Passion == Productivity for Software Engineers

Photo by Michael Kucharski on Unsplash

The Secret Developer has written articles stating that passion is a myth in software engineering. It may come as a surprise to followers of this blog that The Secret Developer now claims passion is directly correlated to software development productivity. They’ve been arguing the opposite for some time and that passion is some sort of employer construct.

“Let’s take a look at the idea of passion in software development and see if it has any value for software engineers in their work. 

Let us take this divisive topic and see if there is something worth salvaging from the idea for general software engineers.”

Passion

”If passion is beneficial, let us look at several key points in software development and see if passion will help a software engineer’s day.”

Learning Passion

If you wish to be a programmer going into the future, you will need to be able to keep up with trends. Laggard software developers do not end up being employed for very long periods of time.

“Ideally, you’d know the theoretical underpinnings of software development so wouldn’t need to study those LeetCode questions like a noob every 6 months. The same applies to frameworks and languages.

However, even if you have a formal education in computer science you need to have a passion for keeping up to date with software engineering trends. Things do frequently change, and you need to keep up with that.

When a developer has a passion for producing great work, they are not only able to create great new features, but their work is frequently quick and accurate.

This is because they want to learn. They want to do a good job. Motivation in this game means a lot and means that when your team needs you to deliver, you can.

When a company speaks about passion this is actually what they want but it simply isn’t expressed as well as it might be.

The Secret Developer is nothing if not interested in software development. So there.”

The contrast

Here is how The Secret Developer feels about those who lack passion for software development. 

“One of my colleagues only spoke about his goal of retiring by 40. Unsurprisingly he wasn’t that interested in learning new technology or moving our project on. 

As a developer with a similar level of experience, I could run rings around his contributions to the project simply because I wanted to learn, and that made the whole difference.”

Delivery Passion

You love to work. Programming gives you the ability to build things! That means you can create solutions that will make a difference to customers. It’s that old idea — you can change the world. That is the ideal software developer certainly.

“Programming should be your passion. Delivering is important too though because you should have your end customer in mind when creating software. As software engineers, we should think about one important thing. It’s that the customer ultimately pays your salary (I know it’s annoying to think about). 

Let that sink in for a minute.

Although you might spend your days crafting the perfect set of PRs it is what that code does which is important. What they deliver in terms of bugfixes and features rather than the tech debt they solve (as much as it pains me to say this).”

The contrast

Here is how The Secret Developer feels about those who lack passion for delivery.

“Some devs I work with some unwilling to do anything really. Their cadence can be so low that I’m not sure that they are still employed by the company.

Now getting those people actually to deliver is even worse. They don’t seem interested in getting software out of the door and it makes me question why they are in this game. I mean what are they doing here?

In most companies that type of software developer doesn’t last particularly long but unfortunately in my current role, it feels like I’m surrounded by this type of developer.

It’s killing my personal motivation.”

Company passion

Are you passionate about who you work for? Your team might have team spirit and the people might care about what they are doing.

“Some delusional people at work actually believe that they are making a difference in their cubicle job, but each to their own.

If you think you work for a great corporation, startup or whatever gets your blood going, more power to you. As long as you use it to create superior software then I’m all for it.”

The contrast

Here is how The Secret Developer feels about those who lack passion for their company.

“I’m there tbh. I don’t see why anyone would ‘love’ their company unless either you’re working for your uncle or Nintendo or something. 

Even then I wouldn’t break my back to make someone else rich. It would help if you had more concrete motivation for making things great than that. 

I get that it’s easier to show passion for your job when you have passion for a company. It’s just I haven’t found a company that is worth the time.“

Mission passion

Alternatively, you might have a product that really helps people. Working in medicine? Making an App to eradicate poverty? You might well have the right to have passion about what you’re doing. If you’re making a real difference to the world you should be proud of that. 

“Who cares about poverty? Seriously. We should all be learning Carbon.

Anyway, if you love your mission that’s great if it gives you motivation to complete that tricky feature.

It’s kinda funny that the big tech and big pharma companies are all about missions that they never seem to behave with respect too. Funny or depressing.”

The contrast

Here is how The Secret Developer feels about those who lack passion for their mission.

“It’s easier to show passion for your job when you have passion for the company’s overarching mission. 

Unfortunately again I’ve never seen a company with true passion for anything other than money. It’s a shame because developers that really buy into a company do seem to perform better than those that don’t (in my experience).”

Conclusion

You can build a career if you are not passionate about it. It can even be a good career. 

A great one though?

“I’ve never seen a great programmer who doesn’t LOVE coding.

That doesn’t mean that you need to fit into the classic reasons why one might be passionate about your work except for one. That one is that you should enjoy making software. It’s the only way you will become truly great.”

Think about that.