Passion for your craft

I've been thinking about starting a blog about technology and business for while, but never actually took the time. I decided now was a good time to do it. However, for my first post, I'm really just going to direct you over to the Software by Rob blog. If you don't read it already, you should consider it. He had an excellent post today about Passion as a Competitive Advantage. I thought it was great and truly believe in the importance of being passionate about what you do.

In the article Rob says:

Passion translates into being insulted when people don’t care about things as much as you do and are willing to hack a crappy solution together. It’s an insult to you, your product and your craft.

One thing that passionate people love is other passionate people. When you really care about what you do, you want to work with people who also care about what they do. The last thing you want is to have to work with someone who is just trying to put in their forty hours a week. And, as Rob puts it:

If you don’t have passion for your code/product/startup everyone will know. It’s obvious you aren’t that into it, and people will not take you seriously. Without passion it’s impossible to convince people to believe in your vision.

I started out in college in Chemical Engineering. I made it through my third year and was only 30 hours away from graduating. Toward the end of my third year I was sitting in a principles of chemical engineering class, and the professor was chewing us out for not putting much effort into our latests assignment. We were doing a design and analysis of a distillation column, and a lot of us (myself included) didn't do a thorough job and just turned in a half baked solution. Not surprisingly the professor, who was passionate about his field, was practically insulted by our lack of effort.

Then the professor said something that changed my path in school. Actually, he asked a question. He asked, "Why would you turn in something poorly done, if you care about what you're working on? And if you don't care, why are you getting this degree?" I sat there and thought, "That's a good question! Why am I getting this degree?" The was effectively the end of my career as a Chemical Engineer.

The summer before that I had taken a C++ class that was required to complete my ChemE degree. I really loved it. I did more than the class required, and would often just program things for fun. In one of my ChemE classes we had to write a program to solve a problem. The professor actually supplied a mostly complete program in some strange math environment and said we just had to complete it, if we wanted to do it that way. Everyone else did that, but I wrote my own from scratch in C++. I thought it would be more fun that way. Incidentally, mine was the only one that worked correctly.

So, when that professor asked us why we were getting a degree in ChemE if we didn't care about it, I decided that Computer Science made more sense. This was something I did really care about, and something I loved doing. And the rest, as they say, is history.

I graduated in 2001 with my CompSci degree and still love programming. It's been great getting paid to do something I love to do. And I've enjoyed all the time I've spent reading, practicing, and learning more about software development. 

After eight years I believe even more in the importance of passion for what you do. I love working with passionate people, and I'm always baffled by people who don't seem to care. They should have had a professor like I did and had to face the question, "if you don't care, why are you getting this degree?" If you aren't doing something you are passionate about, then do yourself and everyone else a favor and go find something you are passionate about. You'll be glad you did.