Every engineer in my company seems to be passionate about the industry we're in.
For example:
If we're in a medical industry, they're excited about being able to help sick people with the medical devices that we program. They're excited about the news/progress in the medical communities. They have something more motivating beyond creating tech tools.
For me, it's just a job with a paycheck. I don't drink their kool aid. I'm occasionally excited if I managed to create new things with new software tools.
I am often jealous with them, because they seem to be already working in their dream job, instead of having cold dead eyes like mine.

Yeah, who cares about sick people. Fuck them.

I think I'm somewhere in the middle. I don't drink the koolaid but I think I like the engineering aspect of most of the jobs I've had. I like making stuff faster, or solving some algorithmic or data analysis problem. Then I'm on all hands meetings with new joiner c-suite whatever that are trying to justify their salary by sounding keen and I can't help but cringe.

Sorry but I imagined excited developers making medical equipement - to be exact that is sarco suicide machine (https://exitinternational.net/sarco... - The Sarco offers a "euphoric death")

All of them excited about their job talking about it's amazing performance improvement and that they managed to kill more people and give them more pleasure during the process.

People tend to have this need for a meaning in what they do...

Engineers often take pride in their work and dread having it taken away or pushed in the wrong direction for bullshit marketing reasons.
Like "we want to innovate and change the paradigm!" (ex: Windows 8, Windows 10, Xbox Kinect, the Metaverse, and soooo many KilledByGoogle).
So defending their work in bullshittish (marketing&management's stupid pseudolanguage) becomes a matter of survival.

Then there is the matter of self-defense.
Engineers want to create actual value, but that is considered "unnecessary" in our bullshit-powered economy, and promotions and better salaries go to bullshit-artists instead.

So engineers defend themselves translating "I work for a paycheck, and would like a larger one, please" from English into Bullshittish: "I'm exited about the diverse challenges of our changing industry, like [over hyped industry-appropriate examples 1-3] and ready to innovate to inspire our bias for action! Do you subscribe to this new momentum-gaining opportunity?"

@netikras

I agree, but comparing making a CRUD app with life-saving work is over the top.

I don't have that sense of grandiose, or maybe I am just too much of a realist/pessimist.

There are some of us who truly do meaningful work for the society, but that's a minority.

@cho-uc but they do contribute to life saving. I bet my bottom euro that this CRUD will save at least 5 lives!

If not for this comfy CRUD app, some chap prolly wouldn't bother getting smth looked at, leading to a cancerous tumour or torn aneurism or smth else..

I worked on a GDPR-related project (providing transparency from state to citizens) and a bonds trading platform for a bank.

Was highly motivated for the former, and felt completely out of touch and uninspired by the latter. I just couldn't identify with the value it presumably provides to a very select number of people. And it even led to me leaving the project, that much of a deal-breaker it is.

@electrineer please don't leave

I feel like most of em just be pretending to go along with the culture tho 🫤

For me it's both pain management and helping other devs that gets me motivated to move the needle

I get passionate about the particular problem/solution I'm working on at the lower level, but idgaf about the general industry we serve in