{"id":130,"date":"2013-03-06T02:50:58","date_gmt":"2013-03-06T02:50:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/provensal.com\/lbb\/?p=130"},"modified":"2013-03-24T20:16:00","modified_gmt":"2013-03-25T03:16:00","slug":"stay-passionate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/provensal.com\/lbb\/stay-passionate\/","title":{"rendered":"Stay passionate!"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Credit: zazzle.com<\/p><\/div>\n

I have been working for the same company for many, many years. When I talk to my friends from college, they ask me how could I be working for the same company for so long? I tell them I’m still having fun and still doing things that interest me. In asking them why they have hopped from one company to another, I often come to the realization that it’s not the company they dislike, but it’s their job. Digging some more, it’s clear that regardless of the company, they will very likely always end up\u00a0disliking\u00a0their job.<\/p>\n

Why? Because, they are missing one important ingredient,\u00a0passion<\/b>. For me, tinkering with computer “stuff” is something I’ve always loved. And it’s that passion that lead me to buy my first computer and made me sign up for my first Computer Science 101 class. That love is still there. Yes, I was and am still a proud nerd.<\/p>\n

Many people start just like me, though that passion erodes over time partially because of the jobs they end up taking but mostly because\u00a0they<\/b>\u00a0decide that they are no longer happy and don’t make room in their daily job for things they do enjoy. This\u00a0recent article in Inc.<\/a>\u00a0brings up\u00a0a\u00a0similar point: they complain about their job but don’t do anything about it.<\/p>\n

Maybe I have been lucky to have managers who have allowed me some\u00a0wiggle\u00a0room to explore new technologies, new ideas, and new methods to keep that passion alive.<\/p>\n

Example 1<\/span>: back in the mid-90s, we used\u00a0to create\u00a0bug reports\u00a0using a home grown app (there was no Bugzilla back then)\u00a0\u00a0running on\u00a0an\u00a0xterm-type of terminal. The Internet\u00a0just\u00a0started to emerge with technology like Apache and CGI. I pushed to start using it as a new front-end for the bugs\u00a0system ,\u00a0and\u00a0people are still using today. Though phased out\u00a0for the RallyDev<\/a> \u00a0tool, it was fun to develop and watch it grow to 150,000+ logged bugs.<\/p>\n

Example 2<\/span>: when I became a manager in early 2000, I realized that I wasn’t very good at the tedious job of keeping track of my team’s many tasks. Hence, I created “Tasks!”,\u00a0a tool\u00a0that allowed me to assign tasks to people, keep track of changes\/updates (with email automatically sent to assignee and assignor),\u00a0and\u00a0monitor progress during\u00a0the development and QA. At the end of the week, when meeting with my product manager, I had a nicely formatted report to share\u00a0with\u00a0him\u00a0and talk\u00a0about the week’s progress. I loved the tool because it took care of the things I didn’t like to do.<\/p>\n

I could provide other examples, but you get the point.<\/p>\n

Did my company breathe that passion into me? No.<\/p>\n

Would I be as passionate at another firm? Probably. At least, I would hope so.<\/p>\n

Did my company do something right to keep and nurture the passion\u00a0alive\u00a0<\/b>instead of snuffing it? Yes!<\/p>\n

Do I have a point here? Yes!\u00a0My point is actually two-fold:<\/p>\n