Belén  😱

Let’s start with 1. I used to believe this was a good thing in my early twenties, but I grew out of it. I’ve met plenty of “passionate” devs who are terrible professionals. And I’ve also met some people whom I’ve loved to work with and don’t think about development after 5pm

For me it’s enough if someone decided to make this their profession and work full time on this. That’s plenty of hours a week to learn and grow –provided you are in the right environment

Some folks also enjoy their work a lot and/or pour every ounce of energy into it that they really need to disconnect in the evenings and weekends

OTOH, some examples of “passionate” devs who are not good professionals (and I’d definitely not want them in my team) include:

- The toxic brogrammer who likes to drink alcohol in the afternoon, works hard plays hard and is disdainful towards his non-brogrammers teammates

- The “overengineer guy”, who wastes time coding a complicated solution that only seniors can maintain later, just because of the technical challenge

- The “fuck the tech plan” guy, who doesn’t give a damn about the tech stack of the company, and always introduces the latest frameworks and tools in his projects just because he likes them (or wants to learn them) regardless the know-how of the other people in the team

- The “sexist guy”, who makes sexist jokes aloud in the office, refuses to merge pull request from fellow female developers and gets credit for things that he didn’t do or suggested

- The “fraud guy”, who goes to tons of events, reads a lot of blog posts, knows the features of every single JS framework the day after the release… and somehow is a terrible programmer

– The “genius” guy who can take a lot of work on his back but is unable to work with a team or mentor others, and likes to make toxic comments (that usually people are too afraid to answer to, because he’s “the guy”)

- The “absolute unprofessional guy” who is terrible at estimating tasks, makes promises he won’t fulfill, skips needed meetings, etc.

I could go on, but you get the idea

Now let’s go for n0 2: equating “passion” with side projects

This is a mistake because: - There’s multiple ways of showing passion - You can be very passionate and not make side projects for a variety of reasons

Passion indicators (among many others): - Is this person happy at work? - Is this person kind towards their coworkers ? - Does this person like to learn? Has curiosity? - Does this person share their knowledge? Mentor junior devs?

Re: side projects, sometimes they can be and indicator of passion, but sometimes they can be a false positive too. More and more people with no (or little) “passion” feel forced to invest time to make a portfolio of side projects because companies require it in their job specs

And you can be passionate and not make side projects because you need to put your time to a better use: - Rest - Caregiving - Socializing with friends and family - Other hobbies

From my point of view, a side project is an indicator on whether the person has spare time in their weekends or evenings. You don’t need to be Sherlock to guess why that would be useful for some companies

PS: if you think I’ve written this because I don’t have passion and I’m afraid of not being hired, you couldn’t be more wrong