Mind you, the observation that "90% of the companies advertising for passionate programmers are crud" is uninformative about the nature of passion does not mean that Avdi's article was uninformative. It's highly useful to be reminded that such companies are nothing special, and that working 80+ hour weeks is nothing special. 90% of all that is crud, and that's ok.<p>And speaking personally, it's very important to be reminded that being passionate about programming isn't anything special, it's a personal choice. I don't believe that in and of itself it makes me necessarily worse than if I was "moderately enthusiastic," but it doesn't make me any better.