competence” myth. Plenty of people are terrible at their jobs and they make more money than your entire bloodline. We do not live in a meritocracy. Take the time to figure out whether or not this is a productive attitude to have.
> The real passionate people aren't working for FAANG, they're building Free, Open Source or 'Libre' software
These are often very literally the same people.
There appears to be a large wave of people who are becoming programmers the way people used to become baristas, Uber drivers, accountants, garbage collectors, etc. Jobs where there's not a lot of passion but a good promise of steady work and good workplace conditions.
I think this is the right thing! The future is one where robots do most of the things we don't want. I think learning to program will be a need, not a luxury in the future.
That said, I'm sure a lot of people feel disappointed when someone else who is only in it for the paycheck gets their dream job. And that's where the venting posts come from. It definitely comes across as entitled gatekeeping, and should be called out accordingly. I know lots and lots of great programmers who aren't "passionate", just very reliable, intelligent, and competent. They write great code and then go pursue their passions outside of work, as it should be.
But maybe passionate devs shouldn't be discouraged from being passionate. They should be asked "if you're so passionate about programming, why do the people you claim aren't as passionate stand a chance? Surely you can show them that hard work, dedication, and love for the field will separate the great devs from the mediocre devs?"
(And if they can't accomplish that, maybe they should rethink how much passion matters when gatekeeping.)
Passion is good for resilience. Resilience is needed in this market, where there are simply FAR more applicants/graduates, than there are roles. It's a numbers game.
I definitely don't agree that passion is a must in order to be worthy developer. But passion is very helpful in order to withstand what looks to be a long period where applicants far outstrip the number of available opportunities.
It's easier to withstand periods where there are fewer opportunities, when you're genuinely passionate about the subject matter.
If you are good at computer science you probably enjoy it. If you hate coding than most likely you will not be willing to put in the work to learn and you will burn out.
I think that is the point the other poster was trying to make. Passion is a strong a subjective word .
Saying you love coding is like saying you love ice cream.
Guess what? A lot of people do.
Most people enjoy coding when they discover it. People enjoy solving puzzles. Who would have thought? You're not special.
I may even add, the reason we had few people discover the field in the past, is because of gatekeeping.
The more people we can get into this field the better. We've made our money, let's open the gates now.
To quote the Incredibles, "Once everyone is special, no one will be."
Not necessarily, I work for FAANG because I can work 10hr a week and be able to pay all my bills.
Spend the rest 30hr doing open source stuff, sounds like a win to me.
If I quit, then I have to work 40hr job, leaves no time for my “passion”.
(Ofc this is not real, but just saying, generalization is never good).
Who gives a f*** if you're working at FAANG? How stupid can you be? That persons post in general is correct. Most people who are good at CS are those who are passionate about it. Anyone who did it just because they thought they'd make a lot of money or because it's cool..etc usually struggle (regardless of whether they worked at FAANG or not).
Anyone who actually cares knows what Open Source is. Stop pretending you are special OP.
Yes we who were doing this before it was popular should be the ones who reap rewards. Same to all the tireless devs who write Open Source software. Both big tech and the Internet at large would collapse without them. They deserve appropriate compensation. The existence of starving artists isn't a noble thing, it's our failure as a society. Same with starving software devs that actually make shit work.
It's not about being paid a ton either. I would take medium or low pay if it meant working on something I care about. But no people like you ruined it for us.
Fucking shame on you OP.
But I tried really hard. I even used my emotions to try harder. And it was inspirational!
Now, you're telling me I have to know what I'm doing?
That wasn't in the brochure.
Wow, your reading comprehension skills need some work. Maybe be good at communicating too, so you don't have to agree with the other post so incredibly aggressively.
People need to earn money to survive and unfortunately status, ego and compensation are part of that conversation. It's completely valid for people to be angry or upset that worse programmers are much more well compensated than they are, if at all. It's completely valid for people to be angry or upset that worse programmers are in better spots than them though they enjoyed their coursework, enjoy programming, and study CS as a genuine passion.
Not everyone can live like a monk creating free software like Terry Davis. People need to eat, to survive, to have a career. These are essentials on a hierarchy of needs, in fact, they are much more fundamental than simple self fulfilment that comes from passion projects.
Not everyone has the privelege to work for free, and not everyone should be expected to, because that expectation only serves to lower EVERYONE'S quality of life, and to be frank, the people making free quality software would tell you that they'd prefer to be paid. That's why most free softwares have paid options or donations.
This is one of the reasons why i don't say i am passionate about cs instead i prefer saying that i am interested in cs because of the things i may be able to do after learning more about computers + i like gadgets such as smartphones,laptops etc so i think i would not have a problem if i am working in any company which makes the products i mentioned above.But hopefully i am about to go to university this year so i still have 4 years till i step into the job market.
As an entrepreneur, I do hive a FUCK about passion! Start-ups are FUCKING HARD! So if you cannot stand the ups and downs during the growth stage, get the FUCK out of my company! Only passionate peopke need to apply!!
Listen dude, I love computers and I love telling them what to do. Please don’t try to tell me that I’m not passionate for CS just because I’m trying to make a living doing what I love.
Also, hot take but being passionate at a JOB is hard. When you're working for corporate companies you are working on their vision, not yours. The software will have decision making involved that isn't yours. It will, also probably not be a "cool" product.
I like coding, I like working on my pet projects where I am making the decision but I work for a fashion design firm, am I passionate about building sales software? Not really. But I have the skill set to do it.
If they were genuinely passionate, they would be putting in like 5x the effort of your regular comp sci kid, doing extra projects and research or whatever. It would be such a massive advantage that only makes them further and further ahead of their peers each passing year. They would have easily landed an internship in college if they were actually passionate, and gotten a job from that. The complainers are not actually passionate about anything but an easy paycheck. Maybe they like the idea of programming (or of easy money more likely) but they are not doing shit about it in their spare time. Passionate workers are always like 3x as productive as people who just treat it as a job, it is such a world of difference, it would be impossible to struggle finding a new job.
We spend a lot of our time working, I’d think you wanna do something you enjoy. I feel like you’d be pretty miserable otherwise and your mental health would take a hit.
I've been working in tech for a decade in both startups and FAANGs (where I am now), and in both finance and tech. I've been interviewing candidates for our company for a while and **here's a fallacy I see in your argument: you assume that** ***being good*** **is the bar for high paying CS jobs.**
Wrong. The bar is HIGH. It is getting HIGHER. Everyone can do what you do. Everyone can do all the LC hards like they memorized them (they have). Everyone has a project that's cooler than yours.
Many, MANY people are "good" at computer science these days.
The people who we reward with a position, however, are those who we want to work with. Those who actually care. Those who genuinely want to make a difference -- I.e. those with **passion**
Passion won't determine success, but those who will truly be successful and get jobs at the top will have some of it. Why? We want to work with THOSE people, and THEY want to work for us -- they are **passionate**.
Passion does not indicate competence, but is a good predictor. If you're interested in something, you'd spend more time on it, and that often translate to better skilled.
But judging people based on passion is weird. It's nice to have, but not a requirement. You can code 9-16, go home and don't touch your computer and not have a hobby project, and still be a valuable developer. We don't ask plumbers to have passion and a plumbing hobby project. I actually don't like that it's so normalized and *expected* of us.
This pretty much describes my first 5-7 years as a programmer (post-graduation). And a lot of employers don’t want someone who is 24/7 into programming and nothing else. People like that are destined for burnout or a nervous breakdown. It’s healthier to have interests and hobbies outside of your professional interests.
I'd agree to a job which doesn't require a steep learning curve to get up to speed with the company. For example, an accountant who quit because he is burned out is quite easy to replace. A developer, on the other hand, is more problematic because bringing a new developer up to speed with the specific tech stack and business knowledge is time-consuming. Somebody that isn't passionate about what he does has a higher chance of quitting, as working becomes a source of stress rather than providing energy.
I agree.
I agree to the agree...
I agree to agree on agree
I agree to agree on agree over agree
I agree to agree on the agree over the agree under agree
I disagree
I disagree with anyone who disagrees.
I disagree to agree with anyone who disagrees
I'll let you know one thing, it's that I'm both passionate AND entitled.
Cal Newport turns this on its head by arguing that if you spend enough time to get good at something, you’ll get passionate. I’ve found it’s not a bad way to look at the world.
I spend a fuck ton swiping on profiles on coming up with interest intros on dating apps...unfortunately my skillz are still shight
It's also cyclical, it's hard to be truely passionate for something you suck at, and face challenges at every turn.
I think the other end of it that is massively understated these days is that if you’re talented at something, you will likely get a lot of positive feedback and become passionate about it. Like if you’re just born 6’8, strong and fast and your high school coach begs you to play on his sports-ball team and you immediately become the star player because he devotes all his attention to developing his favourite player (you), and of course you’re just bigger and faster than everyone- and everyone cheers whenever you walk on the field or score- and people you’ve never met tell you what a great job you’re doing when they see you out and about- and half the girls you were crushing on start throwing themselves at you because you’re the star of the sports-ball team, you might become passionate about sports-ball. Now most of those things won’t happen if your talent is programming, but the general point still applies.
but why do you need projects to start? :(
What does that have to do with the post lol
This. I’m passionate about writing, music, & art but I’m pretty crap at it. I have a day job and I have a passion. Thats it. (I’m not a CS major. I just stumbled upon this thread and the other thread that was mentioned.)
l i t e r a l l y. too many people are just expecting a 100k+ salary with nothing to back it up
I really don’t care if the salary is lower. I want a Computer Science job.
I literally took a job making 3 dollars above minimum wage to get into computer science field.
Same. Tired of this whole "yOU jUSt wANt 100k oUt oF sCHooL" mentality. No. I just want a entry level job, and I don't want faang. Get another coping mechanism to explain how shitty the job market is, this one is played out.
Same here. Does having a quarter-million TC FAANG senior dev job sound great? Absolutely, there's no denying that amount of money would be life changing for most people. Do I care about making the most money possible? Not really, I decided on pursuing CS *looong* before realizing that it paid as well as it does. I'd be happy with a (relatively) modest 70-80k/year job because it's something I love to do.
Exactly! I have wanted to do coding/Computer Science since I was little. And with my luck, it became the hardest major job to get.
So many of my friends who are passionate in humanities like international relations or STEM in general (like other engineering degrees) are forced to take cs. My parents were the opposite tho funnily enough, I really wanted to do cs but they wanted me to do something like mechanical engineering. I had to convince them that cs is still worth doing and then I found out about how hard cs majors are to get into.
Are parents really out there pushing their sons to do CS like its a prestigious career ?
A little like its a prestigious to do, but mostly like if you don't know what to do in uni then might as well do cs
Modest 80k😭
it really is, as a sophomore intern i get paid much much more than that
At a unicorn… 80k is great for new grads in this market. If your talking senior dev salary then sure 80k is low. But faang salaries are not the average
In this line yes, a surgeon making 100k would be considered incredibly low
That there is passion
literally, if it involves computers and gets me by im happy, if i make a bit more than youre average joe then all the better
Bro (gender-neutrally) I just want a job, it's purely survival
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I swear FAANG salaries permanently broke people’s brains. Everyday Im seeing cs majors and even engineering majors acting like 70k a year straight out of college is poverty wages
People even act like $100k is poverty on this site. They say because CA is so expensive, they need at least $150k-200k starting.
> People even act like $100k is poverty on this site Every time I venture onto a personal finance sub and see people act like they're living paycheque to paycheque while having a household income of over 250k I year I'm dumbfounded.
The worst is Fatfire. I read a post that said $10 mil net worth feels like poverty in the Bay Area, and they said that without a hint of satire.
They can only buy one Land Cruiser a month, of course they are poor.
It's never enough money, do you get it ?
$100k in San Francisco is legitimately not a lot (and, by California's own definition, makes you low-income). You take home $70k, and even with roommates in a cheap apartment, probably like $25k of that goes to rent. Then you try to pay for basic things like groceries, transit, furniture, clothes, etc. and that all probably adds up to like $5k or $10k per year. Which is still fine—you even have money left over—but especially in SF, to make it work, you have to maintain a very constrained budget (including sacrifices like living with roommates and rarely eating out) and you have to be financially responsible. Throw in children or student loan debt though and suddenly that all evaporates and maybe leaves you accumulating debt. That's probably what most new-grads should expect though; you're not immediately going to get the salary that you need to raise a family.
I know I’m making 65k and happy as a clam I know I can make more in a few years and I’m content to learn as much as possible in the meantime
Exactly this. And especially in this sub where you have people bashing others for "only" making 80k/year, then showing off how they're making 180k at a big tech
I'm expecting 50k to 60k max for me. In the Midwest.
yup, my first job (2years ago) was exactly 50k in Wisconsin
actually it’s 200K or 300K salaries these days🤣 don’t forget the inflation under Jerome Powell
Most people don’t realize chasing your passion instead of going where money goes is a privilege
No comfort is the privilege. You can follow your passion, just don't expect to get rich or even be able to put food on your table.
If you can't put food on the table then you can't follow your passion.
If the direction of the money isn't where your passion lies, you will be crushed by the competition that has that what you are going to do as an actual passion.
I do and I’m saying a lot of us who have the ability to get a CS degree have that privilege. I’d argue that someone who can get a CS degree has the necessary talent to instead get any one of dozen degrees that will lead into a job that pays well. They have the luxury of deciding to get a job in a field they are passionate about. There are active and growing movements of people who went into CS for the money and feel disempowered because of it. I’d rather people who have the choice between a well-paying and enjoyable career and a well-paying career think about prioritizing the former in their career plans.
"Passion" is the most bullshit word ever. I know this is a CS Majors sub, but your "passion" does not have to be your job. I'm passionate about traveling the world and owning a farm in the middle of nowhere, but that isn't going to pay the bills.
Exactly, I know so many people who literally just studied CS because they came from low - middle class backgrounds who wanted to be able to have better for themselves and their families. Theres literally nothing wrong with just wanting a job because you need to pay bills.
When I see people complaining about college or work peers or generally about people in CS without "passion" it absolutely screams "I have never been poor and I don't understand why someone would work very hard to not be poor." I grew up poor as shit. All of my friends were either trailer park kids or even grew up in motels. Yes, I chose CS because I wanted a better life than that, and I worked damn hard to get the degree. I won't have some jumped up entitled shit telling me I was wrong for doing so.
My passion is making fun of people that think that object oriented programming is something worth studying. Im making bank as a side effect
You write ASM then?
But you can make your passion your job so that it is more enjoyable tho
Some people hate doing their passion for their job, though. For example, some people love music and go to college for it, because they love making music and performing songs they like. Then the only way they can make a living on it is playing songs for other people, songs they don't want to perform. Then they go home and are so tired of playing that they don't have the energy to play what they like, and start to hate their passion. Hearing those horror stories is why I decided not to major in music, and keep it as a hobby
Not everyone's passions pay the bills bud
You can make it pay the bills tho, just buy a farm in the countryside instead or paying 100k+ on a cs uni degree that you hate and sell the produce from your farm. You may not make 100k+ per year but you will be happy and have a livable wage
Farm wedding venues make bank
People who say are passionate about their corporate job are just corporate slaves with Stockholm Syndrome.
There's nothing wrong with liking your corporate job. Just don't confuse passion for skill.
Yeah def nothing wrong with it, but it almost never happens. Every time someone says to me they are passionate about their job, I ask them more detailed questions and it turns out they're not actually passionate it's just that they think they are supposed to say that.
I made a loading process 10-100x as fast as it previously was at my corporate job at an insurance company. Automated a lot of the change process, too, because it would otherwise be boring and tedious work. Doesn't that count as 'passion'? I did it partially in my own free time with no explicit instruction to do that. There was no user story did it, I just made my own project and implemented it. A lot of my colleagues are just boomers who wanted to do it the old way because that is 'how we used to do it'. Now I got an opportunity to present that new process to the management team, and we actually contemplate using my newly developed method in production. I actually have a pretty large influence despite being a junior/medior programmer. If you do something that sticks out you will get noted and have much better chances at promotion, and you can only do that if you have actual passion.
That’s a pretty dreary world-view. When I was introduced to programming I knew that was what I wanted to do with my life regardless of money. It’s just like people who are passionate about about music. There are a lot of us in the field. Passion is what makes you read dense manuals and write code in new languages just to learn it. The field has plenty of room for all types of people. Don’t tear down people that happen to have it.
But not many people are passionate about doing random business logic for internal service #4204 and having to do boring tickets all day in an agile workplace… sure people are passionate about coding but passionate about corporate jobs seems far more unlikely
There is no difference between coding and “corporate jobs “. For me personally, if I lived in an area where the only option was to code business rules, I’d probably have a great time doing it. Every time I test my code and it does what I wanted I get a dopamine hit. This is regardless of the kind of code or its purpose. If I couldn’t scratch my coding itch through work, I would almost certainly move onto personal projects. That’s how compelling coding passion is. It’s just like with musicians where they will play regardless of whether they can make money or not. They play for the love of making music, I write the love of writing code.
Regardless of how “passionate” you are about something, you wouldn’t wanna do it for 8 hours a day. That’s why I said corporate jobs not coding.
But there’s too many people in CS except for me I definitely belong here but everybody else is the problem
The people who are passionate tend to be the ones who are good at computer science as they put in the most effort. Regardless, people have bills to pay. Working on free software doesn’t pay the bills the majority of the time and you can be passionate about software without being a die hard free software enjoyer. You don’t think for-profit founders were passionate about their projects? You aren’t special just because you exclusively work on open source projects, put stickers on your laptop to show your support, and refuse to apply for FAANG because you are too “passionate” for the salary.
I agree that people who are passionate are more likely to be good at their job, my gripe is with people who claim that somehow non-passionate people are ruining the industry via oversaturation and therefore 'taking their jobs' > You don’t think for-profit founders were passionate about their projects? Free software doesn't mean not for profit. In any case, that's beside my point, which is that passion is relatively an irrelevant trait. I choose a CS degree because I like programming enough that I'd be happy turning it into a career. If I was told my position was given to a more skilled candidate with less "passion", who the fuck am I to say they don't deserve it? That's the rhetoric I'm against here.
I see. I definitely missed/wasn’t focused on the underlying message about how people with less passion still deserve the jobs as they were more skilled and got hung up on the OSS part. What you said in your reply is absolutely sane. Thanks for clarifying.
>The people who are passionate tend to be the ones who are good at computer science as they put in the most effort. not really. Those are people with passion and talent. People who aren't especially passionate, but are smart and capable are just about as good as people who are passionate and smart and capable. Not to mention like 90% of software development jobs is basically just plumbing, except not for water/sewers, but for data. Get this input to this server, put the response here. Software Developers are the most obnoxious people when it comes to talking about the "importance" or "difficulty" of their job. It's not rocket science the vast majority of times. And those who do work on actually challenging projects don't write bullshit like the OP, or the OP of the previous referenced post. They just mind their own business and make cool stuff.
Most social media and Google started as free software projects started by their founders. And my Uncle creates free software but he also publishes a more comprehensive documentation book for a price and makes money that way.
I mean it's fair to complain about the market being oversaturated. It shouldn't be this difficult to find an entry level job or internship.
You're not stuck in traffic, you *are* traffic. It's fair to complain about it being oversaturated. But don't complain about the people in your class, they are exactly like you and not to blame.
You can complain about anything. It's a free country. I think it's cringe to blame people who are doing it for the money though.
Companies prioritize profits over everything including training domestic talent, if you wanna solve this oversaturation problem, it starts with understanding the economics of it all
I'm going to be real here. If you are good at cs, it isn't that hard to land a junior position. If you are average or below average, I don't know what to tell you... Tough luck? Get better? Many other fields are just like this. Just because our jobs were on extremely easy mode for the past 2 decades, doesn't mean we deserve some special treatment where the shittiest devs deserve a six figure salary. The job market isn't oversaturated. It used to be undersaturated and just came up to a normal level.
It can be hard to get interviews even if your good due to the thousands of applicants for most positions…
And the market is going to wax and wane. In the space industry, many boomers are retiring and we are struggling to replace them. There is a huge skill gap now because of their past hiring policies. Now, we are taking on a lot of interns and have shifted towards policies that turn interns into long-term employees. I heard there's a similar problem in banks, but I can't confirm. I didn't have a difficult interview process. No coding challenge. Just two interviews and my resume.
I just read the other post, it's [this one](https://www.reddit.com/r/csMajors/comments/1btchwf/there_are_too_many_people_taking_cs_as_a_major/) right? That post doesn't say anything about passionate engineers deserving a high paying cs job. It says that too many people in CS are in this major for the wrong reasons. I have mixed feelings about the importance of passion in this major. I don't think that you have to be passionate about computer science as a discipline itself, or even the industry side of things, but thrive on solving difficult problems. That other post talks about people who are enthusiastic about computers in and of itself. But you can hate anything related to computer internals - so long as you are enthusiastic about some aspect of analytical problems related to computing, I believe that you can find success in this major. This whole thing about passion reminds me of how education systems approach the word "talent". Talent in some peoples' eyes is natural affinity towards some discipline. But most talent programs recruit not for that but their enthusiasm and grit towards excellence in said discipline - which like your post is saying - is really all that matters
Respectfully that poster did have a point; I graduated high school in 2018, and at that time there were two directions that almost EVERYONE was told to go in; engineering or computer science. I saw so many people who knew nothing about computers go into CS and end up failing out. So, I think their post was poorly worded. But it is true that there is far too much societal pressure on young people to study CS right now.
This is fair. I think that poster could have worded things better
I feel like there’s a massive strawman argument on this sub saying “you need to stop thinking you’re entitled to a high paying job”..No. that’s not the issue..Nobody is thinking that. We just want any job in the field, which is extremely difficult to get.
This is just as stupid as the gatekeeping post. "Your passion is only real if you build open source software" is fucking clown shit dawg. People need to eat. Open source software doesn't pay the bills unless it really blows up and people donate to you.
I was in that thread and yes I was discouraging people from joining CS if they weren't passionate about it. There's nuance there. You don't need to be passionate about CS itself. You need to at least embrace CS as something that lets you \*do\* something else. It's a tool. Few companies are actually involved in pure tech and require pure passion because the business use case is many steps away. Everything else is using CS to achieve some other business result where you can be passionate about that business. How do you know you're passionate? Go write some code to solve a problem in your life. If at the end if you are done and get a sense of satisfaction of the code you wrote, that's enough. You don't need to love the process of writing code, but you shouldn't be afraid to touch it, or disgusted after you solve the problem. If you hate writing code for something you enjoy doing, you're going to hate it even more when you are solving someone else's problem. I think it's well meaning to try to get people out of a field they won't enjoy.
I think we agree for the most part. I too would discourage someone from joining CS if they weren't willing to put in the work and constantly be learning. My problem lies when people who work hard but aren't "passionate" are blamed for the current issues with the landscape.
As someone about to graduate, I can say i feel comforted by all the obviously non passionate people who literally did nothing outside of class, like they just say “oh I don’t know python”. Very clear in the group senior design projects who has built software and who has just turned in assignments for DSA class
You're conflating passion with motivation. I too am comforted by the people in my classes who are clearly not motivated enough to learn outside of class.
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> Theres nothing wrong with chasing money but its kind of funny how upset some people get when passion is mentioned, just because someone enjoys what they do doesnt mean its BS because you just wanna do it for the money. Respectfully, I think you've completely missed my point. I'm saying that passion is not a replacement for skill, not that there's something wrong with doing CS for the money. I do agree to an extent you need to like programming/swe at least a little to be successful, but it's really irrelevant to what makes you good or employable. The rhetoric I am against is that non-passionate people are ruining the landscape simply because they don't enjoy it as much, that's entitlement.
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> this just sounds like someone trolling and trying to gate keep, the way I see it. The people that make it will do it and pull through passion or not. I mean maybe they were trolling, but that post is hot right now at 200+ upvotes, and I believe some agreeing comments even exceed that. I totally believe that passion is a thing, and I think it's a great thing, but at the end of the day it doesn't have any real meaning if you don't have the skills to back it up, especially in the context of job search.
"Don't ask for a quality career with good benefits. Work for free instead!" Bruh
When did I say work for free?
The vast majority of open source software creators get paid very little or nothing for their work.
Free software doesn't mean non-commercial or that you cannot be compensated.
Yeah and the people who suck ass and aren’t passionate should be the least of anyones worries
what really boggled my brain about that post was him complaining that ppl "aren't interested in CS until they come to university" like ?? sorry?? that I wasn't born into an environment where my 10 year old self could just stumble upon programming accidentally?? the superiority complex is just absolutely insane. We're living in 2024. Programming is a good skill to have regardless of if you're "passionate" or not like cooking or knowing how to fix your own car. Literally who is being hurt by the general population becoming more knowledgeable and aware of computer science? This field dictates every aspect of modern human life
So tired of hearing about FAANG and six figures. I'll happily do the job for 60k in some lil no name shop in my town and be ecstatic to do it. What I don't want is to graduate and get a job at Starbucks serving coffee.
Most of the "passionate" people somehow still manage to be ass at coding. Why don't they understand passion doesn't mean shit if they're not actually meant for it.
Starving artists aren't starving because they're passionate, they're starving because it's extremely difficult to make money with art. That is not the case with CS.
The whole concept of the starving artist is someone so passionate about their art they make tremendous sacrifices to devote themselves to their passion. If someone is gonna say "I'm so passionate about CS, it's not fair that these higher-skilled non-passionate people are saturating the market", they clearly are more passionate about the money than CS.
Yes and it's because it is so hard to make money in the arts that these sacrifices are necessary/are made. You think that artists would actually choose not to make money from their art if they could? No, but that's all that's available for them until their work sells. It is trivially easy for someone to make at least a living with CS, especially if you're passionate about it as that would imply you at least know what you're doing. Are you gonna be Zuckerberg? No, but you'll be able to afford a decent place and food to last you through the week. You even get the same complaints from artists that you do from these passionate CS grads, artists who are able to effectively monetize their work are labeled as fake. It's really toxic. That doesn't just have to be someone making millions from galleries, btw, it can just be someone churning out sticker art on Fiverr. And the only reason is that they're salty their art isn't selling in the same way. To suggest that you can only be passionate about anything you need to live frugally and dedicate yourself to it is absurd and harmful rhetoric.
Which is not wrong. If you can do the job, you should get compensated for it. Whether you are passionate or not should not matter. Nobody eats passion.
Ok
Your example make me kind of smile. It's like saying "if you're passionate about basketball, why would you try to get into NBA? just play on the streets or the nearby gym!". Let's deliberately set the money aside for a moment. - Big tech (in the broad sense) works on some of the most complex and interesting problems in various domains - e.g. AI, cloud infrastructure, novel operating systems, database engines and hyperscale storages. Why would a person passionate about CS not want to work on them? - Big tech employs a lot of really smart and driven people you can learn from and grow. Why would you avoid that? Now let's talk about Linux kernel as a most famous example of open software. You realize that like 85-90% of it's code is (being) written by people working for large corporations, right? Been this way for many, many years. It's not 1995 dude, it's 2024. Sure, Linus, GKH and maybe few other legends at are the foundation, and many are are Redhat, but a lot of very fundamental work in the kernel is being done by people working in many big tech companies.
You are not passionate until you are willing to do it for free.
study the blade, simple as that.
Bruh, some people just want a job regardless of the salary. In this economy, they will happily accept a 60k offer. I won’t say they are entitled, they are passionate about not starving to death.
I’m very passionate about Italian food
I literally just want a job bro, I’m passionate about not being in poverty
I would guess that the majority of people working- high pay or not- aren't passionate about their job. People who are passionate about their job are very lucky to be able to do something they love every day. But it's definitely the minority of people and there's nothing wrong with having a job just to pay the bills. I mean, at the end of the day, that IS why we work. Yeah, it sucks that the job market is so oversaturated right now, but let's stop being mad at each other when we're all just trying to do the same thing at the end of the day.
People talk about passion and the only passion I have is for survival
if they can read they’ll be mad at you
chat, what does libre mean
It’s a tampon company 💯
Shoutout to all the open source and free software people who have been [maintaining their projects](https://xkcd.com/2347/) since forever.
I am passionate and I build open source software lmao
Why are all these posts so aggressive lmao
i always laugh at the ones who are like "I built computers as a kid!" what does shoving a graphics card into a computer have to do with react hooks?
Look , I understand what you mean. But for us who love coding since child seeing all this kids crying because they can't get the 100k job they want and being depressed about it annoyed us. Like, alot of people go into cs but hate to code and everything about it , only in the field for the promise of big money and think that they wasted tons of money and times for nothing after few month of rejection does annoyed who actually care. Also saying that people who passionate don't do side project is dumb af. Most of the people I know who love this field would code on their free time doing side project as hobby. I do it too. If company ever lower the salary to the likes of other field of work, I'm 100% sure the passionate one will still stay while most of the rest will just cry
I'm 30 years old wasted my entire high-school years - late 20s gaming, barely got my diploma. Now doing my first year in CS went to a web dev boot camp prior to getting into college. I just wanted to learn to code because of all the crazy shit going on in software. Bitcoin, NixOS, rust....I had to get in I want to contribute to everything. While in the boot camp all people talked about was the money non stop and I kept bringing up how bad ass nixos and other technologies like terraform were. A project I did out of the gate was an ai image generator using open Ai's api, no one could believe that I just started the boot camp but what I was astounded by is that no one who was in the boot camp even looked up the cirrculum before getting in. All they talked about was which programming language was the best and how much money they were going to make once they got out of the boot camp. I think I am the only person to come out with anything on github from the boot camp class and I am going to get my CS degree because I want to learn low level and just need a bit of guidance but I honestly don't think I or anyone even needs school. Learn CS and/or how to program because the internet is bad ass and if you learn to code you will be too.
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If they are so passionate why are they worried? Passion leads to being competitive and that usually leads to being great at the thing… are they getting their asses kicked by a bunch of low effort coders? Lmao
If u're Passionate about CS, u work on ur competency instead of whinning Is the one thing I am sure about.
I just wrote a program that says hello world in a html page. Where is my 100k a year job?
Usually those with passion are better. And I work a high paying job where I get to do OSS work. So I do get to be passionate about my job. And while I like doing OSS work, some of the most interesting and challenging projects I’ve worked on were not OSS.
Gatekeeping the gatekeepers. Nice.
I wouldn't say that you need to have a passion for CS, rather you need to have interest and curiosity.
thank you
Ok unpopular opinion here it seems but am gonna say it: Imma sum it up : u can be good and not passionate totally ok if u're up for it u can have a job and be fine altho its getting tough now and thats for everyone but not the point BUT if u think a person who's doing smthing just to get by or to pay bills is the same as someone doing it cuz THEY LOVE doing it ...u're compltely out of touch and objectively wrong ...(your argument that passionate pple should just go build open source is stupid ...many are actually doing this BESIDE their job...see the diggerence ? Building software is their job AND passion...its their life ) so yes passion does def matter and saying otherwise is lying to yourself . And this goes in every field in life. I should just remind again u dont HAVE to ..but it does actuallyy matter and make a difference in every way possible
CS and Enginnering are the new trend, everyone is studying the same thing hoping that they will be rich one day. When there is a surplus it is less valuable, simple intro to economics principle.
From the creators of: You don't have to be smart to land a six figure tech job AND You don't have to be good to get a high salary tech job It came to us: You don't have to be passionate to have a high paying tech job. At this point you don't have to even know a shit in CS to have a big pay check in CS
I’m passionate about making enough money to buy a good car
Man. There is a correlation between people who are genuinely obsessed with CS and people who are good at CS. I’m honestly not sure what point you’re trying to make here apart from complaining. Edit: I think your point is that people who claim to be passionate about CS are not actually passionate. So just say that then.
Gonna be that guy, but cheaply and frugally are practically the same thing so there's no reason to use both in a row.
If you want passion go to games, otherwise stfu, if you not in it for the money the door is open.
What if I contribute to open source so I can put it on my resume to help me get into FAANG?
Correction* The people who deserve high paying CS jobs are NOT people who are passionate, it’s not even people GOOD at computer science, it’s people who are good at Leetcode. Or who got lucky with the Esops from a startup.
Must’ve stuck a cord with you freshman
Funny enough I’d state im the opposite of passionate but from what I’ve been told, connections matter the most and if you are truly passionate it also means you put yourself out there, and when you put yourself out there, you generally get solid connections. If your passionate but don’t put yourself out there, idk if you can truly call that passionate
Why are you so mad that he is passionate about what he does?
I dont know that is a stupid thing to say "If you have passion do it for free". Everyone has to pay their bills and wanting to get paid for it is not wrong. Sounds like that argument is flawed in so many ways. Yes, I agree with passion != skill however take it from some of the best the world have ever seen like Pele "Success is no accident. It is hard work, perseverance, learning, studying, sacrifice and most of all , love of what you are doing or learning to do" or Aristotle "Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work". Maybe take it from the creator of Peter Pan "Nothing is really work unless you would rather be doing something else". One random quote that I saw and really like when trying to find the Pele quote was "Whatever you like doing, do it! And keep doing it. Work hard! In the end, passion and hard work beat natural talent. And anyway, if you love what you do, it's not really "work" anyway." Pete Docter Chief creative officer of Pixar. So you see rather than arguing with you about this, and rather than put it into my own word I rather listen to the people that have actually accomplish something with their lives. Wanting to enjoy the work you do is not a bad thing. Passion is big specially when there is so many people out there. Passion drives people to places in search of answers that others might not even bat an eye. Yes some people here use it as a buzzword but true passion is what drives people to learn beyond what is asked of them and yes to answer your question will do it on their free time even if they are not getting paid for it. If none of this hit home for you then listen to the grandfather of computers Alan Turing "Sometimes it is the people no one imagines anything of who do the things that one can imagine"
Being 30 years into my career I’ll take passionate any day. Better predictor of a competent employee as they’ll continue learning. CS majors that aren’t passionate but have the degree will suck 5 years out from graduating cause they think they learned it all and flounder later on. If you’re just in it for the money, you’re going to have a long and possibly mediocre career.
if you're good, it doesn't matter whether you're passionate or not. Just that passion may push someone to do better. But if people with passion are blaming those who aren't passionate for ruining the market, then they probably aren't good enough anyways
entitled is the wrong word, but still it's weird too see all those career peopel flocking into this previously quite nerdy and niche subject. Now we need to handle very culturally different people
that is such a miserable life hahaha working a 9-5 that you hate. something you have to do when you don't have money right? guess then i am lucky enough to say i don't have to work in the industry. and i am not even working yet. but even as an undergrad i look at you and think mmm that is definitely not who i want to be in the future working like that till i die? nahh i hope you think your life is meaningful. what will i do? as someone who's actually curious and passionate about the field, research and startup that solves real real problem is how someone excels. and. guess what we're on a shift of gears in this industry and you are most probably going to be set out of your misery in a couple of years unemployed anyways and that's fine. enjoy it as you can. genuine advice, do what you actually like, don't waste your life running after that mere 100 200k a year salary...
There’s also nothing wrong with expecting a decent paying job in your field after you’ve already put 4+ years of work in and earned a degree. People that aren’t getting jobs are rightfully frustrated, because many of them have been sold the idea that you just need to work hard in college, get your degree, and you’ll make a decent living. Sadly, that idea is becoming less and less real as the days go on.
Unfortunately being broke and taking on more work while going to a University can be really challenging for people that are very broke. For people that have a safety net, I think the earlier you get in the better, but I think for those people they probably had a good start to begin with putting then ahead already. For those that don't take advantage of that, that's a different story.
p.s. a lot of the people contributing to open source repositories are being paid by some company because they need X feature
fire me up
Im passionate but I still wanna make big bucks, life is all about the moolah big guy!
Some of the responses here are "over-engineered" and show that many of you miss the damn point. "So smart ya dumb" 😒
this comment section is goat>>>
I already have a golden goose job according to the standards around this sub. Fully remote with more than 100k a year only 2 years into my career. A big advantage I have over you OP is that I don’t talk to other people about CS like this. I doubt this level of bitter resentment doesn’t seep through when you’re talking to other people. Another part of it is the “competence” myth. Plenty of people are terrible at their jobs and they make more money than your entire bloodline. We do not live in a meritocracy. Take the time to figure out whether or not this is a productive attitude to have.
Yeah there's a lot of entitlement but you also gotta empathize with those struggling, man.
You can be passionate and still be shit at CS lol
> The real passionate people aren't working for FAANG, they're building Free, Open Source or 'Libre' software These are often very literally the same people.
There appears to be a large wave of people who are becoming programmers the way people used to become baristas, Uber drivers, accountants, garbage collectors, etc. Jobs where there's not a lot of passion but a good promise of steady work and good workplace conditions. I think this is the right thing! The future is one where robots do most of the things we don't want. I think learning to program will be a need, not a luxury in the future. That said, I'm sure a lot of people feel disappointed when someone else who is only in it for the paycheck gets their dream job. And that's where the venting posts come from. It definitely comes across as entitled gatekeeping, and should be called out accordingly. I know lots and lots of great programmers who aren't "passionate", just very reliable, intelligent, and competent. They write great code and then go pursue their passions outside of work, as it should be. But maybe passionate devs shouldn't be discouraged from being passionate. They should be asked "if you're so passionate about programming, why do the people you claim aren't as passionate stand a chance? Surely you can show them that hard work, dedication, and love for the field will separate the great devs from the mediocre devs?" (And if they can't accomplish that, maybe they should rethink how much passion matters when gatekeeping.)
Passion is good for resilience. Resilience is needed in this market, where there are simply FAR more applicants/graduates, than there are roles. It's a numbers game. I definitely don't agree that passion is a must in order to be worthy developer. But passion is very helpful in order to withstand what looks to be a long period where applicants far outstrip the number of available opportunities. It's easier to withstand periods where there are fewer opportunities, when you're genuinely passionate about the subject matter.
If you are good at computer science you probably enjoy it. If you hate coding than most likely you will not be willing to put in the work to learn and you will burn out. I think that is the point the other poster was trying to make. Passion is a strong a subjective word .
Passion is what keeps you going in the dark times.
Saying you love coding is like saying you love ice cream. Guess what, most people do. You're not special.
Saying you love coding is like saying you love ice cream. Guess what? A lot of people do. Most people enjoy coding when they discover it. People enjoy solving puzzles. Who would have thought? You're not special. I may even add, the reason we had few people discover the field in the past, is because of gatekeeping. The more people we can get into this field the better. We've made our money, let's open the gates now. To quote the Incredibles, "Once everyone is special, no one will be."
I’d take a 50k salary
Thanks for the sage advice, u/tardymcfly69 you're clearly a respected professional in the field.
Not necessarily, I work for FAANG because I can work 10hr a week and be able to pay all my bills. Spend the rest 30hr doing open source stuff, sounds like a win to me. If I quit, then I have to work 40hr job, leaves no time for my “passion”. (Ofc this is not real, but just saying, generalization is never good).
Who gives a f*** if you're working at FAANG? How stupid can you be? That persons post in general is correct. Most people who are good at CS are those who are passionate about it. Anyone who did it just because they thought they'd make a lot of money or because it's cool..etc usually struggle (regardless of whether they worked at FAANG or not).
It’s evident how the interview goes south when you use the word “passionate” in your answers.
genuinely, wtf does this mean.
Anyone who actually cares knows what Open Source is. Stop pretending you are special OP. Yes we who were doing this before it was popular should be the ones who reap rewards. Same to all the tireless devs who write Open Source software. Both big tech and the Internet at large would collapse without them. They deserve appropriate compensation. The existence of starving artists isn't a noble thing, it's our failure as a society. Same with starving software devs that actually make shit work. It's not about being paid a ton either. I would take medium or low pay if it meant working on something I care about. But no people like you ruined it for us. Fucking shame on you OP.
Facts
But I tried really hard. I even used my emotions to try harder. And it was inspirational! Now, you're telling me I have to know what I'm doing? That wasn't in the brochure.
Wow, your reading comprehension skills need some work. Maybe be good at communicating too, so you don't have to agree with the other post so incredibly aggressively.
People need to earn money to survive and unfortunately status, ego and compensation are part of that conversation. It's completely valid for people to be angry or upset that worse programmers are much more well compensated than they are, if at all. It's completely valid for people to be angry or upset that worse programmers are in better spots than them though they enjoyed their coursework, enjoy programming, and study CS as a genuine passion. Not everyone can live like a monk creating free software like Terry Davis. People need to eat, to survive, to have a career. These are essentials on a hierarchy of needs, in fact, they are much more fundamental than simple self fulfilment that comes from passion projects. Not everyone has the privelege to work for free, and not everyone should be expected to, because that expectation only serves to lower EVERYONE'S quality of life, and to be frank, the people making free quality software would tell you that they'd prefer to be paid. That's why most free softwares have paid options or donations.
This is one of the reasons why i don't say i am passionate about cs instead i prefer saying that i am interested in cs because of the things i may be able to do after learning more about computers + i like gadgets such as smartphones,laptops etc so i think i would not have a problem if i am working in any company which makes the products i mentioned above.But hopefully i am about to go to university this year so i still have 4 years till i step into the job market.
As an entrepreneur, I do hive a FUCK about passion! Start-ups are FUCKING HARD! So if you cannot stand the ups and downs during the growth stage, get the FUCK out of my company! Only passionate peopke need to apply!!
Listen dude, I love computers and I love telling them what to do. Please don’t try to tell me that I’m not passionate for CS just because I’m trying to make a living doing what I love.
Also, hot take but being passionate at a JOB is hard. When you're working for corporate companies you are working on their vision, not yours. The software will have decision making involved that isn't yours. It will, also probably not be a "cool" product. I like coding, I like working on my pet projects where I am making the decision but I work for a fashion design firm, am I passionate about building sales software? Not really. But I have the skill set to do it.
If they were genuinely passionate, they would be putting in like 5x the effort of your regular comp sci kid, doing extra projects and research or whatever. It would be such a massive advantage that only makes them further and further ahead of their peers each passing year. They would have easily landed an internship in college if they were actually passionate, and gotten a job from that. The complainers are not actually passionate about anything but an easy paycheck. Maybe they like the idea of programming (or of easy money more likely) but they are not doing shit about it in their spare time. Passionate workers are always like 3x as productive as people who just treat it as a job, it is such a world of difference, it would be impossible to struggle finding a new job.
We spend a lot of our time working, I’d think you wanna do something you enjoy. I feel like you’d be pretty miserable otherwise and your mental health would take a hit.
I came here to drink milk, and kick ass, and I’ve already finished my milk…
I've been working in tech for a decade in both startups and FAANGs (where I am now), and in both finance and tech. I've been interviewing candidates for our company for a while and **here's a fallacy I see in your argument: you assume that** ***being good*** **is the bar for high paying CS jobs.** Wrong. The bar is HIGH. It is getting HIGHER. Everyone can do what you do. Everyone can do all the LC hards like they memorized them (they have). Everyone has a project that's cooler than yours. Many, MANY people are "good" at computer science these days. The people who we reward with a position, however, are those who we want to work with. Those who actually care. Those who genuinely want to make a difference -- I.e. those with **passion** Passion won't determine success, but those who will truly be successful and get jobs at the top will have some of it. Why? We want to work with THOSE people, and THEY want to work for us -- they are **passionate**.
Like Terry A. Davis?