Being all consumed by engineering (writing blogs, contributing to open source, giving away your time) is not good because it leads to burnout and perpetuates more people to do the same. Open source for example, is co-opted by large corporations to exploit passionate developers that provide high quality code for free and putting the training burden on the person rather than corporation.
A counter argument to that is most effective people care a lot—a subtle difference, but you can be both dispassionate and care a lot.
See also:
- Open source and ‘passionate developers’ have greatly increased the productivity of the field and contributes to Baumol’s cost disease (managers did not get 10x more efficient in their field, but salaries have gone up nonetheless)
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Working Hard Is Required to Do Great Work
Although it sounds like a truism, working hard is required to do great work. In practice, it is difficult to apply because one must recognize the quality of the work they are doing, the effort they are putting in, and being honest with oneself about the results they are getting.