> And one of the consequences of this is that I'm not confident that if I show up to interview at a startup that I'm going to exhibit the degree of 'passion' they're looking for.
This is good, though. If you faked the passion, you might wind up surrounded by lunatics who actually believe their iOS app is going to save the world.
Also, this "passion", most of the time, is just a word that has been co-opted by the owner class to mean "working nights and weekends".
Yeah, I had that pattern in mind as I was choosing my phrasing.
Coworkers know that they can come to me and say, "hey dude, your code is busted and 4 people can't get work done," I'll drop everything and fix it if I can't give you a workaround (and it'll bug me until I do fix it). I like that passion in others. I get into a little trouble when that passion is about completely fixable things that are dragging down productivity and morale. I'm not particularly repentant about that either.
But when it's some tie telling me we have to work weekends because they didn't listen when we told them "shipping this functionality by April 3rd is a dangerous fiction and you need to come up with a new plan?" you're on your own pal. If you can't hear 'no' then you can't make useful contingencies. Also it probably means you don't respect the people I respect and that's gonna be a problem.
My passion rears its ugly head when my team is asked to take shortcuts and ship garbage to meet deadlines. It also comes out when we're asked to implement half-baked ideas without having the chance to meet and question the ideators and refine those ideas into something workable.
This is good, though. If you faked the passion, you might wind up surrounded by lunatics who actually believe their iOS app is going to save the world.
Also, this "passion", most of the time, is just a word that has been co-opted by the owner class to mean "working nights and weekends".