I'm not convinced of that, there's lots of people who are diligent but quiet about it. Passion works great in some job contexts, in others it can lead to exploitation, cult-like behavior, groupthink that results in a terrible product etc.
Obviously you want staff that like their work enough to be fully engaged with it, but fake passion is bullshit that's often foisted on us by marketing/HR drones. Think of how people who work at Subway stores are called 'sandwich artists' when the reality is that they'd probably be fired if they deviate even slightly from the approved recipe.
I don't want to work with people who are primarily driven by passion tbh, because they're likely to either burn out or be intransigent when there's a difference of opinion. I just want people to be friendly and not robots.
In my current role, I have to sometimes write T-SQL or PL/SQL stored procedures in 80's/90's tech, sometimes scripts in Groovy, sometimes starightforward Java and sometimes code that interacts with relatively more modern tech like Kafka. Do I prefer some over others? Yes. Do I spend equal amount of care towards quality of code? Also yes.
A good programmer will always try to do a good job irrespective of their level of passion with the stuff they are working on. Does enjoying a specific piece of work more produce better code? Maybe because I would have more fun writing it. But I doubt most of us gets to do the exciting work everyday. Ironically, if you are relying that much on passion, you might get those who cut corners on unexciting work. Rely instead on good programming skills coupled with professionalism.
A professional gets shit done. With my higher experience, I have a better understanding of what provides business value and don't work on it more than that, because it is not valuable.
I am passionated about technology, programming and system design. I have about zero passion for writing documentation and good pull requests - but I do it anyway, and I like to think I do it well.
If I only did the parts of my job I had passion for, I wouldn't be a very good employee. If people only worked for companies they were passioned about most companies would have so much more trouble hiring (who is passionate about working for Wells Fargo? Doing SCADA work for a flour factory?).
Obviously you want staff that like their work enough to be fully engaged with it, but fake passion is bullshit that's often foisted on us by marketing/HR drones. Think of how people who work at Subway stores are called 'sandwich artists' when the reality is that they'd probably be fired if they deviate even slightly from the approved recipe.
I don't want to work with people who are primarily driven by passion tbh, because they're likely to either burn out or be intransigent when there's a difference of opinion. I just want people to be friendly and not robots.