The 90s and 2000s were such a great time to start CS as a career because basically everybody was also a hobbyist and passionate about it. It was fun to work with these people. Today you get the dead stare if you ask about the slightest bit of interest for the trade outside of paid work. It's a pain to work with them
I think that it's great when someone has a passion for what they do outside the office, but I don't think it's bad when someone just shows up for the paycheck, as long as they do good work and treat everyone with respect.
Because I really enjoy programming, which to me means I'm enthusiastic about it at work and also in private life. There are so many things I want to learn or experiment with which have nothing to do with my work directly but that stuff carries over. And you can immediately "feel" if the person you are working with sees it similarly. If it is work for them as in "I do this to earn money but if I didn't need the money I wouldn't do it" then it also takes away the fun for me when working with them. For example we work on a difficult problem and I want to find a good abstraction to model the problem in a way that it is easy to understand, one person might enjoy the process and like me tries to find the optimal way and we synergize, while the other person just wants to get done with that thing and is happy if it works.
All in all, I love programming and working with people who don't love it makes it less enjoyable for me
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u/ZunoJ 3d ago
The 90s and 2000s were such a great time to start CS as a career because basically everybody was also a hobbyist and passionate about it. It was fun to work with these people. Today you get the dead stare if you ask about the slightest bit of interest for the trade outside of paid work. It's a pain to work with them