I used to be passionate about coding at work, that gave me my first job, then my second, then some startups, big cos, and so on. At some point it doesn't really matter to try to keep yourself passionate about your job, you get enough experience, and you've seen how the maturity cycle of almost any tech company goes, in a general sense. At that point my passion for coding as a job disappeared, one just need to perform it well, professionally, and deliver what's expected of you for being paid to do it.

Is it nicer to work in a product/organisation you are passionate about? Of course, it doesn't mean this passion will last, or that it will be rewarded, or that it will even be healthy for you (one of the jobs I burned out from was exactly the one I was the most passionate about).

Building products follows the same patterns, even if the underlying technologies are different, or if you work on a product in a very different market/industry. It becomes all more of the same: store data somewhere, pull data from somewhere, transform some data to some other format, write some business logic, develop an interface, develop an application (web, desktop, mobile, embedded), deploy your systems at some server, monitor your systems (or implement telemetry if working embedded). You don't need to be passionate to work like that, you just need to be professional.

By doing that you also avoid the common pitfall of being exploited because of your passion.

People have to eat. Not everyone has a passion in the working realm. My passion would be to make music. I don't think I have the commercial instinct or drive to make a living out of it. Also, that might just destroy my passion.

But you're right though, when I am in flow, those 8 hours go by a lot quicker :)

I don't think you necessarily disagree with them. The issue is most people don't have the option to find a position that's a good fit. Or you find out the companies with a mission you're passionate about have a work culture that you're not.

If you're only working places you're passionate about, you're really winnowing the field of possible employers. I say this as someone who's working at a company I generally respect and am passionate about the product of - I think more than most of my friends who work in the field are about their work. If I wanted another job, there's not a huge pool of companies I would even want to apply to.

If I lose my job, or quit, then I'm often going to need to apply and work somewhere that's not a good fit. I can hold out for a bit without a job, but there's no promise that another company I'm also passionate about is hiring for any position I'm qualified for.