People who love what they do—for work or pleasure—are a joy to be around. Sure, if you're a landlubber with no interest in boats and you have to spend hours on end with someone who constantly talks about boating, eventually you'd want to run screaming from the room. But the hit you get from a conversation with someone who's totally jazzed is pretty darned wonderful.
One of the things I love about my job is how passionate the people I work with are, from the people at the highest levels of the company to the production editors I argue about commas with, the designers who fuss if something is one point (that's 1/72nd of an inch) out of alignment on a layout, and the sys admins who take care of problems of all sizes and all urgencies, every day.
The people I work with care. They care about punctuation and customer service and sales figures and marketing copy and book bindings and the food we serve at conferences and the new products we develop. I'd wager that there's nothing we do that someone in the company isn't passionate about, one way or another—someone who sees it as their mission to ensure that we do that piece of our business properly and well. (In fact, some of us are rather relentless about it, although I'd like to think that I've mellowed a bit over the years.)
Without that level of engagement, working at O'Reilly would be like working the assembly line at a cannery, all of us passively waiting for the conveyor belt to bring us the next item and the next and the one after that, rarely looking up to see what's coming toward us and never trying to get further upstream, where the decisions are made.
Instead, even after 30 years, the company still feels like a startup in many ways. From my perspective, it's all about passion. And that's what keeps me here.
Showing posts with label passion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label passion. Show all posts
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Sunday, March 29, 2009
About Passion
Spent a couple of days at Foo East, an invitation-only event in Cambridge, hosted by O'Reilly Media (my employer) and Microsoft. The companies provided the facilities and the food; the 140+ attendees created the schedule and the sessions, which ranged from discussions on the future of journalism to a compelling demo of a new online information resource to making bath bombs (bath fizzies, essentially), and lots, lots more.
Now, I am not fond of being in the midst of a large group of people. I find it hard to connect with anyone in that atmosphere. I imagine that if the attendees and topics had been more closely related to design, visual art, and literature, I would have found a toehold somewhere. Instead, while everyone else at Foo East was making new connections and talking animatedly about new technologies and potentialities, I found myself reduced to serial "Wow, that's great onion dip" moments. By the end of the second day, I was sitting alone at the edge of the crowd, exhausted, patting a very friendly dog someone had brought along. What a relief!
While I patted the dog, I listened to the conversations around me and watched people interact. What struck me about this group of Very Smart People was not their superior intelligence or some of their "look at me" personal styles. It was their passion, which illuminated everything they turned their attention to. It didn't matter what they were talking about—what was compelling was their absolute belief in and commitment to whatever it was they were championing. They leaned into their conversations, their voices full and confident as they spoke, their expressions rapt as they listened to each other. The huge space was bright with their energy.
Driving home, I thought about the things I'm passionate about. They tend to be private pursuits these days, although I'll argue the merits of the Oxford comma with great intensity, with anyone, anytime.
I was once immensely passionate about everything I did. The flame doesn't burn nearly as bright these days. Not sure if that's a phase or a permanent change. Time will tell.
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Now, I am not fond of being in the midst of a large group of people. I find it hard to connect with anyone in that atmosphere. I imagine that if the attendees and topics had been more closely related to design, visual art, and literature, I would have found a toehold somewhere. Instead, while everyone else at Foo East was making new connections and talking animatedly about new technologies and potentialities, I found myself reduced to serial "Wow, that's great onion dip" moments. By the end of the second day, I was sitting alone at the edge of the crowd, exhausted, patting a very friendly dog someone had brought along. What a relief!
While I patted the dog, I listened to the conversations around me and watched people interact. What struck me about this group of Very Smart People was not their superior intelligence or some of their "look at me" personal styles. It was their passion, which illuminated everything they turned their attention to. It didn't matter what they were talking about—what was compelling was their absolute belief in and commitment to whatever it was they were championing. They leaned into their conversations, their voices full and confident as they spoke, their expressions rapt as they listened to each other. The huge space was bright with their energy.
Driving home, I thought about the things I'm passionate about. They tend to be private pursuits these days, although I'll argue the merits of the Oxford comma with great intensity, with anyone, anytime.
I was once immensely passionate about everything I did. The flame doesn't burn nearly as bright these days. Not sure if that's a phase or a permanent change. Time will tell.
-
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