[schwartzworld]

You should care about how much you pay the contractor and the quality of work you get in response. That's your only contract with them. Same for a developer.

> You don't want someone showing up who just views your garage primarily as an opportunity to learn about this new construction material they've heard about that doesn't help you.

That's a terrible analogy. Most of the time developers aren't writing greenfield projects, meaning they don't choose the stack. Devs have the leverage to choose by accepting jobs that use the stack we know (or want to know).

As to contractors, if you had already started building a garage with a new construction material, you probably would really want to hire people who were experienced in it. If you couldn't find them, you might want people who were interested in learning to use it.

If you want passion and motivation, consider hiring an actor or prostitute. I'm going to stick with my usual plan of "write good code in exchange for good money".

[throwaway98797]

One gets more than just money from work. Or one can get more. Friendship, community (however fleeting), challange, growth. If you over index on comp you may miss out on more fuzzy aspects. You are there 6+ hours a day might as well optimize more broadly.