Hacker | Engineer

I ran into a great article on Hacker News this week about passionate developers. I certainly consider myself an alpha geek, like him, but I still think I can find a job somewhere where I can be passionate about creating software and still love my job. Jonas, on the other hand, feels that a true alpha geek will never be happy with his (or her) day job, and that’s why we code on our off hours. Corporate culture is critical to keeping alpha geeks happy and productive. Alpha geeks, to use his term, are difficult to manage for a variety of reasons, most notably our disinterest in money. Keeping an army of them, much less one, happy and productive is a tough management task that most larger companies aren’t willing to undertake. That’s why I love small companies.

The passionate developer: I do like my profession, I don’t like my job