[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.