Apprenticeship Patterns Blog - Nurture Your Passion

For this week’s blog post, I read the section  “Nurture Your Passion ” from chapter two of the book Apprenticeship Patterns by Dave Hoover and Adewale Oshineye. The section talked about how the work environment can stifle the passion for the craft. For example, you might be a software developer with a passion for the craft, but unfortunately the daily activities, “demoralizing corporate hierarchies, project death marches, abusive managers, or cynical colleagues.” Can become hard for your passion to grow by staying in such hostile conditions. I think this is true for the majority of the people that work in the IT field. I have seen especially my family members whose having such a hostile situation at work especially when there is a deadline that is approaching, or a software release is going on.

The author goes further into project death marches in which he explained how they are the most damaging of the hostile situations, it takes your time and energy, preventing you from taking any significant actions to protect your passion as more important issues like physical and mental health can take a toll. Now that I think about it, work pressure and stress can significantly affect one’s mental health.  I think it is important for people to take a break from sometimes and focus on something else for a little time. Identify what u like, find something at work that interests you and you enjoy doing. I liked the solution that was given to this problem which was: to grow your passion, set clear boundaries that define the sort of environment you are willing to work in. I think that creating some sort of boundaries helps and necessary to have a free hostile environment. One of the statements I do not agree with the author is how walking out of a meeting or refuse to distribute code that doesn’t meet your minimum standards will help your passion however this type of behavior can cause a conflict between your colleagues or your boss. I think the best solution if you want to follow your passion is just to do it, nurture your passion or find a job that suits well for your passion.