Re:Great Hacker != Great Hire (2004)
by wpietri on Monday December 21, 2020 @01:30PM
(#25497803)
It seems to me you have hold of a false dichotomy.
I love cooking, but I very rarely cook food just to cook and then throw it away. That I am cooking for people is part of my intrinsic motivation.
I feel the same way about software. I definitely also enjoy tinkering. But a lot of the motivation for me is in creating things for people to use. So I make sure to take jobs where the mission is one I can get behind and where I can develop empathy for the audience. I also find teamwork intrinsically motivating.
For me that makes for a pretty clear separation between intrinsically motivated coding on the job and intrinsically motivated coding at home. If I'm just fucking around with something cool to explore it, that's hobby time, because I'm not looking to help users or my team. But my days are still full of intrinsically motivated work because I'm there to fight for the users.
I love cooking, but I very rarely cook food just to cook and then throw it away. That I am cooking for people is part of my intrinsic motivation.
I feel the same way about software. I definitely also enjoy tinkering. But a lot of the motivation for me is in creating things for people to use. So I make sure to take jobs where the mission is one I can get behind and where I can develop empathy for the audience. I also find teamwork intrinsically motivating.
For me that makes for a pretty clear separation between intrinsically motivated coding on the job and intrinsically motivated coding at home. If I'm just fucking around with something cool to explore it, that's hobby time, because I'm not looking to help users or my team. But my days are still full of intrinsically motivated work because I'm there to fight for the users.