\n Depending on what you read, you will find advice to \u2018follow your passion\u2019 and, alternatively, \u2018don\u2019t follow your passion\u2019. The former assumes you will be able to turn an interest into a career if you just love it enough to do what it takes to make it happen. The latter recommends that you should find something that you can be good at, that you can earn money doing, and then become passionate about that thing. It\u2019s more of a decision than something that just happens naturally. Are the two schools of thought that different? I think it\u2019s more a matter of timing.\n<\/p>\n
\n When does the average person figure out a passion that can be turned into a career? It\u2019s doubtful that it\u2019s during childhood. Children are exposed to such a limited number of possibilities, that it would be odd to find a young child who wants to be a neurobiologist, network administrator, or accountant when they grow up. If you ask, you will probably hear a limited list of occupations such as garbage collector, doctor, princess, or firefighter.\n<\/p>\n
\n It\u2019s not until the teen years that kids are expected to choose a career that, theoretically, they\u2019ll be doing for the rest of their lives, but it\u2019s often the wrong decision. There are many midlife career changers who tire of the career choice made at 17 or 18 years old and follow what is eventually deemed their true passion. It could be 20 years or more before an individual really figures out what they want to do when they \u2018grow up\u2019, and there could be many twists and turns along the way.\n<\/p>\n
\n In my own case, I had no idea that I would want to be a developer until I was first exposed to a short program written in BASIC. Unfortunately, I was months away from graduating and starting a career that wasn\u2019t a great fit. After years of growing dissatisfaction, I realized my true calling was programming. I was so passionate, or maybe obsessed, that I spent every possible moment learning to code and reading dozens of tech books. Luckily for my family, my children were in their teens and self-sufficient at that point, so they managed not to go without being fed or bathed.\n<\/p>\n
\n In the tech industry, we are fortunate that opportunities are plentiful, and the work is often rewarding. I\u2019ve seen high levels of career passion when talking with developers and data professionals at conferences and meetups. Maybe it\u2019s the atmosphere, but some people can\u2019t stop talking about the cool tech project they are doing at home with their children or the interesting problem they have just solved at work. If not for passion and enthusiasm, why would anyone spend a weekend at a hackathon or an evening at a user group meetup when they could be home with their families?\n<\/p>\n
\n Is technology just a job for you, or have you managed to follow your passion?\n<\/p>\n
Enjoyed the topic? Have a relevant anecdote? Disagree with the author? Leave your two cents on this post in the comments below, and our favourite response will win a $50 Amazon gift card. The competition closes two weeks from the date of publication, and the winner will be announced in the next Simple Talk newsletter.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Depending on what you read, you will find advice to \u2018follow your passion\u2019 and, alternatively, \u2018don\u2019t follow your passion\u2019. The former assumes you will be able to turn an interest into a career if you just love it enough to do what it takes to make it happen. The latter recommends that you should find……<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":110218,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[47125],"tags":[],"coauthors":[11292],"class_list":["post-76197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorials"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.red-gate.com\/simple-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.red-gate.com\/simple-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.red-gate.com\/simple-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.red-gate.com\/simple-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/110218"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.red-gate.com\/simple-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76197"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.red-gate.com\/simple-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76197\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":76198,"href":"https:\/\/www.red-gate.com\/simple-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76197\/revisions\/76198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.red-gate.com\/simple-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.red-gate.com\/simple-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.red-gate.com\/simple-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76197"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.red-gate.com\/simple-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=76197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}