7 ms·

I have recently been applying for a new software engineering job. Any job that has included in the listing for job responsibilities: "A passion for what you do"

• distant_hat 8y ago
  What people write in those ads is fairly generic. Having interviewed a fair bit and knowing people in other companies in the industry I can say outside of the strict job description all such 'requirements' are completely dependent upon the group of people you end up with.
• kpwagner 8y ago
  Honesty and self-awareness. I'll take those over naive emphatic workaholism.
  • BigChiefSmokem 8y ago
    Have you watched the documentaries on the Fyre Festival?Everyone in the company can be honest but if the top isn't then it doesn't matter. You can't really know that up front.
  • mobilemidget 8y ago
    ... I probably should have read this when I turned 20...
    • kpwagner 8y ago
      Fret not. I was a naive emphatic workaholic my first two years out of college--working as an investment banking analyst. It's taken me ten years to figure out that I wasn't honest with myself (or others) about what I wanted, and I've paid a price.
• SpicyLemonZest 8y ago
  What companies are trying to avoid is the failure scenario with an office full of miserable people, constantly complaining about each other and finding creative new ways to slack off. That leads to burnout just as surely as 100 hour weeks do.
  • save_ferris 8y ago
    That makes sense to me, although I don't necessarily think that companies achieve this by looking for people who are passionate about their work. An office full of miserable people usually indicates poor management, which no amount of passion can really offset. I think there's a lot of pressure to "enjoy" work because good-paying work is a lot harder to find these days. Not to mention that our work is deeply ingrained in our identity (at least in the US). I get asked what I do for a living 95% of the time when I meet new people in the US, and exactly 0% when I meet new people in Europe.
    • icebraining 8y ago
      What do you get asked about in Europe?
  • AlexandrB 8y ago
    I don't think hiring for "passion" will avoid this. In my experience, these kinds of dysfunctions are systemic and/or cultural and can arise even in companies full of people who are engaged and passionate about software development.
    • sanderjd 8y ago
      Yep. What happens when you hire a bunch of people for their "passion" and then it turns out they need to spend their days setting up A/B tests and marketing emails while maintaining a crappy house of cards that they aren't allowed to put time into improving because that's not what has customer-visible ROI? Well, you get an office full of miserable cynical people whose passion has been stamped out. I just watched the Netflix documentary about the Fyre festival last night, and it seems analogous: it's actually worse to get people excited about a dream that doesn't exist than for people to be open-eyed about what something actually is.
• tomatotomato37 8y ago
  What's your opinion on "crafted" job listings versus boilerplate job listings? Passion for a job is often a generic thing pasted into those listings along with 15 years of experience in Angular, but in a personalized listing an emphasis on passion I do see as kind of a warning sign.
  • rubenbe 8y ago
    I agree, this line is probably added by someone in HR/Recruiting (no disrespect) who adds it to every job list he/she posts.
  • sokoloff 8y ago
    Ages ago, I was hiring for a senior systems engineering position. I wanted to use a one-line requirements section: "Knows how a computer actually works" Was blocked by HR/recruiting... :(
    • throwawaymath 8y ago
      In fairness, that sounds like a bad job ad on the other end of the extreme. Sometimes job ads are overspecified and fantastical. That one is so underspecified I can't figure out what's different about the job.
      • sokoloff 8y ago
        That was not the entire listing, but just for the requirements section. You know, where people typically list "8 years experience in 3 year old technology" and the laundry list of every other keyword/language/framework they've ever heard of.
        • iamdave 8y ago
          >You know, where people typically list "8 years experience in 3 year old technology" and the laundry list of every other keyword/language/framework they've ever heard of. I have a really funny story about this involving a recruiter deciding I wasn't a good fit for one role, and recommending I take another because I didn't specifically list any experience with CSV files of all things on a DevOps resume. Turns out a friend worked at first company, in the support team-made a referral and I was hired two weeks later after interviewing with the team lead and department head. During onboarding week I'm talking with a few team members at lunch and one of them mentions how they've been needing to hire the role but never put much effort into it, HR connects them with an agency and the recruiting company they hired never sent them any candidates, and only even emailed to say they "maybe" had one person, but that they were missing a few 'key' skills. I smiled discreetly and listened on, but the whole time I had this image in my head: https://i.imgur.com/JbzO6uM.png https://i.imgur.com/JbzO6uM.png
• paulcole 8y ago
  I interviewed for a job where the description said both, "we take work-life balance seriously" and "you must be able to work on multiple projects under very tight deadlines." I asked the interviewer how both of those could be true and he said, "I'm not sure, I'll have to get back to you."
• PopeDotNinja 8y ago
  > Any job that has included in the listing for job responsibilities: "A passion for what you do", I have not applied to. As a developer and former recruiter, I will say that most job ads are not written well. Many people cut & paste the text from other jobs ads and tweak it for their own purposes. The people with whom you'd work may not even be aware of what's in the job ad. Crafting a good job ad is hard.
  • lainga 8y ago
    If you care enough about the position to cut and paste, will you care enough about the employee?
    • throwawaymath 8y ago
      I don't think one has any correlation with the other.
    • harlanji 8y ago
      I have started asking why specifically the position I am interviewing for is open. Not knowing is dodgy, and ads like this would be a side effect.
    • heroh 8y ago
      a job posting is half the battle - you want to have a competitive job description that's scraped by job engines and discoverable to the potential candidate. This may mean you have to look at how competitors are doing it and replicating what they're doing to maintain competitive presence -- which can include copy/paste and customizing as appropriate. You can make a job description a special snowflake, but then not reach the right candidates. In my experience, I will find job postings on a job aggregator website, which will lead me to a companies website for the position. These positings will usually include a boilerplate on what the job includes + other details on the company. If it seems interesting, I'll research the firm to see what they're doing, opinions on glassdoor etc. Judging a company and their treatment of their employees by job description alone is a very narrow view of how business operates.
  • 8y ago
• LaserToy 8y ago
  It is more enjoyable to work with people who love what they do. I also don’t believe you can be actually very good at something if you not I live with it. That’s it.
  • grawprog 8y ago
    I used to think that until one day I asked probably my most skilled, experienced coworker whether he likes his job, not the job but the work he does. He was confused. He said no it's just work. I like completing the schedule. Yet he works long hours, everything he does is extremely high quality and just watching him work you can tell he's pretty masterful at what he does. Though honestly, I'm not even sure if he sees himself that way.
• cc81 8y ago
  I like being around people who have a passion for software development. That does not mean that they are working themselves to death but the curiosity will end up making them better developers. As a .NET developer you usually get a MSDN licence from your company and that will give you a generous amount of "free money" on Azure. My passionate colleagues have read up on what you can do and tried some cool things while most of my other colleagues have never even logged in to it. My passionate colleagues might read an article from Hackernews about web architecture at lunch because they think it is interesting while my less passionate colleagues browse Facebook.
  • icebraining 8y ago
    I think "passion" is too strong (probably a result of word inflation, like "awesome" and such), but yeah, having someone to work with who actually gives a shit about what they're doing is much nicer. It's not even about the company, just the process itself.
    • rzzzt 8y ago
      David Mitchell agrees with you: https://youtu.be/Bz2-49q6DOI https://youtu.be/Bz2-49q6DOI
      • scrollaway 8y ago
        Off topic but thanks for that. :) I didn't know David Mitchell made youtube content. He's one of my favourite british TV personas! Love him on Would I Lie To You.
    • blihp 8y ago
      There are people who have an actual, genuine passion for things they get paid to do esp. in tech. The issue is when it becomes a corporate mantra parroted by people who not only don't love it but don't even care about it that it loses all meaning. I suspect that's where your sentiment comes from but don't believe for a second that there aren't people with genuine passion out there.
    • 8y ago
• throwawaymath 8y ago
  I think you're spiting yourself by opting out of every single job that lists that line. Whether or not a company encourages burn out probably has nothing to do with whether or not they put this or that boilerplate on their job ads. It's not as if they have a consistent set of criteria they're searching for when they write that. Someone in HR or recruiting put it in there because it's what they've always done and they haven't seen a downside to it. In that sense it's just fluff. Fluff is bad for recruiting, but you shouldn't try to infer what a corporate culture is like merely from the flavor of fluff on job ads.
  • iamdave 8y ago
    Whether or not a company encourages burn out probably has nothing to do with whether or not they put this or that boilerplate on their job ads. Interesting you put it that way, since I've learned to be on the lookout for boilerplate in job ads as a personal filter. Usually I've figured this out by just copying and pasting select texts from their ad into Google and seeing how many other job ads from different companies for similar (and in a few cases wholly different) roles. You say "spiting yourself" I call it doing due diligence because you can best bet those companies are gonna be scrutinizing the hell out of whatever resume I give them, turnabout is only fair.
    • throwawaymath 8y ago
      I call it spiting yourself precisely because I don't think you can forecast the behavior of the modal company from that line being on its job ads. That you cannot, in fact, "best bet" anything about them based on that line is exactly why I think you're doing a disservice to yourself by avoiding them. It's just generic filler. That makes for a very arbitrary filter when you're choosing which companies to avoid.
      • iamdave 8y ago
        Sure but this can be said about nearly any aspect of evaluating who you want to work for, hindsight will always be 20/20 once you sign the offer agreement. I'm sure most if not all of us have taken jobs where all the things on our personal checklists were checked off in the interview only to discover the place didn't live up to expectations and certainly probably the opposite has happened. What may be arbitrary for some might be the difference between accepting or declining a job offer for others. At the end of the day the only person who knows if what they see in a job interview matches what they're looking for in a workplace is that individual, and no one else.
• TomVDB 8y ago
  I like to work with people who love doing what they do. That’s what I understand under passion. It doesn’t necessarily mean that they have to work until 8pm every day.
• rm999 8y ago
  >Any job that has included in the listing for job responsibilities: "A passion for what you do", I have not applied to. You're mistaking "passion for what you do" with "passion for a job". I've worked with a lot of people who love their field and I've never seen a correlation with hours worked. If anything the people closest to burnout are always complaining about their job and fantasize about leaving their field entirely. Those people are not passionate for what they do.
• BurningFrog 8y ago
  I think you're over-interpreting a standard phrase. To me "a passion for what you do" means that you care about your work and you don't half-ass it. But I expect that it probably means other things for other people, including your interpretation of "tons of overtime".
  • Jade_Jet 8y ago
    The phrase “a good work ethic” to me describes what you are saying exactly. I am not passionate about computers, I like solving problems and streamlining the tedious. Personally I don’t have a passion for my company either. I like them, I like what they pay me, and I like the benefits and culture. I see my paycheck as a business transaction that is favorable to both myself and the company I work for. With that being said, I do actually enjoy the work I do, but would never use the word passion to describe it.
  • hnuser355 8y ago
    Maybe it’s cynical but I feel like halfassing your work is a very good tactic in some situations. Eg your manager halfassed the project idea, he halfasses spending the time to understand what’s going on, he halfasses setting the team up correctly, etc. In that situation I’m going to halfass the project and spend the other half going out to eat with my friends at other companies, learning something new and relevant, and planning my finances so I can weather any sort of lay-off etc
• lordnacho 8y ago
  I think you're absolutely right to avoid those postings. Fluff like "passion" or "drive" or "initiative" is indicative of someone who has no idea why they are hiring someone. Let alone the fact that none of these things is reliably demonstrable, and all of them depend on what the job on offer is. You're far better off responding to an ad that says "we want someone who has done x, y, and z, and wants to use it for a, b, and c". Specific things with a specific purpose. If someone has that, they've thought about what they actually need, not how they want to look.
• alangpierce 8y ago
  It's tricky. On one hand, it seems odd to say "you must care about the work you do". On the other hand, I think there's a noticeable difference in quality between software that just meets the minimum requirements vs software that was developed with care and pride. There is real benefit to figuring out some mechanism for software engineers (and all workers) to be passionate about what they're doing, and people who are chronically in the "I don't care" camp make that quite a bit harder. My reading is that "a passion for what you do" is meant to filter out those sorts of people. It's much more related to working style/attitude than number of hours worked. Maybe a refined/alternate job req would be something like this: "You must be open to the idea that the work that you're doing has value and is intrinsically motivating. We will do our best to convey that value and provide that motivation, and you should try to harness that motivation to produce high-quality work." Certainly, as someone who has planned engineering tasks for teams, a lot of focus has been on making sure that everyone has a feel of ownership/vision and is working on things that they enjoy.
• ddebernardy 8y ago
  > Any job that has included in the listing for job responsibilities: "A passion for what you do", I have not applied to. I've an extra criteria of late, which is not applying to anything that I don't find socially useful or that is obviously engaged in some anti-social behavior. Try that, and you'll skip nearly all jobs. Sad world...
  • cableshaft 8y ago
    I've tried using that criteria also, and found similar results. Hardly anything out there actually seems to be all that useful (despite their sales pitch or mission statements) nowadays. Most of it is just a me too with a barely different take on something that already exists, and that thing often isn't something terribly needed either. Although maybe I'm just getting older and persnickety.
• rdiddly 8y ago
  It would be better if, instead of using a distilled and ambiguous code word like "passion" (that several people on this thread are expending valiant effort to explain/define) employers just came out and said what they mean/want. "We're looking for people who do their work with care and attention," or the like. Passion is a whole can of worms. Passion can be sex, rage, irrational attachments to things you're "passionate" about, or boundless totally disruptive joy. Is that what they want in the office? I doubt it.
• afpx 8y ago
  I’d argue that if you’re good at developing software, you are probably passionate for it. Creating software is very hard, and I’ve never worked with a person who has gotten good at it without having an above average level of interest. I believe that’s partly because developing good software, efficiently requires team members who can work independently with little guidance. And, to be able to do that, one has to have some interest in what they’re building. But, I may be wrong, and I’ll have to think about it more. It’s good to know that people get turned off by that description, though. I’ve put that term in my job posts for a long time. It comes from my experiences in the 90s and 2000s when waves of people entered the industry only for the money. And, it always seemed to show in their work. Plus, because of shortages, often it’s easier to train passionate, entry-level developers than it is to find good experienced developers. And, that’s not because I low-ball on salary. It’s just very difficult to convince people to come work for you, especially when your a scrappy little startup with little revenue and high risk of going under.
  • clarry 8y ago
    > I’d argue that if you’re good at developing software, you are probably passionate for it. Developing software is all the same, right? Just like everyone tuning the engine in their race spec roadster must love doing oil changes and swapping rusted brake discs on their neighbor's 15-year-old nissan micra? I know a lot of people who are passionate about the beautiful software they get to work on their spare time, on their own terms.. software not tainted by dysfunctional corporate culture, legacy, deadlines, budget constraints, ever growing technical debt, etc. I suspect most of them don't expect to find such passion-worthy projects in a commercial setting. It is quite likely that they won't love their job, even if they can do a heck of a good job at it. So yeah, that kind of description can be a bit of a turn-off.
    • afpx 8y ago
      I concede. That is a good point.
  • charlie0 8y ago
    My thoughts exactly. Those without passion for their career (not a specific job) are going to know just the bare minimum needed to complete a job. It leads to mediocrity. At the same time, I acknowledge that "passion" is an overused buzzword.
• sigfubar 8y ago
  You’re overestimating the amount of actual effort most companies put into writing their job descriptions. The majority of such blurbs strive to fall close to a certain mean that is defined by a variety of canned phrases, one of those you seem to take issue with. Don’t read too deeply into the text. Instead, talk to the people and decide for yourself. The interview is a two way street, especially in this labor market. You can afford to be selective based on meaningful criteria.
• czardoz 8y ago
  Software development is a job that changes frequently, and that requires engineers to stay "on top" of these changes. People who are not passionate about it may get their skills outdated sooner. So honestly, I think being "passionate" is actually important in this profession, more than others.
  • sjapkee 8y ago
    >Software development is a job that changes frequently, and that requires engineers to stay "on top" of these changes. Hype oriented programming as it is.
• vidro3 8y ago
  i think there's a difference between passion for what you do and passion for what the firm does. I try to learn and become a better developer. I could give a rats ass about programmatic advertising and the "value" we bring clients.
• bdcravens 8y ago
  Personally I think that "A passion for what you do" is HR fluff that has no bearing on the real job; it's the new "ninja". Similarly, when I see "Made with (heart image) in (location)" at the bottom of a website, I'm pretty the developers weren't overflowing with emotion when they hit commit.
• leroy_masochist 8y ago
  You can take this to mean two things, right? "A passion for what you do" could mean that, for example, you write work-irrelevant npm packages in your spare time because it scratches an itch. I want to work with people like that! I don't think it's wrong to try to identify and hire these kinds of people. On the other hand, "a passion for what you do" could be code for, "you have to go full tankie on our company's 'we are making the world a better place' mission statement BS". And for companies that's true of, you'll probably be able to identify that trait pretty early in the actual interview process. So, maybe you should apply to some of those jobs!
• squirrelicus 8y ago
  We're so privileged to be in a market where we can be so discerning.
• Kiro 8y ago
  It's not about asking you to work yourself to death. At least in front-end development you need to have a passion in order to stay up to date or you will be irrelevant. That's the passion I'm looking for when hiring.
• ivanhoe 8y ago
  It's so sad that the word passion has become an euphemism for working long hours and weekends, and it really should be all about caring about the project. The paradox with that is that more you're burned out less you will care about the project (or anything else really), less "passion" you'll have.
• AareyBaba 8y ago
  As a technical hiring manager, I write out a job description general enough to attract a wide pool of candidates with specific requirements to keep the candidates relevant. This description gets passed on to HR for posting and they append the company spiel to it. That's where generic HR keywords like 'passion', 'exciting', 'innovation','elite team', 'cutting edge', 'game changing', 'inspiring' get added. I don't have control over that. So ignore the HR rubbish and checkout what the hiring manager and his/her team are like. Also note in mid-size (1000+) to large (10K+) companies each manager and team can have their own work culture based on the personalities in the team so don't write off such a company based on interviews with just one group.
  • pbhjpbhj 8y ago
    Why is it acceptable for HR to add bullshit? Who thinks that's a good idea?
    • icebraining 8y ago
      Probably nobody; it's just that nobody cares about preventing them.
    • AareyBaba 8y ago
      In a large company with a range of hiring needs (engineering, legal, sales, program management) HR recruiting has to come up with a one size fits all company sales pitch. In a small company you can override the job postings and even do the job postings yourself. In a large company, you follow process and pick your battles selectively otherwise you get exhausted tilting at windmills.
• flashgordon 8y ago
  Actually if it makes it any better, you could take "a passion for what you do" as "will put in best foot regardless of how unstimulating and braindead the job is". So not so much as burn out as patience. How does that work for you?
• sridca 8y ago
  Passion notwithstanding we can all agree that it is sensible to enjoy doing work. The problem is that many people swing from being passionate to the other side of the spectrum by becoming cynical of work.