For a couple of years I worked at companies where the work was dull and laborious, and nobody listened to anything the developers had to say or gave them an opportunity to shine. It really put me off programming for a time, and although I was still passionate, it was about my various hobbies and not development. As you say, not enjoying your work really sucks.

Fortunately that acted as a catalyst and made me start learning C# so I could get a better job – I’m now regularly coding in the evenings again, blogging about all the cool stuff around, and often work an hour or two extra (at my new job) just because I want to keep going on some interesting problem!

So while I think your mum is right about traditional incentives like money not making people passionate, motivators such as the those identified by Fred’s company (such as being appreciated!) can certainly make a difference.

Yeah, it’s true. I came in on Friday morning to officially say I was quitting. I can only think of 2 reasons for it. #1 as I mentioned before, or possibly #2, He was paranoid about letting 3rd parties into the office when no one was there.

I remember in the interview, one question set off small warning bells. “How well do you work with difficult personalities?” I can, and have worked with just about every kind of personality. At first I thought he was talking about the technical lead who was a bit eccentric & difficult to talk to at first. Actually, he was talking about himself. When the rest of the team was having a team meeting to discuss a set of requirements, they started at 07:00 and went right through to 10:00 then took a break where the tech lead went out for a smoke. The boss walked into the office around that time and asked what everyone was doing sitting around. Then when the tech lead came back he grilled him for leaving everyone waiting and wasting time. (maybe 10 minutes) That afternoon I did a demo with another dev of the functionality I started earlier in the week and we were discussing using a UI similar to what users are used to with Excel. When I had started up I’d moved many of the shortcuts into folders to de-clutter my desktop & start menu. Since we did the demo on my machine the other dev had to ask me where the Excel link was. After I pointed out the “Office” folder, the boss piped in and told me to put the icons back on the desktop.

I was amazed that anyone would work under those conditions.

http://blog.coreycoogan.com/2009/07/22/passion-in-software-development/

Here’s the thing: I shouldn’t even have used the term 5:01 in this post. There are plenty of passionate people working for lame employers that have every reason to get out fo there and practice Kaizen on their own. That will certeinly lead to a better company, and a better team.

Further, I wonder about something. Do driven people gravitate to that for which they have a passion?

I understand plenty of people are not on fire for their chosen profession. Isn’t that sad? I mean, who wants to spend so much time doing something you you don’t love?

I’ve known programers who decided to move into other careers. Go for it! The point is to do what you love and do it with passion. If you are lacking either, why not go find what works for you?

Really?

Take your typical graduate developer. They’re excited, energetic, focused, and full of ideas. What they don’t have is practical experience. Mix them in a room with experienced developers, give them free drinks, snacks, and lunches, proper equipment, non-intrusive management, and skilled business analysts and you’ve got a happy, effective software development unit. More importantly, you’ll have a software development unit that will be much easier to retain. People adopt things like best practices because they are looking for things to make their lives easier. The way a business is run has far, far more to do with enticing this out of their staff than anything.

Uncle Bob’s tenant is perfectly correct, but who’s going to invest in themselves if they don’t know that investment will be appreciated?

I believe incentives will encourage best practices. But equally, if not more important, the lack of incentive will surely *kill* any effort. (Other than people spending effort to improve themselves to get hired somewhere else.)

It is amazing though. Providing lunches & snacks & drinks costs peanuts compared to the cost of unproductive staff, and staff that just perform to the minimum expectation instead of 100%. I mean what, $15/day for lunch and bulk snacks? that’s not even 1/2 hour of pay. You can pay for 8 hours and get 8 hours of half-assed work, or pay for 8.5 hours and get 8 hours of dedicated, happy work. Hell, I spent a week at a company where the boss figured that staff weren’t going to be productive on a Friday afternoon so he had them go around the office to vacuum, clean the kitchens and bathrooms. I thought they were pulling my leg.

Tenet of professionalism: work 40 hours for your employer and another 20 hours improving yourself. Always increase your own value.

If you haven’t already seen it, check out this post: 50% Time

I recognize that my passion fueled by others’ passion. So the problem I have is determining if one’s passion is at (or exceeds) my level. I hold in high esteem those close friends with the same level of passion as mine. Growing that circle however is sometimes difficult. That’s why I love reading blogs, and attending conferences such as Tech-Ed – where the average level of passion there is at or exceeds my level.

Not all programmers are “geeks” (i.e. people who are ‘passionate’ and love to hack around with stuff) and not all good programmers are, either. this idea gets perpetuated a lot but it is false.

For example, there are probably mechanics out there who really love cars and work on their own cars in their spare time, and mechanics who just do their work at their job. Both can be great at what they do, just like coders can, I think. So the answer from my perspective to the question posed would be, “Time and commitments to people in your life have a large effect on dictating what you do outside of work.” For that matter, someone can improve themselves regardless of this, but obviously the degree to which you can spend your whole evening coding is dictated by those outside factors. The other factor of course, is self-discipline.

I wouldn’t chalk it up to being the only factor. I just don’t think that people would spend outside time trying to better themselves if they didn’t actually want to be doing it.