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Popular job advice, especially in highly competitive fields like tech, often states that you should be “passionate” about your work. The word passion gets written into job descriptions all the time. There are plenty of articles on Dev discussing how to demonstrate your passion to employers, how to cultivate your passion, or how to maintain passion through tough times. While the sentiment originated in white-collar jobs, it’s now so pervasive that you might see a customer service position that requires the applicants to be “passionate about the customer experience”--there are even articles about how to tell if an employee is passionate enough about it. If we accept that demanding passion is absurd at the cashier level (do you really want your grocery bagger to be passionately placing each can in your reusable waxed canvas bag), then why is passion considered a prerequisite for so many jobs in tech?
Asking interviewees to demonstrate passion might be a way to try and predict quality of work--you might assume that someone who loves what they do will do it better than someone who’s just here to get their paycheck. However, it’s pretty easy to play up passion on a resume or in a job interview that you might not feel during a forty hour work week. So why do employers assume that they can gauge someone’s passion, and that passion matters, when it’s fairly easy to falsify?
A cynical answer might be that an employee who’s claimed that they are passionate (or who--I guess--is actually passionate) might be easier to persuade to work longer hours for the same pay, or pursue work-related research and professional development off the clock. From an accounting perspective, that means you can pay the passionate person less. Someone who puts in a 60 hour week when the job is for 40 hours is technically getting paid about 67% of what they said their hourly rate was--and they’re giving themselves professional development off the clock, which means you don’t necessarily have to pay for conferences and trainings. And so perhaps employers are incentivized to ask for passion so that they can expect you to prove your love by making big sacrifices for the company.
But even if we assume that employers aren’t trying to get one over on you, there are drawbacks to their seeking only the most passionate employees. Some fields within tech don’t have degree certifications, and must be either learned on the job or self-taught. If the expectation is that hires will have to learn those skills off the clock, in order to demonstrate passion, then employers will lose out on smart, teachable candidates who might have great reasons for not “passionately” pursuing their career outside of work--for example, if they have young children, or have to support elderly relatives, or have illnesses or disabilities that take up much of their non-work time. Sometimes, what employers mistake for passion is actually “plenty of free time” or “some disposable income to spend on personal projects.” This can make passion a metric that inadvertently locks out women, people of color, and working-class people from tech positions where they might otherwise thrive.
In many fields, the passion requirement ends up screening out candidates who would otherwise be qualified-enough, because they didn’t manage to sufficiently demonstrate their love for doing work for free. Liking your job and doing it well are important, but a great step to diversifying tech would be to back off this endless thirst for endlessly thirsty employees.
Have you had an employer ask you about your passion for your work? What do you think about passion as a job requirement? Tell me in the comments.
Top comments (47)
"We're looking for someone passionate" on a job description translates to "We want someone that works harder at no additional cost." Prove me wrong.
I reply to them with "How is excellence measured in your company and how is it rewarded." The answers are quite interesting.
For me its just about finding people that have an eye on quality instead quantity. I want to work with devs that are going to try to find ways to improve the code, and not just work on stories. I want thinkers not robots.
I fully agree with you. I'm a picky developer in terms of code quality, and I want to deliver always as best as possible within time frame. This pursue of quality is what motivates me to find new approaches and technologies, listen and learn from people and, at the same time, share my knowledge. I would call that passionate.
I have something clear though: I'm a professional and I appreciate and give a lot of value to my free time. If something I do on my free time casually matches the company interests then good for them, but it's not my main driver.
Yes, you also have to make sure boundaries are respected. In my experience when those boundaries are not respected its usually caused by one or a combination of:
In short, "passionate" is a small part of what constitutes a good hire. Definitively a good trait to look for though.
Interesting point of view!
You can be competent without being passionate.
Agreed.
In my own personal experience, I think of this as being separate from passion. Some people (and I agree they're the best developers often) simply don't like delivering flawed, unmaintainable code. For me that's separate from someone who is "passionate" in terms of always working super hard.
How is it different from passion?
Well, Jonathan you need to be expicit here. Are you saying that you do ask for "passion" or do not? So, does passion create better code? I guess there is a point to be made on either side. no?
It isn't a requirement, but a good quality for a developer to have. I will favour developers who have this quality the same way I will favour a candidate which is already familiar with part of our tech stack.
Ben, you have opened up the floor to this VERY interesting question. So...
What are the answers you have seen in your travels?
Well most of the time they hit me with the old "Errrrrrr..." because they have never thought about it (that's about 70% of the companies I've met.) They simply believe that a fair compensation is enough for their developpers to give 100%. I personnaly doubt it but it's debatable.
A tiny 5% have a direct incentive with clear, well defined objectives and associated bonuses.
The rest of them (25%) simply have packages for the overall enterprise / team / personnal performance. That is to say IF the company performs well AND the team has delivered on time AND your annual meeting with your manager went well, then MAYBE you'll get a few hundreds bucks.
Interesting, so it seems like the majority (70%) don't have a clue(so to speak). The rest have some incentives while only a small portion (5% in this anecdotal survey) have clear objectives and bonuses, i.e. have their shite together.
In my experience working with other companies outside hi-tech that sounds about right. lol
Most companies view tech as a cost center whose function is to provide services to the rest of the company. It doesn't produce value by itself. Value is only created when software is being used by the rest of the company or its clients.
In this context it is very difficult to provide an incentive for developpers to generate more value because there is no direct value produced by them in the first place. Software is only a cost that needs to be lowered - just like refilling your tank with gasoline, who cares if it's better gasoline as long as the car goes, right?
By contrast it's very easy to boost sales by increasing the cut (bonus) the salespeople get, because for every deal signed, there's an amount in dollar attached to it.
Note this is merely an accounting perspective but sadly, most companies understand tech that way as far as I know...
Interesting, the programmer/company model you describe is almost exactly how I would describe the Biotech research company model.
Basic and pre-clinical research which includes animal testing are treated exactly the same. These researchers are viewed as 'overhead' even though they are creating future pipelines and products. The fewer resources a company can give to this branch of the company and the quicker these scientists can produce anything close to a product the better overall for the company. Ironically, historically 'basic' research over the last century has actually been the area where science has (arguably) achieved the largest gains.
Similarly, those in Manufacturing/production, for example those making vaccines for people, are viewed as the most valuable employees by upper management.
A friend of mine summed this idea up by saying. Manufacturers of drug substances are the closest to the cash cow. The father one is away from that cash cow the less important you are.
The model is not just tech but maybe any science endeavor when it meets business. lol
That's what happens when CEOs are accountants... Sometimes hired by other accountants (the shareholders & investors) to merely balance the books and cut costs. All those guys see and understand are spreadsheet, business plans, and financial reports.
Sometimes (5% of the time?), a visionnary CEO may convince them to bet on ideas, innovation, research etc. But most of the time they'll stick to the safe route. They'd rather have $1 with 100% certainty than $100 with 1% certainty.
Also the bigger the company, the stronger the effect. Rendering some of them incapable of innovating because of the fear factor and the "what ifs".
So yeah, the farther you are from the "cash cow", the less the value is tangible, both in minds (it's difficult to understand what those shady scientists are up to, we don't understand a word of these devs mumbo-jumbo...) AND in the spreadsheets - they produce derivative value, not actual value, that is to say value whose yield depend on something else.
The more things change,
The more things stay the same.
Haha
ignore this comment
I will not. You're not mom
Wow. What an amazing reply. 👏🏽👏🏽
Ah nice one! Will use that in the next interview 😂
Would love know the answers you got.
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My rule of thumb is that, if the questions use the word "passion," it's always a cynical attempt to filter out candidates who won't center the company in their life. (A similar question is "why do you want to work for us?" because it frames their leadership as something to aspire to have in your life.)
It's far safer when they ask questions about contributions to projects, that might provoke a passionate response. That could still be about filtering people, but it's more likely that they're figuring out which project to put you on or confirming that you care about your work.
I can say that, when I've been a part of the interviewing process and the candidate doesn't get excited about anything they've worked on, that's a "no-hire." It actually has nothing to do with passion as such, but rather that they've made me suspicious. If nothing in their work history provokes an emotional response or even a story, it sounds suspiciously like they've been pushing work off on their colleagues.
I really like this response.
Good article-- I never thought about the passionate bias like that but it makes a lot of sense. I'm cynical and believe that most companies use "passion" to see if they can get extra work hours, but I believe that there are more facets. Asking myself "why is passion important?" the loudest answer is morale. Ceteris paribus, I believe people who are passionate think a little bit more clever, code a little bit faster, communicate a little bit clearer, take misfortunes a little bit better. Not because of any conscious effort but because of an unconscious fire-- they want to do this, they like to do this down to their core. This hypothesis also explains why companies are now looking for passion in all roles, even where it seems ridiculous-- morale is infectious.
In some cases I think companies look for passion in programmers because it means that the person is paying attention to detail and finishing projects in a polished way rather than a poorly tested and unfinished project.
Maybe, in that example, we are talking about passion when we should just call it being professional, because if we are talking about passion per se, maybe it would be more important to be passionate about the field of the company, whether it is medical, games, banking, etc. rather than being passionate about programming in general.
Coming from the biotech/science industry, people do not ask about 'your passion.' To many, that would be a ridiculous question. When I first heard this discussion, I became cynical about its use. But then I thought back to other interviews I have played a part in. Those questions were only slightly different. The questions I have come across (in my career) seem more pointed than the vague and blunt tool about your passion.
In the conservative world of biotech, people ask 'what are your interests' or 'why do you study x?' From there, people infer what is important to you. To me, that seems more direct than asking about your 'passion quotient'. The idea (at least in my tiny mind) is that there is/could be a certain amount of enthusiasm in our work and that enthusiasm should be born out to some degree.
Another question that I have come across that interested me was, "Would you consider yourself ambitious?" That seems to cut right to the heart of the matter more than this vague passion term. I guess one could even extrapolate this line of thinking to "What are your future plans?" Isn't that more attune to what you really want in your life, be it your personal and professional life?
To me, the term and question regarding passion is just another poor rewording of the same questions that have been around for a long time.
while I agree that in many company Passion is translated to - work more pay less, or work extra hours for free or spend your entire weekend learning the framework we will start using in the next project (. in the end what's best than doing what you love?!?!) I don't necessarily consider a Red Flag.
As any Senior Engineer would answer for almost any problem: It depends
Honestly I can't understand how somebody that is not passionate about coding, technology and solving problem could even do this job, or at least be good at it.
Programming is hard, it is frustrating, it requires to learn a lot, and to unlearn a lot, things change constantly, so, if you don't really like it, how can you dedicate 40 hours per week to it.
Sure it is definetely better than dedicating 40hours per week to Cleaning Toilets or as a Cashier in a Supermarket, but then, well yes.. ** if your only reason to work as a Developer is "there is worse than that" probably then yeah.. that might not be the Passion companies are looking for.**
But then.. how do you demonstrate passion?
Sure, contributing to OS could tell a lot.
Sure, blogging about Software Engineering counts.
Sure, reading articles or learn something out of your working hours is important.
but all this, to a certain extent, to me that could also tell that you _ don't have a life _ . And as soon you find a partner, or you get a baby or find some hobby then you will stop doing all that.
Passion is to be demonstrated at work, during standups, during meetings with stakeholders, during code reviews, while pair programming. It is showing that you care about what you are doing, that you are interested in the feedback you are getting from your colleagues and you like sharing your knowledge to others, it means being proactive, have initiative, find joy in whatever challenge you are faced ( be it fixing a lint rule error or writing UML diagrams, refactoring a crappy piece of legacy code, or architecting a new app.
not just waiting for the PM to assign you a ticket, work on it trying to meet the estimate, push and wait for what's next.
So true! I'd like to note here that some of the best developpers I've met in my carreer are dads with other preocupation than maximizing their entreprise's wealth. What they lacked in passion they made up for in diligence and patience, which are qualities that I admire.
I really liked this - not because you're arguing that companies shouldn't be asking for "passionate" employees, but you're being very explicit about the real reason they do so.
There's a normative judgement and social capital in the word "passionate" - it's usually reserved for someone who is full of energy, dedicated to their craft, will achieve great success, etc etc.
I don't think your cynical answer is cynical at all - it's just that no company in their right mind would write "We prefer candidates who will willingly put in more hours for no extra pay because they will prioritize their job above other things in their life - family, friends, health, personal interests" etc, even though that's 100% the truth.
I personally appreciate you stripping the pseudo-meritocratic veneer off of this word when it's used in job descriptions. It has nothing to do with merit and everything to do with what is in the company's best interest.
Phrasing in things like job descriptions is actually my partner's area of expertise, and some of it's rubbed off on me. I could talk about whether you should ask for it, but I'm inclined to think that most of the time, "passion" is a catchy-sounding space-filler like, "detail-oriented" or "team player" that HR or recruitment agents put in because they can't think of anything original.
To me, the term and question regarding passion is just another poor rewording of the same questions that have been around for a long time.
To me it means nothing. Why? I and all the others I know in this industry are already passionate. In fact passion drives persistence, which is mandatory in order for us to keep our jobs. How many new things did we learn just last week even though we've been in programming for 25+ years?
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