Passion in IT

Published by Christian Mohn · Read in about 3 min (567 words)

Bob Plankers, aka The Lone Sysadmin, has posted a series of posts on “the blame game” in modern IT organizations (Blame, Understanding Blame and Preventing Blame).

Bob’s posts are most excellent, and well worth a thorough read. Feel free to head on over and read them now, this post will be waiting right here when you come back.

Are you back yet? In fact, Bob’s excellent rants has inspired me to write my own! No, I’m not going to talk about blame in IT. I have another little pet peeve, and that’s passion.

**Passion** (from the Ancient Greek verb πάσχω (paskho) meaning to suffer or to endure) is an emotion applied to a very strong feeling about a person or thing. Passion is an intense emotion compelling feeling, enthusiasm, or desire for something. The term is also often applied to a lively or eager interest in or admiration for a proposal, cause, or activity or love. Passion can be expressed as a feeling of unusual excitement, enthusiasm or compelling emotion towards a subject, idea, person, or object. A person is said to have a passion for something when he has a strong positive affinity for it. A love for something and a passion for something are often used synonymously. Source: [wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passion_%28emotion%29)

I’m a passionate guy, in just about every sense of the word. I’m passionate about my family and I go nuts when my favorite sports teams do well (those of you that follow my twitter stream will certainly recognize this!).

But here is the kicker; I’m also very passionate about my work. Call it childish excitement or even misplaced enthusiasm, I don’t really care.

I have a strong burning passion for doing whatever I can, within the limits of my current employer, to develop and manage the best IT infrastructure I possibly can.

I’ve been like this for as long as I can remember, and it’s probably a genetic defect of some sorts, and that’s fine. I know it’s definitely fine with my employer too, but that does go without saying doesn’t it?

Of course, this passion and commitment flows over into hours and hours of unpaid work, done on my spare time, but for now that’s a price I’m personally willing to pay. As long as I’m able to juggle all of this, and my family responsibilities, it makes me a very happy camper indeed.

This sense of passion towards your professional being is something that has really attracted me to the general VMware Virtualization Community. People who are recognized as industry experts happily share their knowledge and get involved in lengthy discussions with us minions, without expecting anything back. This enables others to share of their knowledge and actually dare to share their own experiences and ask questions. There is no sense of non-sharing to protect their own status as experts, but rather an abundance friendly, helpful and generally awesome people who happily help you out if you just engage them.

So, this is my thank you post to everyone in the wide, wide world of VMware virtualization. You all rock, and you fuel my passion with jet propellant.

Ok, so I get play the blame game after all:

**I’m blaming you lot for really igniting the dormant passion in each and every isolated vInfrastructure Admin in the world. The combined hive-mind is awesome, and you are all a significant part of it. **

Post last updated on January 2, 2024: Add author

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