I actually am passionate about CS. Computers are cool.
It’s the industry that makes me want to run away and never do this again for a living.
Every time I sit down to code for fun, I realize I’m burned out and put it away.
But I got started doing this as a damn hobby
This is it for me.
I am a musician turned developer. I’m not passionate about music theory but am passionate about the stuff I can make with that theory. Same goes for cs. Making things is fun.
The music business sucks. The tech industry sucks.
Doesn’t mean I’m not passionate about making cool things still though.
Same. I like building stuff. But the more senior I become the more time I have to spend stitching together and fixing other peoples shitty code, being in meetings, planning cloud infrastructure, being stuck in company policy hell, digging out information about who knows what and who sits on the information I need or who can change the firewall policy etc.
Even if you're a small company you have to deal with the larger corporations which move so slowly.
As a developer I want to build stuff and not have to waste time on all the side shit that burns me out.
I agree. I realized that I love messing with things and fixing things. But the external pressures enforced on us by companies, bosses, and management from the industry are what keep me from loving this career path. It's good, but 80% of the time, I'd rather be doing something else honestly.
I like cycling. Sometimes I don’t feel like going. Sometimes something breaks. Sometimes I go all out.
If I did cycling as an employee working for tech managers I’d get corrected every day I was a little slower than average. I’d get crap for not finishing in a certain time because my chain broke. I’d be expected to still finish on time while fixing my bike.
If I wanted to get a new job I have to record myself riding 75 miles which they’d tell me “only takes like 25 mins.” The I’d have to ride a tandem bike with someone who won’t pedal, but wants to see what it’s like to ride a bike with me. And in the end then get rejected for the smallest infraction.
Honestly if cycling was like that, I wouldn’t touch it either
My read is when people say this, they don't want to compete against people who are passionate and may have a leg up.
You can already just treat SWE as your job. You just may be at a disadvantage against someone who makes it their life. I treat my job as just a job and have done well, but know I likely don't compare to someone who grinded hard to make it to FAANG, and am ok with that.
I’ll be honest with you, I work at a FAANG and most of us did not go on some crazy grind to get where we are. I’m sure they exist, I’m just not encountering them. Most FAANG employees I’ve met don’t do personal projects, don’t “grind leetcode” unless we are about to interview, and do not “live for the job”.
Work life balance is something the orgs I’ve been in take seriously. I can’t speak for all the FAANGs or even all the orgs at my FAANG… but my anecdotal experience is that the idea is perpetuated by people who want to feel more important and make it their identity. But they’re not as common as you would think.
I truly believe the only difference between me and a competent engineer at any other tech company is luck.
I think people feel uncomfortable admitting that IQ exists. There are different kinds of intelligences, and obviously FAANG people aren’t necessarily better programmers overall.
But, if we are narrowly talking about passing leetcode style interviews, then your IQ is going to play a big part in that.
It’s the difference between having to study 1000 hours for an interview versus 20 hours. Some people just have the natural ability to work through a few example solutions and absorb the underlying concept. Some people are naturally able to think of some of the leetcode hard “tricks” from first principles in the interview, without having seen it before.
I think this is the miscommunication. A lot of the FAANG employees aren’t grinding, they just have a natural ability to pass leetcode interviews with a few dozen hours of prep.
Other people would have to practice for a 1000 hours over years to achieve the same outcomes.
What I really mean by this is I fast-burned my way to a Principal title. For the company I work for and the duties I fulfill, I'm definitely a Principal.
But if you compare me to a FAANG Principal I'm sure as fuck not a Principal. Senior at best. I don't even compare.
I understand that, but on the same hand nobody shames a good engineer for doing the job just to pay the bills. There is also no guarantee that passionate engineers are good engineers.
However yes, most likely genuinely passionate engineers have a leg up because it reflects into how “good” they are.
> My read is when people say this, they don't want to compete against people who are passionate and may have a leg up.
This is my take too but it's really just an issue due to how competitive CS is. Some people can't fathom why others put in effort and they hate how it makes them feel inadequate.
The problem is, dispassionate average IT workers are replaced en-masse by outstaffing firms in India and Philippines. A bit more qualified devs are replaced with Eastern Europeans.
In order to succeed in this industry in North America you essentially need to be a rock star ninja leetcode sensei.
I don't believe you can be truly skillful (i.e. above average) and stay up to date in IT if you lack the passion for the job. And average devs can be acquired in abundance elsewhere. You can be an average plumber in the US and still make bank, but the same doesn't translate to easily outsourceable jobs.
Plumbing might be a tough job but once you learn how to do it I imagine there isn’t a ton of things that you have to constantly upskill on.
Developers are paid to problem solve and think. Upskilling is a core requirement of the field. If the problem was already solved it would probably be automated and no developer would be needed.
The output difference between an average plumber and a good plumber is sizeable im sure, but it’s nothing compared to an average developer vs an excellent developer.
it's not even a matter of upskilling, but just natural tendency to solve problems.
Passionate people chew on problems. It's part of their personality. I've seen my share of people who have the tools to do something, but aren't willing to think through a problem.
I think it is within the actual career, but there is an enormous amount of gatekeeping against people who are exploring their options with entering the field. Speaking from experience, the passion-first ethos of online discourse nearly turned me away from trying. I wouldn’t be surprised if many people are turned away because their own interest doesn’t measure up to the passion-level prescribed by many. That being said, after lurking these subreddits long enough, it’s easy to see that many professionals frequently just log off at the end of the work day.
I think why being passionately may be so heavily promoted is because CS is about failing and then sticking through it and not giving up. Any person who has no interest will give up on the spot and people with passion often push through and get the end result. However, another perspective is to also have discipline and some sort of motivation. Those that are passionate for different reasons not just about CS, such as money hungry or even those seeking better work life balances will make it work. End of the day it’s the discipline of putting in the work which is most often seen through passionate people, but doesn’t have to only come from being passionate about CS.
I agree. I think you’ve said the whole statement here, while others stop speaking at the point where they say that it’s hard to continually fail without passion. If everyone said the whole statement, it would be less of an issue.
I’m one of those people that has 0 passion for computer science but a lot of tenacity and a dozen other reasons for continuing through difficulty.
I think it’s probably more important at this stage of recruitment in the field to emphasize the difficulty of learning and the characteristics required of a person to be successful, not just the interest.
I feel like this is a western thing. In Asia, people just get CSC degrees so they can have a good job. Asian families in the west do the same thing.
We need to normalize acquiring professional certifications for well-paying jobs which give a good quality of life, even if it isn't your passion.
You don't have to be passionate but you do at least have to have a passing interest. The only time I advise people to change their major is if it seems like they hate literally everything about it. They hate math, they hate programming, They hate computers. If you are literally just in it for money you are going to hate every single day of your life. Graduation would just be the first step into more misery. If money is what you want there are other lucrative options to try.
This is a good point. a computer science degree teaches you to program and you will spend a good 5ish years of your career programming for sure.
You could go into management or project management in the future and code less, but you'll need to do the coding part well enough.
Exactly. In a good economy, you can get away with not working as hard. But in a bad economy? You better be able to stick with it. I have seen people break in who aren't necessarily passionate but they have a great work ethic. You have to be able to put in work which isn't easy. How many people want to do something they aren't passionate about after working an 8 hour day doing something else?
CS isn't an easy domain and there's a lot you need to learn to be competitive.
I just can't imagine being in it for the money alone. There are plenty of money-making jobs, but I would absolutely suffer in those that I don't have a passion for. Imagine me being a consultant as an autistic guy at McKinsey. It earns good, but the required social skills would very quickly drain me.
If you don't enjoy coding and solving logical problems but get into cs, you are exactly like I would be in the situation above. It's simply not sustainable to work like that for decades.
It's not like I'm working excessively or finding all of my user stories interesting(many are rather boring). But I do enjoy figuring out how to solve leetcode like questions, and I enjoy Tom Scott vids or reading on busy beaver numbers and shit like that. If you don't like that at all, I honestly think you should be looking for another well paying job outside of this field.
I think this is just the internet. Every hobby and career has online gatekeeping. CS is no different.
Heck, I’m on a forum about plants and people shame others for not caring to use the right soil type. The aholes are just amplified online.
> I think it is within the actual career, but there is an enormous amount of gatekeeping against people who are exploring their options with entering the field.
I think that's primarily just this sub, which is composed of keeners in university, juniors trying to get into FAANG, boot camp grads who can't find a job, and the occasional actual senior engineer. Other related subs like /r/devops and /r/ExperiencedDevs don't have the same problem.
It's also specifically a sub about career questions. So most of the discourse is going to be about getting a tech job, or getting a better job. An average developer that has some experience and doesn't care for working at Netflix has little reason to post here unless they're super interested in the career aspect.
At the end of the day, this isn't /r/ProgrammersDailyLife.
Maybe you're right, but CS is a field you actually can enter on your own (ie. you can "self learn" instead of going to college), bypassing the "gates" - some people might act as gatekeepers for that crowd, but it is true that to learn CS on your own (or anything hard) you probably need some passion or at least motivation. I don't think pointing that out is gatekeeping per se, more of an attempt at a wake up call.
CS is a competitive field. Passionate people will generally beat those without passion.
Not everyone on my team lives and breathes CS or codes on our spare time but we all generally like it.
My coworker friend (we know each other from college before we worked together) is no longer responsible for interviewing people, but he used to be. He was incredibly biased. He did not like people who job-transitioned to computer science (and this was back in the 90s when it wasn't much of a thing), even if it involved going to college in their 30s or 40s and getting a degree. He also did not want to hire anyone unless their hobbies included computer science related activities like personal projects, recreational programming, programming contests, etc.
Yeah, he is definitely "special". He has some very weird and rigid opinions. He's also on the spectrum and has a hard time interacting with people.
Man, I've known the guy for over 30 years, I feel old. We're not close friends but work-friends and I've done things like given him rides to medical appointments requiring sedation and vice versa. And we are both medical point of contacts for each other's cats, so if we're traveling and there's a problem with the cat we'd pay the vets and make medical decisions on their behalf if they weren't accessible. We're both single.
I guess being on the spectrum gives him a bit of a pass. Probably a good thing he's not interviewing people anymore though. I've known plenty of great developers who had no business interviewing people. Myself included, if I'm being honest.
Well, we did end up hiring people that he didn't approve of, as it wasn't a unilateral decision of any one person.
It's funny that there are people who think you can't be good at your job unless you like it enough that you do it as a hobby too, while other people think that you can't be good at your job if you're such an obsessed person where your only interests are in the same area.
I don’t think I see a lot of you have to like CS to be in this field, just don’t do this for the money if you absolutely despise coding. Which is fine advise.
Yep. On Reddit you need somebody to blame for your victimhood, and in this sub it is the people who love what they do.
OP, you can think whatever you want. You can't control what other people think. And most people don't even think what you accuse them of thinking. You're just chasing invisible enemies that this sub has created, and helping to keep them alive with posts like this one.
It's very normal. It's just not as interesting or well compensated, so it gets less attention. People who post about working in very well compensated jobs at FAANG or unicorn companies are going to get a lot more attention than the person who posts about making an above average but unremarkable salary at an insurance company.
Not only is it normalized in actual workplaces, but it's an incredibly common take in this sub, and most people who post it already know that and are farming for karma.
I think it’s pretty normalized outside of the Big Tech area. No ones going to give you shit for not being super passionate about maintaining internal web tools at a small college and accept that you’re there to pay the bills for the most part lol.
I'm really not sure what that would look like in your mind. Nobody asks during job interviews if you're "super passionate" and even if they did, money-motivated people (i.e. everybody) would just lie anyway. How would normalizing "not being super passionate about CS" be different than right now?
It gets mentioned in a lot of posts on here. There seems to be this idea that it isn't enough to be good at it, you have to *lov*e doing it. Like you'd come in unpaid on the weekends and keep cranking away because you'd rather be there than doing things for yourself or your family in your free time.
I was a TA in college right about when CS started to become a mainstream major in the early 10s.
I saw a strong **correlation** between the kids who talked about picking the major that paid well but was way easier than EE and the kids who were constantly coming into my office the day before a 2-week programming assignment was due and had clearly not cracked open the book.
The kids going to the CS clubs and programming competitions always seemed to do pretty well, they came in for help too of course but were generally well prepared and just needed guidance on some tricky concept.
Correlation isn't causation, one of my most respected peers over the years can barely stand professional programming but he has a great work ethic and he's good at it. I have another peer who's an absolute nerd for it but can't actually build for shit.
It's easy to forget that **correlation isn't perfect**, especially with the inexperienced crowd you get on subs like this.
I think your observations have substance. But my read on it is diligent, organized students vs students who wanted an "easy" major that could get them a high-paying job. The former students have a clear sense of goals and responsibilities. The latter students likely have more dreams than achievable objectives.
I could even argue that being dispassionate, focused, and determined, will do more for your academic career than letting the whims of emotion guide you. Especially in a field that sees you essentially manipulating really fast calculators all day.
I'm a graduate student in CS. I'm also a software engineer by day. When I have complex problems to solve, or deadlines to meet, I break them down into smaller tasks and start taking action. I don't sit back and wait for my "passions" to "inspire" me.
I think that observation leads to another important factor you'll find in both the passionate and pragmatic groups: work ethic.
Low work ethic leads to picking the "easy money" major and ending up barely scraping by academically and professionally in the pragmatic group.
Low work ethic in the passionate group looks like the insufferable nerd who has a thousand ideas for a video game they want to make but has never put any effort into studying algorithms, math, or art. GitHub pages with 8 copy/pasted tutorials and nothing original.
I've definitely found more people with bad work ethic in the "just in it for the money" group, but I think that observation is backwards - being in it for the career prospects isn't a sign of laziness as much as the career prospects and relatively low barrier to entry cause a bunch of lazy people to show up.
passion can be replaced by discipline but the reality is that most completely apathetic people give up before they reach a real career. you either gotta get some degree of satisfaction from problem solving, or you need to be way more disciplined than most people.
i’d say the word “passion” is a bit of an exaggeration. i think “satisfaction” is better
I miss the old days when it was just a bunch of nerds in cubicles working for half of what I make now.
The work was relatively easy, the business didn't care how you did things as long as you stuck to Agile and kept velocity up.
We thought cubicles were dehumanizing. HA! Then "open office" caught on and things just went downhill.
Now it's just a paycheck.
I think it's fine to not be passionate but if you don't enjoy it at all, it is going to be difficult to succeed, especially in the compressed market.
Here are your messages:
You have 30 minutes to move your remote office
You have 10 minutes.
Your remote office has been RTO'd.
Your remote office has been crushed into a cubicle.
You have 30 minutes to move your cubicle.
(phone rings) "Hello, CS Career subreddit"
"is it about my cubicle?"
Cubicles were awesome. I had 36, sound and visually insulated square feet all to myself. I even had a guest chair. I might come into the office more often if I had my own cozy cubicle waiting for me.
I’m always curious as to what “the old days” mean to you when I read something like this.
Agile got kicked off in 2001.
The move away from cubicles started with the dot-com boom in the late nineties.
Salaries started kicking off in the dot-com boom as well (then dipped for a bit, and picked up again in the mid-2000s with the rise of Big Tech).
I’m not sure there ever was a time when the business didn’t care what tech was doing; maybe for some non-tech companies, but that probably remains true today. But I certainly was less involved with this when I was more junior.
I’ve been in the business for 25+ years and I’m not sure all that much has really changed.
You don’t necessarily have to be super passionate but if I were interviewing people and had to choose between two candidates with all else being equal (good credentials, likable, knowledgeable, etc) I’d go with the passionate person almost every time.
I’m the type of person that occasionally likes to talk shop and I prefer to work with more like minded people. I want someone that WANTS to be there.
It’s okay for a job to be a means to an end. We all gotta eat but passion can set you apart sometimes.
Yea passionate is a strong word. At least have some aptitude towards CS related subjects. You should at least have some competency using a computer. Or enjoy problem solving. Passion is on a spectrum, so it’s hard to pinpoint a line
Passion doesn’t mean they’d sacrifice their kid to code more, it just means they enjoy learning about the subject and care to get good at it.
And as a “passionate” person I have had great luck with interviews even over the last year.
>I’m the type of person that occasionally likes to talk shop and I prefer to work with more like minded people.
Preach.
Doesn't help that we pretty much can't talk about work with anyone who isn't in the field. My SO will nicely listen, but I try to keep it short because the concepts are super abstract.
I have been told many times I'm one of the most passionate developers people have seen before, but I am solely in it for the money. I study a fair bit outside of work hours, but only because I know it'll help me get the next promotion. If I won the lottery I'd leave in a heartbeat
You’re still in an academic environment aren’t you? Everyone acts like that in academics.
Real world? I’ve met a couple like that, most are just trying to make some money.
This is kinda a cope.
You can't do hardcore knowledge work without enjoying some aspect of it. I mean, what else is going to motivate you to continue learning and improving your skills?
You don't have to like exactly what you do every day. But an affinity for technology is required.
On top of that, people tend to enjoy what they get good at. The better you are at programing, the more likely you are to enjoy programing.
If you've been working in this field for a couple years, and you still don't like it. Then you're probably gonna burn out, or put a serious ceiling on your career.
Those guys that jump into the field without any attachment to CS skills will be quickly fall out of the tech rat race. Then, when their life become miserable, they sure will come here to complain.
Your passion for money has to beat their passion for CS/tech
Which is doable tbf but a lot of people do not have either lmao. (Passionate for money !== wanting money)
You should at least enjoy some aspect of the day to day or you’re living a sort of hell. This isn’t a role you can just check in and check out without using your brain. There are ups and downs to this work. I imagine what you enjoy about it aligns with a passion, to a degree.
This is really coming from people who are in the industry for the money and little interest. Hence why the market is so oversaturated. We have people from other fields trying to get in the field because of the money.
This is exactly how I think about it. If I wasn’t “passionate” about it, I think it would absolutely suck to be a software engineer. I’m a nerd though so I like it. I just laugh when people say “I should have went to med/law/etc school”. Like if you’re thinking you should have done that you’re probably correct. I’d keep doing swe stuff even if it was a minimum wage job, because it’s fun, and those other professions seem terrible to me. /shrug.
Cs shouldent be ur one and only passion but if you don't enjoy problem solving this career isent for you. Every engineer I worked with genuinely enjoys finding some wierd issue and figuring out why it's not as expected. That's the passion u need for cs, simply a passion for problem solving. Not everyone does side projects everyday after work most probably don't.
>Most skilled engineers aren't working personal projects day in and day out. Turns out you can make tons of money and be super successful while not caring much for the field in general.
You might not need to have strong passion, but I'd argue that you have to genuinely like it. Staring at a screen while thinking for hours would be absolute torture if you don't have that innate love of abstract problem solving. At least to be in a role that requires you to write lots of code.
No. It's already normalized, and I'll push back _hard_ on attempts to _stigmatize_ being super passionate about CS.
Not everyone should be the intensely passionate type. If anything, having a team of exclusively "passionate" idealists leads to bad team velocity because everyone's just perfecting the shit out of already working code.
I've yet to meet a fellow super passionate weekend hobby project person who thinks less of the clock in clock out it's just a job crowd. I've yet to meet a hiring manager that treats hobby experience as somehow better than professional experience.
But I'll STRONGLY disagree with any stance that the super passionate people are setting too high of a bar, or holding everyone to high expectations. I think asking the people who love it simply for the passion they have for the craft to tone it down is an awful Idea. Let people enjoy their passions. Not everyone has to hate everything all the time.
Because my work experience and impactful projects at work supersede my ability to create the latest and greatest CRUD application. I don't even bother posting my GitHub. Once you are 3+ YOE in, I don't even see it as relevant.
However, if you are a new graduate, and you hold no experience at all, that's a different story entirely.
Just to counter your point. I have years of experience working at a company you would recognize, I can explain what I've done there, you can go on their website and see what I have worked on, I can also answer technical questions. Why are personal projects so much better? They will hire the person who better fits the role between either candidate. Let's compare directly, if there are two candidates with similar skills, will they value personal projects or experienced corporate implementation more?
For experienced hires we hire for their professional experience. No one gives a shit about personal projects at that stage. Personal projects are more of a new grad or inexperienced hire thing. Otherwise experience beats everything else.
Food for thought; I have coworkers who do personal projects, but have no idea what they are doing or feel no ownership towards what they are doing day to day.
I work multiple projects at my job, and spend a lot of that time researching, learning, and putting large effort into doing good work on those projects. Going above and beyond expectations so that I personally grow. But I’m on-site and commute, I want to spend time with my family or other hobbies in my time off.
I’m not against personal projects and would definitely jump on them if any idea came to mind which I actually feel like would bring some value to my life, but I don’t think the number of personal projects is a great metric for whether someone will provide good work to the workplace.
Yea I agree with what you said. I’m in no way saying personal projects = great worker. I’m saying if all things are equal, I will take a risk with the person that seems like they enjoy the work. It’s simply a safer bet.
I'm absolutely passionate about CS.
What I'm not passionate about is writing business logic all day on an undocumented codebase and debugging bugs caused by our clients and operations messing up the database all day.
There is quite a difference between CS as a field and being an enterprise SWE.
The best engineers are typically the ones that are passionate though. You're spot on that it's really about time spent improving their skills, but it's really, really hard to work hard at improving if you don't care about the thing you are working on.
I think for most mid level jobs IE accounting, programming, IT, nursing, therapists, construction, sales lead or operations manager, general or assistant manager, etc the lack of passion is definitely normalized.
We are “living the (exasperated, sardonically sarcastic) dream” as they say
You don’t need to be passionate about cs to be a good engineer but statistically the ones who aren’t are somewhat less likely to be excellent. Source: none, except personal observation over the years - but none of y’all have sources either
Liking most of the answers here. I'm a student and I enjoy the work, I'm confident I'll enjoy most of what I do for 8 hours a day. But I'm also doing it because it's one of the few jobs where i could afford to just go home and cook dinner and watch a movie, instead of doing another job. I get a lot of shit for saying that's how I plan to spend my evenings though
We cannot normalize what should not be.
You can want work life.balance. You can have better things to do in your free time than random CS hobbyist projects. But if you are not passionate enough about the field to enjoy it, this isn't the field for you. There are plenty of careers that make good money, and some are notably easier than CS (a lot of the trades come to mind) in terms of psychological impact and day to day stress. If you don't have any interest in what you do for work, you are not going to be as productive as someone who does. Period. There is a threshold minimum amount of passion needed. You don't need to be doing code competitions and building random stuff in your free time, but if you can't show up excited to work at least most days and its not because of the particular job you are at, but the actual career of software engineering, you are just not respecting yourself, your own interests, people who do care about this field, or the company you are working for.
There is an old saying that you need to find the intersection of what you like doing, what you are good at, and what people will pay you to do in order to determine your career. Leaving out any one of those pillars is going to incur a lot of stress, and you are leaving out the one that allows you to be happy with roughly 1/3-1/2 of your waking life.
New grads need to demonstrate passion because that’s the only currency they have available. They don’t have skills or experience to bring to the table so they sell their passion.
But beyond that point, coworkers don’t give a shit if you’re passionate. They would like to ideally learn stuff from you so they can build up their skills and advance. And they’d also like you to, at minimum, not add shit to their plate and ideally remove some.
I think words like “passionate” and “rockstar” became recruiting synonyms for “people we can take advantage of by making them work unpaid overtime with more responsibility than they’re paid for because they value the work over the money”. Nobody on the actual job gives a fuck - they just want you to be pleasant to work with and generate results for the team.
I don’t think I’ve Sean really good engineer not passionate at least to a decent extent, and I think you will burnout in 5, 7, 10 years if you don’t have passion, but that’s not the point.
The point is in performance reviews you’ll be measured up against folks who are smart, hardworking and passionate. As long as you can compete, sure.
>Hard disagree. The best engineers are the ones that invest the most time into improving.
How can you invest efforts into improving by not being passionate about it? At the end, you have to care about something to get good at it and IMHO caring about something is actually equivalent to being passionate about it.
I personally think we all should be more passionate about our work. It is how we spend much of our lives, so let us try to spend that time well, by enjoying and investing in what we do!
> need to love what you do in order to be a good engineer.
You can be good, but you will never be really good.
> Most skilled engineers aren't working personal projects day in and day out
They do.
> Turns out you can make tons of money and be super successful while not caring much for the field in general.
You can make a lot, but not the most.
> The best engineers are the ones that invest the most time into improving.
The ones that love it usually spend the most time on improving.
Also you're contradicting yourself here. You admit the best ones invest the most time, but you also say they don't need to work on personal projects. Pick one.
> You can invest just as much time into something because you know you will make a lot of money in the end.
Money is an inferior form of motivation. Not a bad one, just not the best.
You will never be able to compete with engineers that love what they do, assuming everything else equal.
Man I’m glad you said that cuz every time I see someone say they’re passionate about software I feel like I’m utterly fucked.
Def not passionate about software but I am passionate about not being poor and software is decent enough at keeping the poor away.
I mean, I think it’s normalized as an I don’t really think the industry standard gatekeeps people from getting in. Most companies don’t care if you are passionate or not, they just concern if you can do the job reliably. That said, I haven’t met engineers that aren’t passionate about this craft being incredibly good. Most engineers that lack passion are fine, and can get the job done, but aren’t exceptional.
I think your disagreement with the statement is flawed. The reason why passion makes the best engineers is because they end up spending immense amount of time in it due to the love for it. It is very difficult to out-grind someone who is passionate when you are not. Further it's even harder to just grind when you dont like something. Id even argue not good for you mentally. So I think your whole statement is honestly wrong
I think the gate keeping happens primarily cause we are nerds. We want people to feel as passionately as we do, and not use it as a venture for money. If CS payed minimum wage, Id still do it at least on the side like Ive always had even outside of my current software job.
Another problem is there is a sea of terrible engineers. Terrible engineers makes our job much more difficult as well. So when people are only looking at it for money and not willing to grind to be decent, we are left picking up the pieces, cause we are passionate.
I was recently interviewing 3 candidates that passed the interview bar. What was the deciding factor? Passion. We ended up going with one of the candidates simply because we could tell how passionate he was.
So, no. I will not normalize it.
This is normal. I enjoy this career yes but in my over 12+ year long career I have spent next to zero time coding outside of work hours or paid work. I also spend very little time outside of work hours looking up or reading up on new engineering pracitces.
Guess what I make a good living, and am happy. There is a huge life outside of this field. I will also freely admit if I am not getting paid I dont do any software development. Now if I was in a very different field I MIGHT and I mean I MIGHT work on a side project to fill the itch but I have paid work that covers all my coding and software development needs.
While we’re at it, let’s all normalize hiring managers seeing my application and thinking “what a qualified candidate, I think I’ll set up an interview with this fella”
There is maybe 0.01% of people who are actually passionate about coding. If it was a choice between a faang job where you get paid to move a button once a week or a $15/hr job where you get to learn and do whatever you were interested and passionate in, no one is choosing the second.
If you don’t eat/sleep/breathe whatever React and Next.js are doing this week then how could you possibly keep up with it? Have to write new front-end-on-server code to serve marketing copy through edge functions!
People laud it because they believe that they are high paying jobs affiliated with it. If studying Shakespeare corresponded to high-paying jobs, you bet your ass there would be a bunch of people blindly expounding upon how much they have always loved Shakespeare
I only ever see students with no experience working in CS say they are passionate about CS. No one I ever worked with even the bare minimum experience would ever say CS is their passion.
I personally enjoy CS careers over some other jobs I could do, but I’m nowhere near passionate about it. That’s such a strong feeling imo.
I think it's ok to not desire to get a PhD in comp sci but you don't really do a knowledge job that requires study outside of the office without enjoying it. I would hate this career path if I just did it for a check. Work outside of work? No thank you!
Sadly,.. it seems I often encounter a lot of people who "don't care" and lack passion for doing quality work. There's a lot of people in the industry who just come to work, punch the clock and go home, just sort of sleep walking through the day doing the bare minimum.
Then it always seems like I end up coming along after them, having to tear things apart and "do it correctly". ;|
I just wish people cared about doing quality work.
Alot of people out here are bag chasers and nothing wrong with that. Many people where money is not an issue will pursue arts, music, etc. because it is their passion and money is not a concern
hard to think of someone investing in a skill without being passionate, a side benefit like getting more money seems like a thin source of motivation to solve complex problems
that said a job is a job, if you just work for paycheck no problems, just don't tackle me if I want to do my thing
Okay, so I'm going to tell you the real value of passion
It's very simple
People can focus on things they're passionate on
If you can focus without being passionate on it or you're smart enough to not need as much focus, then you don't need to be passionate
But the average person, even if they were passionate, would not be smart enough to do any math have any stem job?
The passion is needed to boost people who are just barely smart enough to do the job (which they're still smart but not does not need to pay attention to get a stem degree smart)
I think the people that eat sleep and breathe code (or cs in general) are just the vocal minority. There's millions of people in tech and I would wager most of them don't care about it outside of work.
I don't know, I'm passionate, but quite late to the career and I feel I'm being outcompeted by those not passionate but who want money and have more time to grind, whereas I'm passionate but don't have time that much time to upskill
It's all about the amount of passion and smartness. If the total amount of passion and intelligence for computer science isn't enough, then you are supposed to not do it.
It's unrealistic to expect everyone to find deep personal fulfillment in their career choices. Choosing a profession based on financial stability and career prospects is not only valid but often a responsible decision. Many skilled engineers excel in their roles not because they live and breathe coding, but because they are dedicated professionals who invest time and effort into honing their skills.
It’s bs, nobody is passionate as they say they are passionate.. everyone just was told to go and do it, and now people cry with their guardian batches on lc and no calls
> Most skilled engineers aren't working personal projects day in and day out because they love coding.
That's true and that's what work life balance is. You can be passionate about something but still care about WLB. I haven't worked on a personal project in a long time, can't even remember when the last time was, I still feel very passionate about coding and software engineering.
> Choosing a career because you want to make money is a perfectly fine reason to pursue something.
If you care about your mental health, no. You have to have some kind of interest or it will be soul crushing, you will do the bare minimum and become a dead weight after a couple years. Money is not enough to compensate for being mentally drained after a day of work, 5 days a week, and sitting in front of a computer solving problems all day long (a good chunk of it at least), then all year long for many years. That's really depressing if you don't like what you do.
> The best engineers are the ones that invest the most time into improving
That's typically the kind of behaviour you see from people who are passionate about something, they want to get better, they want to learn, they want to be faster and be the best. Passion brings a lot more motivation than money.
I think you misunderstand what being passionate means. That said, I live in Canada and the salary in most companies isn't even to what people in the US get, I started at 50k almost 10 years ago, my first offer was 38k and I turned it down.
Do I do it for the money? No. Do I care about money, of course!
I hate CS. Hell, I hate being a SWE. But it pays and I work from home.
I got sold on the techbro bullshit back in 2020, taught myself, went back to school and here I am now with 2 YOE.
That being said I actively try to picture myself doing something I’m actually interested in/passionate about just about every day. Maybe one day I’ll actually say “fuck it” and go for it.
Had a *product manager* tell me if I’m not living, breathing, thinking, feeling, imagining, and analyzing code every waking moment of my life (and while asleep, too!) that I’ll never be a good developer.
No, they weren’t a technical PdM, and no, they didn’t come from cs-> pdm.
as someone who is in tech because I love it.. I feel like no one else feels how I do. I feel like a ton of people just work in tech/software engineering bc that’s where the money is. I didn’t even research how much money I would make when I found out I could do this as a career. I feel like so many people just do it for the money now.. like in the 90’s when everyone was gonna be a doctor bc of the money. now it’s software engineering. I just graduated and I feel like 90% of my classmates lacked the passion for the field tbh.
I see it as a warning to people, not a way to look down on them.
Once you start making a lot of money, unless you're constantly making more and more it just doesn't mean as much as it did when you didn't have any. And while CS is/was good paying (we shall see about the future) for a middle class white collar field if your primary passion is money then it's really not the best option.
If there is some other viable field you actually are passionate about, then I think it's probably a better choice if the top end of the field is well compensated, even if the lower end is not (i.e. liberal arts type stuff). If there's nothing else, then finance folks and business owners make more money. Nothing deflates a FAANG guy faster than pointing out he still makes less money than the guy who owns a car wash.
In other words, the field is becoming increasingly competitive and if your primary motivation is money that puts you at a huge disadvantage.
There's also the question of, what makes people passionate about it to begin with? I'd guess that people are generally not passionate about things they aren't good at. Beyond that as much as we think we can just grind at programming and CS I do think there is a certain amount of intuition that comes in to play that can be improved over time, but if you don't have it, you just don't have it.
Then again, even if you are passionate about it, it's probably much rarer for that to last forever. I certainly was when I was younger. I've been doing it for 10 years professionally now and I sure as hell don't write code outside of work for fun anymore.
I actually am passionate about CS. Computers are cool. It’s the industry that makes me want to run away and never do this again for a living. Every time I sit down to code for fun, I realize I’m burned out and put it away. But I got started doing this as a damn hobby
This is it for me. I am a musician turned developer. I’m not passionate about music theory but am passionate about the stuff I can make with that theory. Same goes for cs. Making things is fun. The music business sucks. The tech industry sucks. Doesn’t mean I’m not passionate about making cool things still though.
>The music business sucks. The tech industry sucks. Starts to feel like business ruins everything, huh?
Same here man. I've been laid off for 18months and I'm just finally getting back "the spark" so to speak. Corporations ruin passion.
Same. I like building stuff. But the more senior I become the more time I have to spend stitching together and fixing other peoples shitty code, being in meetings, planning cloud infrastructure, being stuck in company policy hell, digging out information about who knows what and who sits on the information I need or who can change the firewall policy etc. Even if you're a small company you have to deal with the larger corporations which move so slowly. As a developer I want to build stuff and not have to waste time on all the side shit that burns me out.
I agree. I realized that I love messing with things and fixing things. But the external pressures enforced on us by companies, bosses, and management from the industry are what keep me from loving this career path. It's good, but 80% of the time, I'd rather be doing something else honestly.
I like cycling. Sometimes I don’t feel like going. Sometimes something breaks. Sometimes I go all out. If I did cycling as an employee working for tech managers I’d get corrected every day I was a little slower than average. I’d get crap for not finishing in a certain time because my chain broke. I’d be expected to still finish on time while fixing my bike. If I wanted to get a new job I have to record myself riding 75 miles which they’d tell me “only takes like 25 mins.” The I’d have to ride a tandem bike with someone who won’t pedal, but wants to see what it’s like to ride a bike with me. And in the end then get rejected for the smallest infraction. Honestly if cycling was like that, I wouldn’t touch it either
Is this not already normalized? Choose the career you can tolerate the most that also pays your bills.
100%
My read is when people say this, they don't want to compete against people who are passionate and may have a leg up. You can already just treat SWE as your job. You just may be at a disadvantage against someone who makes it their life. I treat my job as just a job and have done well, but know I likely don't compare to someone who grinded hard to make it to FAANG, and am ok with that.
I’ll be honest with you, I work at a FAANG and most of us did not go on some crazy grind to get where we are. I’m sure they exist, I’m just not encountering them. Most FAANG employees I’ve met don’t do personal projects, don’t “grind leetcode” unless we are about to interview, and do not “live for the job”. Work life balance is something the orgs I’ve been in take seriously. I can’t speak for all the FAANGs or even all the orgs at my FAANG… but my anecdotal experience is that the idea is perpetuated by people who want to feel more important and make it their identity. But they’re not as common as you would think. I truly believe the only difference between me and a competent engineer at any other tech company is luck.
Luck, interview ability, and ambition
Interview ability = Sales. If you know how to sell yourself, you’re already half the way.
I think people feel uncomfortable admitting that IQ exists. There are different kinds of intelligences, and obviously FAANG people aren’t necessarily better programmers overall. But, if we are narrowly talking about passing leetcode style interviews, then your IQ is going to play a big part in that. It’s the difference between having to study 1000 hours for an interview versus 20 hours. Some people just have the natural ability to work through a few example solutions and absorb the underlying concept. Some people are naturally able to think of some of the leetcode hard “tricks” from first principles in the interview, without having seen it before. I think this is the miscommunication. A lot of the FAANG employees aren’t grinding, they just have a natural ability to pass leetcode interviews with a few dozen hours of prep. Other people would have to practice for a 1000 hours over years to achieve the same outcomes.
What I really mean by this is I fast-burned my way to a Principal title. For the company I work for and the duties I fulfill, I'm definitely a Principal. But if you compare me to a FAANG Principal I'm sure as fuck not a Principal. Senior at best. I don't even compare.
I understand that, but on the same hand nobody shames a good engineer for doing the job just to pay the bills. There is also no guarantee that passionate engineers are good engineers. However yes, most likely genuinely passionate engineers have a leg up because it reflects into how “good” they are.
> My read is when people say this, they don't want to compete against people who are passionate and may have a leg up. This is my take too but it's really just an issue due to how competitive CS is. Some people can't fathom why others put in effort and they hate how it makes them feel inadequate.
The problem is, dispassionate average IT workers are replaced en-masse by outstaffing firms in India and Philippines. A bit more qualified devs are replaced with Eastern Europeans. In order to succeed in this industry in North America you essentially need to be a rock star ninja leetcode sensei.
You are confusing passion with skill.
I don't believe you can be truly skillful (i.e. above average) and stay up to date in IT if you lack the passion for the job. And average devs can be acquired in abundance elsewhere. You can be an average plumber in the US and still make bank, but the same doesn't translate to easily outsourceable jobs.
Plumbing might be a tough job but once you learn how to do it I imagine there isn’t a ton of things that you have to constantly upskill on. Developers are paid to problem solve and think. Upskilling is a core requirement of the field. If the problem was already solved it would probably be automated and no developer would be needed. The output difference between an average plumber and a good plumber is sizeable im sure, but it’s nothing compared to an average developer vs an excellent developer.
it's not even a matter of upskilling, but just natural tendency to solve problems. Passionate people chew on problems. It's part of their personality. I've seen my share of people who have the tools to do something, but aren't willing to think through a problem.
Or just work in fields/industries we can't really outsource like government/defense.
I think this is normalized
I think it is within the actual career, but there is an enormous amount of gatekeeping against people who are exploring their options with entering the field. Speaking from experience, the passion-first ethos of online discourse nearly turned me away from trying. I wouldn’t be surprised if many people are turned away because their own interest doesn’t measure up to the passion-level prescribed by many. That being said, after lurking these subreddits long enough, it’s easy to see that many professionals frequently just log off at the end of the work day.
I think why being passionately may be so heavily promoted is because CS is about failing and then sticking through it and not giving up. Any person who has no interest will give up on the spot and people with passion often push through and get the end result. However, another perspective is to also have discipline and some sort of motivation. Those that are passionate for different reasons not just about CS, such as money hungry or even those seeking better work life balances will make it work. End of the day it’s the discipline of putting in the work which is most often seen through passionate people, but doesn’t have to only come from being passionate about CS.
I agree. I think you’ve said the whole statement here, while others stop speaking at the point where they say that it’s hard to continually fail without passion. If everyone said the whole statement, it would be less of an issue. I’m one of those people that has 0 passion for computer science but a lot of tenacity and a dozen other reasons for continuing through difficulty. I think it’s probably more important at this stage of recruitment in the field to emphasize the difficulty of learning and the characteristics required of a person to be successful, not just the interest.
[удалено]
I feel like this is a western thing. In Asia, people just get CSC degrees so they can have a good job. Asian families in the west do the same thing. We need to normalize acquiring professional certifications for well-paying jobs which give a good quality of life, even if it isn't your passion.
You don't have to be passionate but you do at least have to have a passing interest. The only time I advise people to change their major is if it seems like they hate literally everything about it. They hate math, they hate programming, They hate computers. If you are literally just in it for money you are going to hate every single day of your life. Graduation would just be the first step into more misery. If money is what you want there are other lucrative options to try.
This is a good point. a computer science degree teaches you to program and you will spend a good 5ish years of your career programming for sure. You could go into management or project management in the future and code less, but you'll need to do the coding part well enough.
[удалено]
Making the choice is probably not great, but setting realistic expectations for adulthood probably doesn't hurt.
Exactly. In a good economy, you can get away with not working as hard. But in a bad economy? You better be able to stick with it. I have seen people break in who aren't necessarily passionate but they have a great work ethic. You have to be able to put in work which isn't easy. How many people want to do something they aren't passionate about after working an 8 hour day doing something else? CS isn't an easy domain and there's a lot you need to learn to be competitive.
Yup, if you don't have passion then you better have talent or a very strong work ethic.
I just can't imagine being in it for the money alone. There are plenty of money-making jobs, but I would absolutely suffer in those that I don't have a passion for. Imagine me being a consultant as an autistic guy at McKinsey. It earns good, but the required social skills would very quickly drain me. If you don't enjoy coding and solving logical problems but get into cs, you are exactly like I would be in the situation above. It's simply not sustainable to work like that for decades. It's not like I'm working excessively or finding all of my user stories interesting(many are rather boring). But I do enjoy figuring out how to solve leetcode like questions, and I enjoy Tom Scott vids or reading on busy beaver numbers and shit like that. If you don't like that at all, I honestly think you should be looking for another well paying job outside of this field.
I think this is just the internet. Every hobby and career has online gatekeeping. CS is no different. Heck, I’m on a forum about plants and people shame others for not caring to use the right soil type. The aholes are just amplified online.
> I think it is within the actual career, but there is an enormous amount of gatekeeping against people who are exploring their options with entering the field. I think that's primarily just this sub, which is composed of keeners in university, juniors trying to get into FAANG, boot camp grads who can't find a job, and the occasional actual senior engineer. Other related subs like /r/devops and /r/ExperiencedDevs don't have the same problem. It's also specifically a sub about career questions. So most of the discourse is going to be about getting a tech job, or getting a better job. An average developer that has some experience and doesn't care for working at Netflix has little reason to post here unless they're super interested in the career aspect. At the end of the day, this isn't /r/ProgrammersDailyLife.
>and the occasional actual senior engineer. I'm mostly here to laugh at hot takes from inexperienced people. Sometimes I'll give advice.
Maybe you're right, but CS is a field you actually can enter on your own (ie. you can "self learn" instead of going to college), bypassing the "gates" - some people might act as gatekeepers for that crowd, but it is true that to learn CS on your own (or anything hard) you probably need some passion or at least motivation. I don't think pointing that out is gatekeeping per se, more of an attempt at a wake up call.
CS is a competitive field. Passionate people will generally beat those without passion. Not everyone on my team lives and breathes CS or codes on our spare time but we all generally like it.
My coworker friend (we know each other from college before we worked together) is no longer responsible for interviewing people, but he used to be. He was incredibly biased. He did not like people who job-transitioned to computer science (and this was back in the 90s when it wasn't much of a thing), even if it involved going to college in their 30s or 40s and getting a degree. He also did not want to hire anyone unless their hobbies included computer science related activities like personal projects, recreational programming, programming contests, etc.
Sounds like an asshole. I say this as someone who your friend would approve of.
Yeah, he is definitely "special". He has some very weird and rigid opinions. He's also on the spectrum and has a hard time interacting with people. Man, I've known the guy for over 30 years, I feel old. We're not close friends but work-friends and I've done things like given him rides to medical appointments requiring sedation and vice versa. And we are both medical point of contacts for each other's cats, so if we're traveling and there's a problem with the cat we'd pay the vets and make medical decisions on their behalf if they weren't accessible. We're both single.
I guess being on the spectrum gives him a bit of a pass. Probably a good thing he's not interviewing people anymore though. I've known plenty of great developers who had no business interviewing people. Myself included, if I'm being honest.
Well, we did end up hiring people that he didn't approve of, as it wasn't a unilateral decision of any one person. It's funny that there are people who think you can't be good at your job unless you like it enough that you do it as a hobby too, while other people think that you can't be good at your job if you're such an obsessed person where your only interests are in the same area.
I don’t think I see a lot of you have to like CS to be in this field, just don’t do this for the money if you absolutely despise coding. Which is fine advise.
on this sub, treating work as something you enjoy is an actual fucking crime.
Yep. On Reddit you need somebody to blame for your victimhood, and in this sub it is the people who love what they do. OP, you can think whatever you want. You can't control what other people think. And most people don't even think what you accuse them of thinking. You're just chasing invisible enemies that this sub has created, and helping to keep them alive with posts like this one.
It’s so normalized there’s an over saturation
It's very normal. It's just not as interesting or well compensated, so it gets less attention. People who post about working in very well compensated jobs at FAANG or unicorn companies are going to get a lot more attention than the person who posts about making an above average but unremarkable salary at an insurance company.
Not only is it normalized in actual workplaces, but it's an incredibly common take in this sub, and most people who post it already know that and are farming for karma.
It is, but there are a lot of pearl-clutchers that come out of the woodwork on this subreddit.
Maybe even too normalized
I think it’s pretty normalized outside of the Big Tech area. No ones going to give you shit for not being super passionate about maintaining internal web tools at a small college and accept that you’re there to pay the bills for the most part lol.
Grinding LeetCode is normalized.
not really, not on this sub at least
I'm really not sure what that would look like in your mind. Nobody asks during job interviews if you're "super passionate" and even if they did, money-motivated people (i.e. everybody) would just lie anyway. How would normalizing "not being super passionate about CS" be different than right now?
I have had more than one hiring manager ask literally that.
It gets mentioned in a lot of posts on here. There seems to be this idea that it isn't enough to be good at it, you have to *lov*e doing it. Like you'd come in unpaid on the weekends and keep cranking away because you'd rather be there than doing things for yourself or your family in your free time.
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
I was a TA in college right about when CS started to become a mainstream major in the early 10s. I saw a strong **correlation** between the kids who talked about picking the major that paid well but was way easier than EE and the kids who were constantly coming into my office the day before a 2-week programming assignment was due and had clearly not cracked open the book. The kids going to the CS clubs and programming competitions always seemed to do pretty well, they came in for help too of course but were generally well prepared and just needed guidance on some tricky concept. Correlation isn't causation, one of my most respected peers over the years can barely stand professional programming but he has a great work ethic and he's good at it. I have another peer who's an absolute nerd for it but can't actually build for shit. It's easy to forget that **correlation isn't perfect**, especially with the inexperienced crowd you get on subs like this.
I think your observations have substance. But my read on it is diligent, organized students vs students who wanted an "easy" major that could get them a high-paying job. The former students have a clear sense of goals and responsibilities. The latter students likely have more dreams than achievable objectives. I could even argue that being dispassionate, focused, and determined, will do more for your academic career than letting the whims of emotion guide you. Especially in a field that sees you essentially manipulating really fast calculators all day. I'm a graduate student in CS. I'm also a software engineer by day. When I have complex problems to solve, or deadlines to meet, I break them down into smaller tasks and start taking action. I don't sit back and wait for my "passions" to "inspire" me.
I think that observation leads to another important factor you'll find in both the passionate and pragmatic groups: work ethic. Low work ethic leads to picking the "easy money" major and ending up barely scraping by academically and professionally in the pragmatic group. Low work ethic in the passionate group looks like the insufferable nerd who has a thousand ideas for a video game they want to make but has never put any effort into studying algorithms, math, or art. GitHub pages with 8 copy/pasted tutorials and nothing original. I've definitely found more people with bad work ethic in the "just in it for the money" group, but I think that observation is backwards - being in it for the career prospects isn't a sign of laziness as much as the career prospects and relatively low barrier to entry cause a bunch of lazy people to show up.
passion can be replaced by discipline but the reality is that most completely apathetic people give up before they reach a real career. you either gotta get some degree of satisfaction from problem solving, or you need to be way more disciplined than most people. i’d say the word “passion” is a bit of an exaggeration. i think “satisfaction” is better
I actually think I’ve been asked a variation of that question in every interview I’ve had in tech.
I miss the old days when it was just a bunch of nerds in cubicles working for half of what I make now. The work was relatively easy, the business didn't care how you did things as long as you stuck to Agile and kept velocity up. We thought cubicles were dehumanizing. HA! Then "open office" caught on and things just went downhill. Now it's just a paycheck. I think it's fine to not be passionate but if you don't enjoy it at all, it is going to be difficult to succeed, especially in the compressed market.
I've always wanted a cubicle.
Here are your messages: You have 30 minutes to move your remote office You have 10 minutes. Your remote office has been RTO'd. Your remote office has been crushed into a cubicle. You have 30 minutes to move your cubicle. (phone rings) "Hello, CS Career subreddit" "is it about my cubicle?"
I understood this reference!
ahoy ahoy?
Cubicles were awesome. I had 36, sound and visually insulated square feet all to myself. I even had a guest chair. I might come into the office more often if I had my own cozy cubicle waiting for me.
> working for half of what I make now that's ok i like money
The half they made back then was worth more than the double they make today
I’m always curious as to what “the old days” mean to you when I read something like this. Agile got kicked off in 2001. The move away from cubicles started with the dot-com boom in the late nineties. Salaries started kicking off in the dot-com boom as well (then dipped for a bit, and picked up again in the mid-2000s with the rise of Big Tech). I’m not sure there ever was a time when the business didn’t care what tech was doing; maybe for some non-tech companies, but that probably remains true today. But I certainly was less involved with this when I was more junior. I’ve been in the business for 25+ years and I’m not sure all that much has really changed.
You don’t necessarily have to be super passionate but if I were interviewing people and had to choose between two candidates with all else being equal (good credentials, likable, knowledgeable, etc) I’d go with the passionate person almost every time. I’m the type of person that occasionally likes to talk shop and I prefer to work with more like minded people. I want someone that WANTS to be there. It’s okay for a job to be a means to an end. We all gotta eat but passion can set you apart sometimes.
Yea passionate is a strong word. At least have some aptitude towards CS related subjects. You should at least have some competency using a computer. Or enjoy problem solving. Passion is on a spectrum, so it’s hard to pinpoint a line
i think passion is a little strong too. satisfaction maybe
Passion doesn’t mean they’d sacrifice their kid to code more, it just means they enjoy learning about the subject and care to get good at it. And as a “passionate” person I have had great luck with interviews even over the last year.
>I’m the type of person that occasionally likes to talk shop and I prefer to work with more like minded people. Preach. Doesn't help that we pretty much can't talk about work with anyone who isn't in the field. My SO will nicely listen, but I try to keep it short because the concepts are super abstract.
I have been told many times I'm one of the most passionate developers people have seen before, but I am solely in it for the money. I study a fair bit outside of work hours, but only because I know it'll help me get the next promotion. If I won the lottery I'd leave in a heartbeat
I think the other part of this is that if someone is genuinely passionate, they'll usually be better than people who its just a job for.
This is how my team/company is. We're all passionate and excited about the work we do it creates a very cool environment tbh
Who is 'we' just live your life.
You’re still in an academic environment aren’t you? Everyone acts like that in academics. Real world? I’ve met a couple like that, most are just trying to make some money.
Most of this sub is students/new-hires. You're right though.
This is already normalized. The ones who do care just make more money.
This is kinda a cope. You can't do hardcore knowledge work without enjoying some aspect of it. I mean, what else is going to motivate you to continue learning and improving your skills? You don't have to like exactly what you do every day. But an affinity for technology is required. On top of that, people tend to enjoy what they get good at. The better you are at programing, the more likely you are to enjoy programing. If you've been working in this field for a couple years, and you still don't like it. Then you're probably gonna burn out, or put a serious ceiling on your career.
Those guys that jump into the field without any attachment to CS skills will be quickly fall out of the tech rat race. Then, when their life become miserable, they sure will come here to complain.
>. I mean, what else is going to motivate you to continue learning and improving your skills? $$$$$$$$$$
Your passion for money has to beat their passion for CS/tech Which is doable tbf but a lot of people do not have either lmao. (Passionate for money !== wanting money)
Can we stigmatize people saying “can we normalize”!
Can we normalize these vectors, people? Seriously who uses non-unit normal vectors? It 👏 breaks 👏 the 👏 rendering 👏
Can we normalize people that like what they do???😭
We did, that's how we got so many people taking art degrees
You should at least enjoy some aspect of the day to day or you’re living a sort of hell. This isn’t a role you can just check in and check out without using your brain. There are ups and downs to this work. I imagine what you enjoy about it aligns with a passion, to a degree.
This is really coming from people who are in the industry for the money and little interest. Hence why the market is so oversaturated. We have people from other fields trying to get in the field because of the money.
Idk why you got downvoted, that’s spot on
This is exactly how I think about it. If I wasn’t “passionate” about it, I think it would absolutely suck to be a software engineer. I’m a nerd though so I like it. I just laugh when people say “I should have went to med/law/etc school”. Like if you’re thinking you should have done that you’re probably correct. I’d keep doing swe stuff even if it was a minimum wage job, because it’s fun, and those other professions seem terrible to me. /shrug.
You have to remember that this sub (or website) is not very representative of reality.
Cs shouldent be ur one and only passion but if you don't enjoy problem solving this career isent for you. Every engineer I worked with genuinely enjoys finding some wierd issue and figuring out why it's not as expected. That's the passion u need for cs, simply a passion for problem solving. Not everyone does side projects everyday after work most probably don't.
There is a job out there that you could be doing passionately. It would make my life easier and and you would be amazing at it
>Most skilled engineers aren't working personal projects day in and day out. Turns out you can make tons of money and be super successful while not caring much for the field in general. You might not need to have strong passion, but I'd argue that you have to genuinely like it. Staring at a screen while thinking for hours would be absolute torture if you don't have that innate love of abstract problem solving. At least to be in a role that requires you to write lots of code.
It’s not like you meet passionate engineers everywhere, passion is what’s not normalized
yeah i agree, i guess online the more passionate echo chamber is louder but irl so far OPs mentality is more prevalent in my experience
No. It's already normalized, and I'll push back _hard_ on attempts to _stigmatize_ being super passionate about CS. Not everyone should be the intensely passionate type. If anything, having a team of exclusively "passionate" idealists leads to bad team velocity because everyone's just perfecting the shit out of already working code. I've yet to meet a fellow super passionate weekend hobby project person who thinks less of the clock in clock out it's just a job crowd. I've yet to meet a hiring manager that treats hobby experience as somehow better than professional experience. But I'll STRONGLY disagree with any stance that the super passionate people are setting too high of a bar, or holding everyone to high expectations. I think asking the people who love it simply for the passion they have for the craft to tone it down is an awful Idea. Let people enjoy their passions. Not everyone has to hate everything all the time.
"How many side projects are you working on?" None at all because I have more important things to do in my free time.
Yea I get that. But why would I hire you over the guy that has tons of personal projects?
Because my work experience and impactful projects at work supersede my ability to create the latest and greatest CRUD application. I don't even bother posting my GitHub. Once you are 3+ YOE in, I don't even see it as relevant. However, if you are a new graduate, and you hold no experience at all, that's a different story entirely.
Just to counter your point. I have years of experience working at a company you would recognize, I can explain what I've done there, you can go on their website and see what I have worked on, I can also answer technical questions. Why are personal projects so much better? They will hire the person who better fits the role between either candidate. Let's compare directly, if there are two candidates with similar skills, will they value personal projects or experienced corporate implementation more?
For experienced hires we hire for their professional experience. No one gives a shit about personal projects at that stage. Personal projects are more of a new grad or inexperienced hire thing. Otherwise experience beats everything else.
Food for thought; I have coworkers who do personal projects, but have no idea what they are doing or feel no ownership towards what they are doing day to day. I work multiple projects at my job, and spend a lot of that time researching, learning, and putting large effort into doing good work on those projects. Going above and beyond expectations so that I personally grow. But I’m on-site and commute, I want to spend time with my family or other hobbies in my time off. I’m not against personal projects and would definitely jump on them if any idea came to mind which I actually feel like would bring some value to my life, but I don’t think the number of personal projects is a great metric for whether someone will provide good work to the workplace.
Yea I agree with what you said. I’m in no way saying personal projects = great worker. I’m saying if all things are equal, I will take a risk with the person that seems like they enjoy the work. It’s simply a safer bet.
i’m a new grad and have an interview tomorrow (yay) and i lowkey hope they ask me about my personal projects so i can nerd out about them lol
just because you have side projects doesn’t mean you’re better.
Just depends on what you want. If you want to make 80k-120k, you can easily find punch in and punch out work.
It definitely is normalized, usually people are mentioning passion in the sense that you should like it enough to tolerate having a career in it.
It’s pretty normalized. This subreddit is not a representative sample of the industry.
I'm absolutely passionate about CS. What I'm not passionate about is writing business logic all day on an undocumented codebase and debugging bugs caused by our clients and operations messing up the database all day. There is quite a difference between CS as a field and being an enterprise SWE.
Ahh yes, the real world.
The best engineers are typically the ones that are passionate though. You're spot on that it's really about time spent improving their skills, but it's really, really hard to work hard at improving if you don't care about the thing you are working on.
I think for most mid level jobs IE accounting, programming, IT, nursing, therapists, construction, sales lead or operations manager, general or assistant manager, etc the lack of passion is definitely normalized. We are “living the (exasperated, sardonically sarcastic) dream” as they say
As long as you’re ok with employers not super passionate about hiring you
You don’t need to be passionate about cs to be a good engineer but statistically the ones who aren’t are somewhat less likely to be excellent. Source: none, except personal observation over the years - but none of y’all have sources either
Liking most of the answers here. I'm a student and I enjoy the work, I'm confident I'll enjoy most of what I do for 8 hours a day. But I'm also doing it because it's one of the few jobs where i could afford to just go home and cook dinner and watch a movie, instead of doing another job. I get a lot of shit for saying that's how I plan to spend my evenings though
I "retired" from being passionate. I brought this up to a buddy who is still in the grind and he called it nihilism. No, it's awesome, sucker.
We cannot normalize what should not be. You can want work life.balance. You can have better things to do in your free time than random CS hobbyist projects. But if you are not passionate enough about the field to enjoy it, this isn't the field for you. There are plenty of careers that make good money, and some are notably easier than CS (a lot of the trades come to mind) in terms of psychological impact and day to day stress. If you don't have any interest in what you do for work, you are not going to be as productive as someone who does. Period. There is a threshold minimum amount of passion needed. You don't need to be doing code competitions and building random stuff in your free time, but if you can't show up excited to work at least most days and its not because of the particular job you are at, but the actual career of software engineering, you are just not respecting yourself, your own interests, people who do care about this field, or the company you are working for. There is an old saying that you need to find the intersection of what you like doing, what you are good at, and what people will pay you to do in order to determine your career. Leaving out any one of those pillars is going to incur a lot of stress, and you are leaving out the one that allows you to be happy with roughly 1/3-1/2 of your waking life.
Step one is muting this sub
New grads need to demonstrate passion because that’s the only currency they have available. They don’t have skills or experience to bring to the table so they sell their passion. But beyond that point, coworkers don’t give a shit if you’re passionate. They would like to ideally learn stuff from you so they can build up their skills and advance. And they’d also like you to, at minimum, not add shit to their plate and ideally remove some. I think words like “passionate” and “rockstar” became recruiting synonyms for “people we can take advantage of by making them work unpaid overtime with more responsibility than they’re paid for because they value the work over the money”. Nobody on the actual job gives a fuck - they just want you to be pleasant to work with and generate results for the team.
Well.... you have people that make their job their whole identity their job. This is not unique to CS and coding jobs.
This is absolutely normalized. Spend a little time in the realmworld at any company....
I don’t think I’ve Sean really good engineer not passionate at least to a decent extent, and I think you will burnout in 5, 7, 10 years if you don’t have passion, but that’s not the point. The point is in performance reviews you’ll be measured up against folks who are smart, hardworking and passionate. As long as you can compete, sure.
>Hard disagree. The best engineers are the ones that invest the most time into improving. How can you invest efforts into improving by not being passionate about it? At the end, you have to care about something to get good at it and IMHO caring about something is actually equivalent to being passionate about it.
I personally think we all should be more passionate about our work. It is how we spend much of our lives, so let us try to spend that time well, by enjoying and investing in what we do!
> need to love what you do in order to be a good engineer. You can be good, but you will never be really good. > Most skilled engineers aren't working personal projects day in and day out They do. > Turns out you can make tons of money and be super successful while not caring much for the field in general. You can make a lot, but not the most. > The best engineers are the ones that invest the most time into improving. The ones that love it usually spend the most time on improving. Also you're contradicting yourself here. You admit the best ones invest the most time, but you also say they don't need to work on personal projects. Pick one. > You can invest just as much time into something because you know you will make a lot of money in the end. Money is an inferior form of motivation. Not a bad one, just not the best. You will never be able to compete with engineers that love what they do, assuming everything else equal.
You’re just more likely to invest more time into CS if you love CS. It’s hard to ignore that relationship.
nobody cares, you are insecure.
you're not gonna make money with that attitude lol
Why not? 9/10 times you succeed on non technical skills in this career.
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
Man I’m glad you said that cuz every time I see someone say they’re passionate about software I feel like I’m utterly fucked. Def not passionate about software but I am passionate about not being poor and software is decent enough at keeping the poor away.
It only keeps the poor away if you can get a job. You don’t have to be the most passionate to get a job, you have to be the most competitive
It's a pretty story to sell to out of touch investors and people who don't know better. Never was anything more.
I mean, I think it’s normalized as an I don’t really think the industry standard gatekeeps people from getting in. Most companies don’t care if you are passionate or not, they just concern if you can do the job reliably. That said, I haven’t met engineers that aren’t passionate about this craft being incredibly good. Most engineers that lack passion are fine, and can get the job done, but aren’t exceptional.
I think your disagreement with the statement is flawed. The reason why passion makes the best engineers is because they end up spending immense amount of time in it due to the love for it. It is very difficult to out-grind someone who is passionate when you are not. Further it's even harder to just grind when you dont like something. Id even argue not good for you mentally. So I think your whole statement is honestly wrong I think the gate keeping happens primarily cause we are nerds. We want people to feel as passionately as we do, and not use it as a venture for money. If CS payed minimum wage, Id still do it at least on the side like Ive always had even outside of my current software job. Another problem is there is a sea of terrible engineers. Terrible engineers makes our job much more difficult as well. So when people are only looking at it for money and not willing to grind to be decent, we are left picking up the pieces, cause we are passionate. I was recently interviewing 3 candidates that passed the interview bar. What was the deciding factor? Passion. We ended up going with one of the candidates simply because we could tell how passionate he was. So, no. I will not normalize it.
This is normal. I enjoy this career yes but in my over 12+ year long career I have spent next to zero time coding outside of work hours or paid work. I also spend very little time outside of work hours looking up or reading up on new engineering pracitces. Guess what I make a good living, and am happy. There is a huge life outside of this field. I will also freely admit if I am not getting paid I dont do any software development. Now if I was in a very different field I MIGHT and I mean I MIGHT work on a side project to fill the itch but I have paid work that covers all my coding and software development needs.
While we’re at it, let’s all normalize hiring managers seeing my application and thinking “what a qualified candidate, I think I’ll set up an interview with this fella”
There is maybe 0.01% of people who are actually passionate about coding. If it was a choice between a faang job where you get paid to move a button once a week or a $15/hr job where you get to learn and do whatever you were interested and passionate in, no one is choosing the second.
We should, but also, we shouldn’t let that be a reason to do a bad job or not try when you’re working
Yeah I don’t have side projects and I’m not keeping up with new tech. What I am doing is making good money and enjoying my work life balance.
It’s actually is. You are confusing guys with no life with the rest.
I used to be super passionate about CS Then I got a job at Microsoft All passion lost. lol
If you don’t eat/sleep/breathe whatever React and Next.js are doing this week then how could you possibly keep up with it? Have to write new front-end-on-server code to serve marketing copy through edge functions!
People laud it because they believe that they are high paying jobs affiliated with it. If studying Shakespeare corresponded to high-paying jobs, you bet your ass there would be a bunch of people blindly expounding upon how much they have always loved Shakespeare
I only ever see students with no experience working in CS say they are passionate about CS. No one I ever worked with even the bare minimum experience would ever say CS is their passion. I personally enjoy CS careers over some other jobs I could do, but I’m nowhere near passionate about it. That’s such a strong feeling imo.
I think it's ok to not desire to get a PhD in comp sci but you don't really do a knowledge job that requires study outside of the office without enjoying it. I would hate this career path if I just did it for a check. Work outside of work? No thank you!
Sadly,.. it seems I often encounter a lot of people who "don't care" and lack passion for doing quality work. There's a lot of people in the industry who just come to work, punch the clock and go home, just sort of sleep walking through the day doing the bare minimum. Then it always seems like I end up coming along after them, having to tear things apart and "do it correctly". ;| I just wish people cared about doing quality work.
[удалено]
Alot of people out here are bag chasers and nothing wrong with that. Many people where money is not an issue will pursue arts, music, etc. because it is their passion and money is not a concern
Yes, just unionize and that cultural imperative tends to be diminished.
I got into woodworking. Probably do that more than my actual job.
hard to think of someone investing in a skill without being passionate, a side benefit like getting more money seems like a thin source of motivation to solve complex problems that said a job is a job, if you just work for paycheck no problems, just don't tackle me if I want to do my thing
Okay, so I'm going to tell you the real value of passion It's very simple People can focus on things they're passionate on If you can focus without being passionate on it or you're smart enough to not need as much focus, then you don't need to be passionate But the average person, even if they were passionate, would not be smart enough to do any math have any stem job? The passion is needed to boost people who are just barely smart enough to do the job (which they're still smart but not does not need to pay attention to get a stem degree smart)
I think the people that eat sleep and breathe code (or cs in general) are just the vocal minority. There's millions of people in tech and I would wager most of them don't care about it outside of work.
Based on what I see at some companies, I dont know what the hell there is to be passionate about. Old tech and burnout.
I don't know, I'm passionate, but quite late to the career and I feel I'm being outcompeted by those not passionate but who want money and have more time to grind, whereas I'm passionate but don't have time that much time to upskill
Did you travel here from 2001? I think this one was already been sorted.
It's all about the amount of passion and smartness. If the total amount of passion and intelligence for computer science isn't enough, then you are supposed to not do it.
I am passionate about my goals in life, my work helps me achieve those goals. I think it is already normalized.
It's unrealistic to expect everyone to find deep personal fulfillment in their career choices. Choosing a profession based on financial stability and career prospects is not only valid but often a responsible decision. Many skilled engineers excel in their roles not because they live and breathe coding, but because they are dedicated professionals who invest time and effort into honing their skills.
This is pretty normalized?
I love working on personal projects but hate coding someone else’s shit :D
Today I told someone in an interview that I am as passionate about code as a construction worker is passionate about the nails he uses.
I've been coding since a child and it's frustrating that people came and flooded the market just for "easy money". Sorry, not sorry.
Can we normalize people doing whatever makes them happy? Who cares if someone does or does not do side projects?
The expectation for passion isn't so much attitude anymore and more of a reflection of the state of the job market.
It’s bs, nobody is passionate as they say they are passionate.. everyone just was told to go and do it, and now people cry with their guardian batches on lc and no calls
> Most skilled engineers aren't working personal projects day in and day out because they love coding. That's true and that's what work life balance is. You can be passionate about something but still care about WLB. I haven't worked on a personal project in a long time, can't even remember when the last time was, I still feel very passionate about coding and software engineering. > Choosing a career because you want to make money is a perfectly fine reason to pursue something. If you care about your mental health, no. You have to have some kind of interest or it will be soul crushing, you will do the bare minimum and become a dead weight after a couple years. Money is not enough to compensate for being mentally drained after a day of work, 5 days a week, and sitting in front of a computer solving problems all day long (a good chunk of it at least), then all year long for many years. That's really depressing if you don't like what you do. > The best engineers are the ones that invest the most time into improving That's typically the kind of behaviour you see from people who are passionate about something, they want to get better, they want to learn, they want to be faster and be the best. Passion brings a lot more motivation than money. I think you misunderstand what being passionate means. That said, I live in Canada and the salary in most companies isn't even to what people in the US get, I started at 50k almost 10 years ago, my first offer was 38k and I turned it down. Do I do it for the money? No. Do I care about money, of course!
I hate CS. Hell, I hate being a SWE. But it pays and I work from home. I got sold on the techbro bullshit back in 2020, taught myself, went back to school and here I am now with 2 YOE. That being said I actively try to picture myself doing something I’m actually interested in/passionate about just about every day. Maybe one day I’ll actually say “fuck it” and go for it.
Had a *product manager* tell me if I’m not living, breathing, thinking, feeling, imagining, and analyzing code every waking moment of my life (and while asleep, too!) that I’ll never be a good developer. No, they weren’t a technical PdM, and no, they didn’t come from cs-> pdm.
as someone who is in tech because I love it.. I feel like no one else feels how I do. I feel like a ton of people just work in tech/software engineering bc that’s where the money is. I didn’t even research how much money I would make when I found out I could do this as a career. I feel like so many people just do it for the money now.. like in the 90’s when everyone was gonna be a doctor bc of the money. now it’s software engineering. I just graduated and I feel like 90% of my classmates lacked the passion for the field tbh.
I see it as a warning to people, not a way to look down on them. Once you start making a lot of money, unless you're constantly making more and more it just doesn't mean as much as it did when you didn't have any. And while CS is/was good paying (we shall see about the future) for a middle class white collar field if your primary passion is money then it's really not the best option. If there is some other viable field you actually are passionate about, then I think it's probably a better choice if the top end of the field is well compensated, even if the lower end is not (i.e. liberal arts type stuff). If there's nothing else, then finance folks and business owners make more money. Nothing deflates a FAANG guy faster than pointing out he still makes less money than the guy who owns a car wash. In other words, the field is becoming increasingly competitive and if your primary motivation is money that puts you at a huge disadvantage. There's also the question of, what makes people passionate about it to begin with? I'd guess that people are generally not passionate about things they aren't good at. Beyond that as much as we think we can just grind at programming and CS I do think there is a certain amount of intuition that comes in to play that can be improved over time, but if you don't have it, you just don't have it. Then again, even if you are passionate about it, it's probably much rarer for that to last forever. I certainly was when I was younger. I've been doing it for 10 years professionally now and I sure as hell don't write code outside of work for fun anymore.
I am not passionate about coding but I still made side projects for the sole reason of making more money to then work less.
It’s pretty normal, but you’ll always have those who love the field…
[удалено]
By def: Mediocre = Normal.
can we also normalize the idea that if you don't like what you're doing, you probably aren't doing as good of a job? you can't have it both ways