Hearing something often enough can really change my perspective even on things I agreed with completely beforehand. It happened again after reading for umpteenth time that passion for programming/company vision is the quality every new hire should have.

Passion is a symptom, not a diagnosis.

I know a great developer with whom I would love to work again who is passionate about electronics. I am sure he likes programming and does it a lot, but it’s not where his heart truly lies. Which is alright because his other qualities more than make up for any passion deficiencies.

Passion in complementary direction is doubtless a positive signal, but I simply do not believe that only people working on something they care deeply about are able to do it well. We can and do regularly care, with some degree of autonomy, about more than one thing (or person).

In more general sense my feeling is obviously a reaction to the end result of a process in which a useful guideline calcifies into dogma. Ideally I could get to this point sooner, but it seems unlikely. If I regularly reconsidered and doubted every piece of my mental framework, then it would mostly be mental and not much of a framework.