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One issue is indeed when people are trying to project the whole "I'm realy into this whole software development thing!" vibe. Genuine excitement about something can almost always be differentiated from this, in my experience. But the issue I'm more concerned about is this idea that you have to live, breathe, drink, eat, sleep software development 24 hours a day, or you are a lesser developer than someone else who does. There are obviously different levels of investment people are willing and/or capable to commit to a job in this field, and yes some people are better at it than others. However, I think many in our profession are being pushed to invest too much of their lives into career-centric tasks, and as a result will end up being less effective as developers than they could be. I think this is perhaps even more dangerous than being lazy, and not keeping your skills relatively current. Having a good balance in life is the way to avoid burnout. It is way too easy to leave your family and/or friends in the wake. There are infinitely more things to learn, and you can't do it all. These are choices I personally struggle with, as I'm sure many others here do. It doesn't help that almost all of the job listings are asking for people "passionate about X" (where X can be almost anything related to development), or looking for "a Rockstar Y developer", or some other such buzzword-laden description. It seems to me, that there is a way to describe people who want to do high quality work, who care about their results, but at the same time have a life outside of work. However, although I see some job listings where the writers appear to be trying, a lot of them leave me thinking "no need to apply there, I just want a job doing a lot of things that I am good at and enjoy most of the time. I don't want to join a cult." |