[SpicyLemonZest]

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.

[AlexandrB]

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]

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.

[TomVDB]

IOW: “passion” is basically meaningless then. And thus no disqualifying word when selecting companies to send your resume to.

[SpicyLemonZest]

If you're running a company where engineers do work long and hard, you have to make a conscious effort to hire people who are fulfilled by that, or you're sure to see the dysfunctions arise. I'd agree that hiring for passion can't fix things once they're broken.

[watwut]

Why are you running organization where long term crunch is required and norm? What is primary motivation for having crunch as goal?

[ntsplnkv2]

This begs the question, though. How many people realistically enjoy being worked long and hard?

I highly doubt that's a large number.

[itronitron]

Also, the most qualified people for such a job are not going to need to work long and hard so will likely be turned off by the position description.

[SCHiM]

I've read some books that attribute this with command and control leadership.

If employees are not responsible for their work, can't take chances and have every decision second guessed by more senior people fiercely guarding their little sphere of influence, that's when you breed such resentment.

You see this too with 'bikeshedding', there appears to be delegation taking place, but it is a farce. In this case there are too many captains on a single ship, nobody can take charge and nobody is responsible and free to give it their best and possibly fail.

[ahoy]

The _job_ is why those people are miserable! This is insane! It's like running a gym and requiring people to already be fit to join!

[alexashka]

Funny. They can start by not having open offices if they care one iota about human misery.

[coldtea]

And yet such ads and mentality is the best way to get an office full of miserable people.

The most important parts of most project work are grunt and grit, not "passion" and other such BS oriented at Disney-nurtured adults.

[icebraining]

What's grunt in this context?

As for grit, nobody has ever paid me enough to deserve mine. Interest will get me to go above and beyond, otherwise I'll just perform well enough for 8h and I'm outta there. My grit is reserved for stuff that matters.

[coldtea]

grunt noun (POWER) informal power or determination

But also in the sense of grunt work.

[save_ferris]

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]

What do you get asked about in Europe?