Part of the issue here is the idea of the "incomplete contract" inherent in labor: that, since there's no way to adequately define performance in an employment contract, what counts as "doing the job" is something that gets negotiated through the day-to-day interaction between a worker and her boss. The "passionate programmer" idea is fine when it informs how you meet your own goals to find the happiest, most satisfying way to work. But it has a dark side in that the programmer herself is not the only one with a stake in elevating the work into something worthwhile above and beyond its monetary value to the programmer. Never forget that the negotiation over your job happens every day you clock in, and you'll never mistake your love of programming for your employer's interest in harvesting your marginal value.I suppose one can be passionate about programming without setting oneself up for exploitation. But how many of us are? How many of us lose ourselves in technical problems as an alternative to living more full, self-actualized and self-aware lives? How many of us tell ourselves we're passionate about code to explain away the shitty work we have to do?
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