www-datagubbe-se-og9kur.txt (13472B)
1 { datagubbe } 2 3 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 4 5 [1]datagubbe.se » on working with your passion 6 7 On Working With Your Passion 8 9 Autumn 2024 10 11 Cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the 12 days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and 13 you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall 14 eat bread, till you return to the ground. 15 16 Genesis 3:17-19 17 18 I recently read an old blog post by Eric Wastl (of [2]Advent of Code fame) 19 entitled [3]Your Job Is Not to Write Code. The gist of it is that software 20 development is, actually, a lot about writing code. Wastl's text is, I dare 21 say, uncontroversial - including its final sentence and sentiment: "(...) Your 22 job is to engineer things, and to love every second of it." 23 24 Is it, though? 25 26 As a software developer, I agree that my job is to write software that is as 27 good as humanly possible given the circumstances under which it was produced. 28 I'd argue, however, that it is not my duty to love every second of it. 29 30 Let it be noted that I'm not trying to pick a belated fight with Wastl here: 31 his text is fairly lighthearted and it seems fitting for it to end on an upbeat 32 note. Add to this that the sentiment that software developers should love their 33 jobs, or work with their passion, is extremely commonplace. I come across it so 34 often it almost seems like a mantra, or perhaps rather a platitude repeated 35 without much thought. 36 37 This begs the question: Why is that? 38 39 *** 40 41 There are good and bad jobs, and there are many various factors affecting this. 42 Examples like colleagues, managers, salaries, working environments, tasks, 43 workplace hazards and personal proclivities immediately spring to mind. I'd 44 probably make for an abysmal a dentist, for example, but I'd like to think I'd 45 make a decent farmer. Liking and enjoying most aspects of a job, however, is 46 not the same as loving every second of it, or being passionate about it. 47 48 A wise person once defined a passion as something you'd do even if you didn't 49 get paid for it. In that sense, I'm passionate about a lot of things - 50 including computers and programming. But my passion isn't perfectly aligned 51 with what I do at work: there are many different kinds of programming. The same 52 goes for a lot of other activities. Being passionate about food doesn't mean 53 you'll love every second of being a line cook at an all-you-can-eat cruise 54 liner buffet. Being passionate about cars doesn't mean you'll love every second 55 of working on the assembly line at Tesla. And, of course, being passionate 56 about programming doesn't mean you'll love every second of churning out yet 57 another REST API. 58 59 Conversely, this doesn't mean you should do a bad job. It also doesn't mean 60 that not loving a job automatically means you hate it. Passion shouldn't be 61 confused with things like personal growth, pride, satisfaction and enjoyment: 62 the more of this you feel at work, the better. It's just that there's often a 63 gap between something you'd do for free and something you're paid to do, 64 regardless of your working conditions. 65 66 Even when actually working with something that is your passion, can it really 67 stay that way for long? I love [4]tinkering with my [5]Amiga. I'm not paid a 68 single cent for it - I do it when I feel like it (which is rather often), on my 69 own terms. There's no pressure, no demands and no deadlines other than those I, 70 and nobody else, decide. Would that really feel the same if I, say, did it in 71 front of an audience on Youtube - an audience on which my livelihood depended? 72 How often would I have to think of some new project, and how much would I have 73 to adapt that project to suit the tastes of those effectively financing my 74 mortgage? As far as jobs go, I'm sure it could be better than most - but I 75 doubt it would really be my passion and, more importantly, I firmly believe it 76 would risk poisoning the well that's presently the source of much creative joy. 77 78 I'm sure there are people who have successfully managed to turn their passion 79 into a job they love every second of - though I think they're fewer than we 80 care to admit. I'm also sure there are people who are perfectly happy 81 performing some menial job as nothing more than a means to finance a 82 commercially unviable passion - probably many more than the first category. In 83 this context, though, this is an aside - it's the passion trope itself that 84 interests me. 85 86 *** 87 88 Where does this notion of professional love, or passion, come from? It's 89 commonplace in some lines of work, whereas others are refreshingly exempt from 90 it. Nobody expects a vacuum truck operator to go around exclaiming things like 91 "Pumping sewage is my passion!" That doesn't mean their work isn't important 92 (Quite the contrary!) or that they can't - or shouldn't - feel pride or job 93 satisfaction, or earn a decent living wage. 94 95 It seems to me as if this talk of passion has increased in strength and 96 prevalence along with the shift towards a service economy - yet, not everyone 97 employed in the service sector are expected to be passionate about their jobs. 98 Sure, many Foodora and Doordash delivery workers have probably, at some point, 99 been subjected to some trite motivational speech along those lines, but in 100 reality - just as with the vacuum truck operator - nobody expects them to 101 really feel that way. 102 103 Hence, in what's considered the lower rungs of the service economy, 104 professional passion is nothing more than an empty phrase. However, as we climb 105 the ladder of status, prestige and - sometimes - salary, this phrase becomes 106 more loaded with intent and ostensible sincerity. 107 108 One reason for this could be the type of jobs that have proliferated during the 109 last few decades. By channeling [6]David Graeber and [7]Peter Turchin, our 110 current situation can be summarized as one where jobs with immediate meaning - 111 manufacturing, farming - have, to a large extent, been replaced with highly 112 abstract (and often seemingly superfluous) make-work jobs. Coupled with 113 downward mobility and cutthroat competition within the middle class, we seek 114 rationalization to help us reconcile with a reality not quite matching our 115 expectations. 116 117 Maybe churning out clickbait headlines about celebrities (and perhaps barely 118 earning a living wage doing so) wasn't the desired outcome after spending lots 119 of time and money on a journalism degree. Maybe polishing off yet another 120 corporate powerpoint about DEI policy wasn't, in your heart of hearts, what you 121 envisioned when enrolling in university. Maybe your friends earn more money 122 than you, or seem more professionally fulfilled, or at least have a job that 123 comes with more prestige. Maybe you've come to feel that "education is the 124 silver bullet" was a lie you were told when you were young and impressionable. 125 And maybe, just maybe, lies along that line beget other lies. 126 127 Passion can be one such convenient little lie we tell both ourselves and 128 others, making us appear a bit more accomplished and our lives feel a little 129 more acceptable. When trying to invent meaning, or even explain why we've 130 settled for something not matching how we envision ourselves, few things are 131 more powerful than a deeply held personal affection for our work. 132 133 *** 134 135 How does programming fit into this? Even though the tech sector has taken quite 136 a beating of late, programming jobs are still associated with status, 137 prestigious traits (such as intelligence) and, of course, money - even 138 relatively modest developer salaries are usually enough for a comfortable 139 middle class lifestyle. While the process of writing code may involve dealing 140 with abstract concepts, the rewards and results of the work are more concrete, 141 comparable to any other craft: tangible (sort of) consumable goods. I also 142 believe that most programmers, like me, quite like their jobs. As far as work 143 goes, it's pretty cushy: I get to sit on my butt in a comfy chair in a climate 144 controlled office, I have a good work/life balance, I like my colleagues and, 145 from time to time, I get that elated feeling of having solved a hard problem or 146 helped someone else solve theirs. 147 148 That, one could argue, should be enough for job satisfaction - and for a lot of 149 programmers, I'm sure it is. But life is full of status games, unfulfilled 150 ambition and dreams that may never fully come true. 151 152 Just like a journalism major may dream of truthful reporting, exposing great 153 scandals and scrutinizing corrupted power, so may a programmer dream of being a 154 scientist of sorts. Not just because the associated educational path is called 155 Computer Science, but because of the still relatively young lore of the 156 profession. Not that long ago, computers where extremely scarce and most 157 programming took place in academia or various mythical R'n'D departments during 158 a time of exceptional economic growth. It was an exclusive, high status 159 activity among very clever individuals whose work, in the end, generated real - 160 and measurably massive - benefits to an economy still firmly dominated by 161 traditional industrial manufacturing. 162 163 These are the people who - given ample funding and almost complete freedom to 164 shape their work - came up with some damn fantastic stuff: Unix. C. The GUI. 165 Garbage collection. The Internet. Many of these pioneers are still alive, and 166 will happily recount inspiring stories about what programming jobs were like 167 during the golden heydays. 168 169 Alas, the way places like Bell Labs, Xerox PARC, DARPA and tangential 170 institutions like NASA operated back then isn't coming back. In short, there's 171 too much politics and not enough money involved today, making it unfeasible to 172 just lock a handful of guys with a vision in a room, let them tinker freely and 173 then see if what comes out of it is useful - or if they should be given some 174 more time and money for a second attempt. 175 176 This, of course, is closing in on pursuing your passion and getting paid for 177 it. No JIRA boards, no hard deadlines, no endless, agenda-less meetings, no 178 customer demands, no MVP, no sprint deliverables, no "Can we get the icon in 179 cornflower blue?": Just a bunch of like-minded juggernauts and a carte blanche 180 to do almost exactly whatever you feel like within your area of expertise. 181 182 I think this - be it romanticized fantasy or actual historical fact - is what a 183 lot of us programmers, deep down, desire from our professional life. Sadly, 184 we're not celebrated geniuses working at the research department of a telecomms 185 monopoly during the rise of an empire. We're instead doing yet another customer 186 checkout form for a mid-sized e-commerce site, helplessly watching our 187 profession slowly, as Marx put it, "sink into the proletariat". Meanwhile, we 188 secretly feed the little part of us that pretends to be Douglas Engelbart as 189 best we can. This activity sometimes manifests itself as yet another JavaScript 190 framework, the resulting bloated package dependencies rationalized by blaming 191 our unyielding passion. 192 193 Perhaps this is also part of why we suddenly start shunning or even mocking 194 certain methods or languages: PHP, Visual Basic and Java, for example. COBOL 195 was among the first: a pioneering high level language that empowered scores of 196 new programmers, but also one that was soon openly ridiculed. Sure, it's funny 197 and odd and a bit clunky (though very much less so compared to other languages 198 in 1959), it was designed by a committee and isn't considered cool and elegant 199 and interesting like, say, Lisp. 200 201 More importantly though, COBOL is a language specifically designed for some of 202 the earliest routine programming jobs, used for mass producing "good enough" 203 systems intended for broad consumption. Its stated purpose is to write software 204 with low intellectual merit, delivered according to exact specifications 205 stipulated by a bunch of suits at a megacorp. The resulting code was dutifully 206 assembled by swathes of office drones with zero real freedom to tinker. An 207 anomaly, surely, tarnishing the exciting, groundbreaking field of computing 208 with boring, everyday sustenance careers: A language laying bare the crass 209 reality of applied computing already in its infancy. 210 211 It's tempting to pretend we're above all that simply because the language we 212 use has a different syntax. 213 214 *** 215 216 Just like the journalism major churning out clickbait may despise what they 217 write, so may the programmer come to despise the software they develop. Today, 218 much of it is not only unexciting routine work, it's also completely frivolous. 219 In many cases it's even morally dubious, intended as little more than a vehicle 220 for harvesting personal user data and delivering ads. And even if repeating 221 little lies can make us feel better in the moment, it will probably make us 222 bitter in the long run. 223 224 Alas, it seems we can't stop collectively fanning the flames of 225 disillusionment. After all, we're working with our passion, and it's our job to 226 love every second of it all. 227 228 privacy notice: datagubbe.se uses neither cookies nor javascript. | [8]rss feed 229 © carl svensson 230 231 232 References: 233 234 [1] https://www.datagubbe.se/ 235 [2] https://adventofcode.com/ 236 [3] http://hexatlas.com/entries/5 237 [4] https://www.datagubbe.se/jol/ 238 [5] https://www.datagubbe.se/mkdem/ 239 [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs 240 [7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_overproduction 241 [8] https://www.datagubbe.se/atom.xml