Passion can show itself in many ways. Why did you pick programming of all things? There's something there, right? If you can dig into a topic, that's a form of passion. If you're willing to put in hard work, that's a form of passion. These may not be the same thing as the person who gets excited about these problems, but something did drive you. And no one is so excited about coding that they are never dispassionate and never frustrated. The thing you're looking for is why should I trust that you have these skills? If there's nothing you can rant about, then I'd find that odd, even if you see it as a paycheck.

I picked programming because I was a short (still short), fat (I got better) kid with a computer in the mid 80s.

You can “trust” I have those skills because I can talk about my past experiences, you can throw any architectural or business problem at me and I can talk through it including tradeoffs and why I made the decisions I made. How I deal with organizational challenges, etc.

My being able to dig into a topic is not “passion”. It’s my job. I get paid to know my subject matter deeply and to be able to ramp up fast on technology and the business domain.

The deal is if I work at your company, you agreed to give me $x amount of money, benefits and for me remote work and in exchange I agreed to give your company all of my expertise gained over 30 years of working for 40-45 hours a week.

You need me to code those 40 hours a week? You got me. You need me to be on a zoom call or fly to a client site? No problem. You want me to do pretty diagrams and spit out 40 page requirement documents or business proposals? I can do that too. Along with leading projects, cloud architecture, etc.

Just understand, you get 40-45 hours a week. You don’t get late nights, you don’t get on call, you don’t get weekend work, and my bullshit tolerance level is relatively low before I am looking for another job - ask my last nine employers.

Okay, so it seems like for the most part we agree in concept but disagree about the words used to convey them? Do I have that right?

I laid out what __I__ consider different forms of passion and while explaining yourself you met some of that criteria. So I'm not sure where the anger is coming from. I hope you're doing okay and I really hope we can have fewer abusive employers. I'm really empathetic to that, and have quit several jobs because situations like you mention.

It’s not anger. I get tired of employers taking advantage of naive younger developers who have “passion” and underpay them and overwork them, expect them to have open source contributions and as you said yourself, if someone is “passionate” money isn’t as important.

These are the people who don’t show “passion” unless when they get off of work they are doing side projects related to software development and usually end up getting burned out.

I’ve also avoided burn out, stress over work and I am able to survive in the industry for 30 years because I understand the transactional nature of the job and set boundaries.

Someone who does there job well doesn’t mean they are “passionate”, they are “professional”.