Chapter 46. Following Your Passion – Good or Bad Advice for Developers?

As a developer, should you follow your passion? I hear this term and this advice quite often and I'm not a fan of taking things at face value, so I wanted to look into the concept and review it here.

At a high level, the advice centers around the idea that if you do work in a field that you truly love, you will be happy. Many people point to Steve Job's Stanford commencement speech when he says:

" And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become."

Following your passion – a case study

While writing and researching this book, I came across Cal Newport's book, So Good They Can't Ignore You, where he took a deep look at Steve Job's life. He shows that if Jobs would have spent his life adhering to the advice of following your passion, he never would have started Apple, but instead would...