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Comment by dmitripopov | Hacker News Reader

Creativity without passion is just making. You put pieces together, add some glue, and it just works. Being creative means to be able to find untrivial solutions.

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What does finding untrivial solutions have to do with passion?

Take two programmeers, a passionate one and non-passionate about his job and give them the same complex task that can not be solved without invention. I did this experiment a dozen of times over my subordinates and non-passionate ones always fail. 100%. So I do not hire people that just do their job any more.

There's a difference between caring about your job and being passionate. I recommend reading Avdi Grimm's http://www.virtuouscode.com/2014/02/10/the-passion-gospel/, it's really good.

All of them did care about their job equally. To care - is to do your best, to be passionate is to do more than you can.

I think your assertion is false. Isn't necessity the "mother of invention"? Creativity is a part of human nature, everyone has it, to a degree, and it's something we use not only out of passion, but to resolve pain, to make our lives easier, to help people, and even to do evil things like commit crimes etc.

You may be just making, but if you're making a good solution, does it in any way devalue it if you're not passionate about it?

In case when good is enough - it's OK. But when you need something exceptional - you will regret 10 times if you hire someone not passionate.

That's an "if" that applies to so few companies it's almost not worth considering. Most software written today isn't breaking new ground, and I think the sooner we communicate that to the next generation (and the companies trying to hire)the sooner we can fix a lot of the problems in pipeline.

Exactly this. Unfortunately most developers I've met, look at their jobs as little more than churning out code to meet a spec that was handed down to them.

Now if you're an early stage startup, you're putting together a team, then yes, of course you absolutely need someone who lives and breathes dev and loves every minute of it - but it's not as much about the quality of the code as it is about how that person will positively impact the overall company culture.

But majority of dev jobs ... little more than 9-5 code churning.

I guess we should take a time and make a clearer terminology. The developer is the one who develops things. The coder/programmer is the one who writes code. There was a time when both terms were synonyms, but nowdays it is not true.

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