[dakiol]

> That's what I get for choosing to work for something I'm passionate about.

Are you passionate about working for your current employer or passionate about your career?

I’m passionate about my career (programming/software development): I love reading the classic tech books out there (TAOCP, DDIA, etc.), I love working on side projects, sometimes I contribute to open source, etc.

On the other hand, I couldn’t care less about my employer. Not because they are bad, but I just don’t care about most of the tech companies out there. I do what I need to do to get paid, but i’m not passionate about deadlines, conversations with other engineers about subjective topics, daily standups, on call, etc.

[boxfire]

Yeah I work in an FFRDC, pushing the frontier of our exploration of space. I'm quite passionate both about the employer and (most of the time) my work. If I didn't care about my employer at that level I woulda been out the door after two years. I think to myself sometimes about the other side of that though, like if I didn't care for them but the money was good.

My home hobbies resemble work within my area, but not my current job function, but I'm keenly aware my employer may try to take advantage of my other talents and do I guess the only thing that saves having an alternative hobby is that I'm so diversified that whatever my work task is I can work on an orthogonal hobby at home. It's kinda nice, I've got both really.

In my mind if I "sell out" (in terms of trading in for that sense of purpose in my work), and just work for the paycheck, then I would go for max. Work an HFT quant firm as a senior or principal engineer or research analyst. $$$. Or some other juicy gig. But I would hate myself if that became a slog and I had no time for my interests at home.