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by cesarbs
3499 days ago
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> IMO anyone who is passionate about their work will have greater success and generally be more innovative. That is true, I don't dispute it. What I dislike is the shunning of those who want to do it just as their job. Also, passion comes in different forms. For example, I am "passionate" (as much as I hate the term) about delivering reliable, secure and well-documented products. Sometimes a project will be focused on that and my passion will show, other times projects focus on things I just can't get myself to care enough about and will only do as much as is strictly necessary to get the job done. |
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Usually I hire for passionate people, and usually it isn't because we need 80-hour workweeks. Usually it's just because the output is often better, they notice more mistakes, take more initiative, and bond with their teammates more.
However, in this case, suddenly we had to switch from, "It's a 30-hour per week project," to, "It's an 80-hour per week project," and because most of the team was deeply passionate about it, everything was fine and everyone continued to show up and do fantastic work until we completed the project.
We had two team members who refused to stay more than the 30 hours per week we projected at the start. Even if we offered them more money, they wouldn't do it, because they just didn't want to. Work-life balance, etc. But it was okay, because both were in non-critical roles. So we let them go and continued without them.
Had one of our hires in a critical role been "not passionate", we would've failed the project. But we didn't, because I made certain that when we hired the most critical roles, we hired for passion as much as anything else.
We were on-site in a foreign country. So the options if there were no passionate people to hire would've been, "Stay 9 weeks instead of 3 weeks in a foreign country, for 3x the cost, and do it in 30-hour weeks," or, "Give up."
Fortunately for me, I suppose, there were and are people passionate about our business, mission, and industry available for hire.
You don't need passionate people for everything. I prefer dispassionate hires for repetitive roles that need steadiness and regularity. If we need a guy to clock in every Monday morning at 7 AM and clock out by 4 PM and do the same work every day and do it consistently, that's a role where we don't need "passion", and where passion would even get in the way (passionate people want to get more involved, they want more tasks and assignments, they want promotions, etc. Great for some roles, but not for the repetitive grinder roles).
But, yes. There is a distinct need for passionate people. There is a market demand for them. It isn't just "Company X is cheap and wants twice the work for half the pay."
Sometimes you want the guy who's going to do it "just as their job." Sometimes you want the guy who's going to do it as a personal mission, as a great undertaking to accomplish.
It depends on the role, the project, and the hiring manager. But that's market forces for you - different people, looking for different things, end up in different places, and command different positions, rates, and lifestyles. It's the free market. And it allows us to do things we could not if we were all forced to adhere to one single way of doing things. This is a very good thing.