Tim Barcz

Passion in Programmers

Occasionally I interview prospective employees at the company I work for.  In the course of the interview I of course look for technical competency, but I also look for passion.  Passion in my mind is the opposite of boredom.  I think 9 times out of 10 I'd take a passionate programmer instead of the bored all-star.  Why?  I think passion for the technology you're working with will ultimately be visible in the product you're developing.  Passion can manifest itself in different ways, so don't look for it always in the same place.  Geonetric in many ways has done an excellent job in hiring passionate employees.  I want to give you two recent examples, but some of my co-workers read this so I'll keep the following as minimal as possible. 

• We have one developer who was in the break/lunch room with me and we got to talking about a problem.  The discussion got to the point where we needed to go look at a computer screen, the discussion went something like this:

Me: Yada Yada Yada....I'll show you later after you eat.

Developer: Let's go look now.

Me: Now?

Developer: Yes, learn first.

"Learn first."  That's passion.

• Another developer, fresh out of college, has jumped right in to the project to the point where I don't look at him at all like a fresh college grad anymore.  His passion is a project on the side where he's seeing if he can better deliver web content using XSLT and XML rather than delivering (x)html (sorry Scott if I've butchered the goal).  Is it relevant to what we do daily at work? Maybe.  Maybe not.  The point is that he is passionate about XSLT/XML and jiggering with the technology to bend it to do what he wants.  That's the kind of guy I want on my team.

Passion in my mind is a key characteristic of being a great developer.  A passionate developer is will never stop learning and enjoys the journey of learning and thus is an asset to any team.