[kylebrown]

I've recently been appreciating Cal Newport's latest book "So Good They Can't Ignore You". Wish I was able to read it when I was younger, but like most I was caught up with the "find your passion" hypothesis. The book deconstructs this passion hypothesis for a fallacy, and prescribes a craftsman mindset ("what can I offer the world?") over a passion mindset ("what can the world offer me?").

Don't worry about finding your true calling, just get good at something which few other people are good at (skills in low supply - so not video games, sports, etc). Get good by doing "deep work", not just superficial exposure. This Ira Glass quote spoke directly to me: "I feel like your problem is that you're trying to judge all things in the abstract before you do them. That's your tragic mistake."

Doing "something with value" requires (valuable, low supply) skills ("skills trump passion". skills also trump courage, as in the "all it takes is courage to follow your dreams" message of courage culture from which comes the OP article). Developing skills requires deep work. The deep approach is to narrow the focus from "be good at math" or "be good at programming", or even "understand functional programming". This is the broad/abstract approach I've had in the past, which, in retrospect at the ripe old age of 28, has not worked super well.

New plan is to hone a craft by choosing to work intensely with "this particular design pattern" or "this particular javascript library" (looking at you d3). Most importantly, to get good at building stuff by building stuff (craftsman mindset). Get good first, because you won't become passionate about something you're not good at.

[shicky]

very much enjoyed your comment, something I very much needed to hear. I myself am a comp sci graduate and I feel I have no programming skill whatsoever, especially now after almost 2 years of support work in banking. So essentially I feel like I've a software development degree and lack the skill to be a software developer. I've looked at my current passions and the Ira Glass quote also speaks directly to me as I'm looking at potential avenues and saying no, no, maybe with little to no actual experience of these avenues!

May I ask if you've always been a developer and this was limited to languages / paradigms or was this am I a DBA/Systems Analyst/Dev or perhaps even wider?

[kylebrown]

Thanks, I'm glad typing that wasn't just for myself.

In college, my major was math and biochem (with an eye toward computational biology or computational chemistry). So no, I haven't always been a developer, my interests were very wide: everything from systems biology to quantum mechanics. So wide that I ultimately dropped out at the start of my senior year, rather than choose some specialty for graduate school. I don't regret that, since at least I have a couple friends who did go on to different grad programs (physical chemistry, molecular biology) and I still appreciate the independence and freedom that comes with dropping out.

Anyway, I always wanted to be more of a big picture / theoretical guy and sort of poo-poohed programming. I thought it was more important to have deep understanding of mathematical formulas and creative theoretical research ideas (the passion). But I've come to appreciate that implementing such formulas/ideas as code (the skills) is much harder than I imagined (as is any type of coding), and also the best way to gain a deep understanding.

So that's how I came back to programming in the past few years, which I always treated rather casually growing up (started with some visual basic in my early teens).

How did you end up in banking support work? Maybe thought it was an avenue to wall street quant/HFT work (wild guess)? In Cal Newport's book he does say there are certain jobs where the best option is to leave, eg when there's little opportunity for growth and learning (building "career capital"). But his overall point is to stop chasing a passion by looking for an expected dream job right out of college. Instead, develop it over time by earning and leveraging/parlaying career capital. Going through the motions, gaining experience, and developing valuable skills through hard work. You should check it out (I finally found a pdf online only the other day), sounds like it will be worth your read.