Why people pay you

Last Update: 17.07.2018. By Jens in Developers Life | Learning | Newsletter

Yeah, for your passion of course.

Nope.

The passion industry is huge. Do what you love, follow your passion. Everywhere.

The problem with it. It blinds you from what actually matters. For you, your goals and how to archive them. That’s one of the reasons why I am allergic against this word.

Second is, it’s also misused a lot. Intentionally. For various reasons. A company looking for a passionate dev seeks something totally different than the dev passionate about unit testing or chainsawing. Which brings me to the third reason, passion has nothing to do with why people pay you. Your employer or clients are not paying you for your passion of chainsawing. They might need it and pay you for chainsawing but they don’t pay you for the passion. What might happen is, that they even pay you less because it is your passion and you won’t complain about doing it.

Other people are paying you because they got a problem which needs to be fixed. And one or more of your skills can fix it.

If they believe you can fix it and the relationship works, they hire you.

I once had an interview with an agency. At this time I was “passionate” about Python and Django and really loved to test both in a real-world customer project. We actually talked about it and the HR lady even asked her colleague if they got a project for that or could do it. During the interview.

Did she do it because I was passionate about Django?

Nope.

It was a bait.

They already knew my skills will help to fix their problems and it was a cultural fit. That’s the important stuff. Not any passion.