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It is common advice for students to “study what they are passionate about”. Yet, with existing literature cautioning against the exploitation of passion in workers, is this a cause of concern for students? This paper explains how students seem to be bounded by considerations for their passions in their careers and appear to be facing pressures and stresses similar to that of exploited passionate workers. Given the scope of this essay, I will focus on students from the School of Computing (SoC) in the National University of Singapore (NUS). I further establish that because these students in particular are embroiled in a meritocratic competition, the role of passion does not play as strong a role in students’ careers as described by literature. Instead, it is argued that passion is utilised as a means to an end that furthers students and companies’ versions of success. Ultimately, this uncovers how students utilises a practical approach to cope with their stresses.
To support the claims made in this paper, two interviews were conducted. The first was with Adam (pseudonym) who is a career advisor for undergraduates, providing the perspectives of the tech industry and an overview of his theories on what passion means. The second interview was with Ben (pseudonym) who is a member of the NUS Students’ Computing Club, the student union representing the students of SoC in NUS. Ben provides sentiments of work culture and student’s attitudes toward notions of passion and work and is assumed to be somewhat representative of the SoC student body. Additionally, secondary research is conducted, including references to two books, namely “The Trouble With Passion” by Erin Cech and “Work Won’t Love You Back” by Sarah Jaffe.
It is no secret that passion is a key feature of students’ lives. Cech famously coined the term “passion principle” that outlines the cultural phenomenon that prioritises a workers’ own passions as the “most valuable and morally legitimate consideration in career decision-making” (Cech, 2021). To her, passion goes beyond just interest. Passion is a cognitive and emotional experience which is genuinely and uniquely felt by a particular individual, and is not only an outward expression of taste, but also an inward understanding of one’s individualism and character.
Often, passion becomes a key priority when students make career related decisions. Cech finds that the need for passion in work dominates the way that students make plans for their careers, severely outweighing practical considerations such as job salary and job security. In fact, this attitude persists with them even into the workforce, where college educated workers with years of work experience were equally inclined to prioritise their passion. Many are also willing to take significant economic sacrifices for the sake of their passions. These include rejecting jobs with a higher salary and better job security for work they are passionate about.
In Singapore, it appears that the concept of prioritising one’s passion starts relatively early in students’ lives. All Singaporeans undergo about ten years of relatively standardised education in primary and secondary school, usually culminating in the GCE N-Levels or GCE O-Levels national examinations at the age of 16 (National Center on Education and the Economy, 2021). Moving forward, students are advised to seek out their interests to start specialising in different subject combinations in Junior College (Tan, 2021), diplomas in Polytechnic, or skill-based courses in the Institute of Technical Education.
The passion considerations become stronger as students enter university, where society advises students to eventually turn their interest into a future career (Davie, 2021). Such a narrative is also promoted by SoC themselves. For example, the major in Computer Engineering is pitched as the ideal choice for students “passionate about processors and motherboards as web apps and social media” (National University of Singapore, n.d.). Naturally, companies too seek out passionate students for internships and full time careers. GovTech, for instance, is a popular government organisation that provides internship opportunities to students who “have a passion for technology” (Government Technology Agency, n.d.).
Yet, many argue that this demand for passion by the industry often leads to the exploitation of employees. This is because passion for work often generates motivation and positive attitudes towards completing the job functions required (The University of Southern California, n.d.). Additionally, Cech argues that passionate employees are also more likely to bring extra commitment and effort to their work without wanting to be compensated for it (Cech, 2021). Such workers create additional “surplus value” compared to their co-workers, which employers take as economic profit.
Such exploitation seems to be a reality especially in the tech industry as explained by Jaffe. She argues that the nature of tech work in the current age often blurs the distinction between home and work, allowing employees to want to work more without the respective compensation (Jaffe, 2021). For example, the nature of game development requires many people to be working on different parts of the game across various time zones. This creates a brutal work culture that is not time-bound, and without overtime compensation.
Additionally, tech companies are increasingly creating a culture of “playbour” where the workplaces are designed to be fun in attempts to create work that is unforced yet productive. This is often done by including hackerspaces, sleep pods, and even game rooms within company premises, led by major tech companies like Google and Meta. However, this creates an unhealthy self-motivation for overwork, yet without the compensation or recognition.
While it is unclear if SoC students are exploited, they are undoubtedly overworked not only to succeed in school, but to succeed in their future careers. Just within NUS, SoC students face one of the toughest workloads compared to other faculties (Adam, 2023). In addition to balancing academic work with student life, students also face pressures to pursue their passions. These come in the forms of various school-supported activities, such as hackathons, coding competitions, and capture-the-flag competitions. Students’ efforts also manifest in less formalised avenues, such as technology related volunteer work, or actively participating in latest trends in their field of interest.
It is also important to note the scale of one’s passion, since the fact that students are already in the tech industry renders a generic “passion for tech” to be insufficient. Often, students have to pick a certain technology or social cause as their passion, which may be too niched beyond the capabilities of an undergraduate. For example, a passion in technology may evolve into a passion in cybersecurity. Yet, cybersecurity involves a range of technologies, including systems, database, networks, and new technologies like Internet of Things, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence. Even after selecting a sub-specialisation like artificial intelligence, one can decide to be a programmer coding AI systems for cybersecurity purposes, or even a security expert in the poisoning of AI systems, both of which require different sets of skills and knowledge, and often of postgraduate levels. All things considered, this places immense stress on students, which possibly sets them up for future exploitation where overwork are desired and expected.
However, how much of these observations can be attributed to passion? While extensive research have been conducted and documented, most are executed in the United States of America. To properly understand the context of SoC students, it is also necessary to understand Singapore’s meritocratic system as well as NUS’ position with relation to the local tech industry.
Firstly, Singapore’s meritocratic structure creates a society that prioritises justifiable achievements. Although not legally enforced, Singapore has rewarded their citizens based on individual effort, talents, and achievements, instead of one’s social or economic class, and has lauded meritocracy as their core principle of governance (Desker, 2016). This is especially instilled in Singapore’s education system, where all students are given fair opportunities using standardised tests such as the Primary School Leaving Examinations (Global-Is-Asian, 2018). To execute this meritocratic ideal into practice requires certain metrics for assessment, creating a system that encourages effort by “rewarding type” (Low, 2013). Hence, while hard work underscores the ethos of Singaporeans, there is a huge emphasis on achieving the “right” indicators of industriousness to obtain a competitive edge over the rest.
Next, the success of NUS in producing top talent creates an extremely competitive environment. Globally, NUS ranks 6th in providing education in computing (QS Quacquarelli Symonds Limited, 2023), resulting in SoC graduates being preferred over those from other top local universities in Singapore. In 2022, SoC Computer Science graduates enjoy a mean starting salary of $6954 (Ministry of Education, 2022), a significant achievement compared to $5515 for those from Nanyang Technological University (Ministry of Education, 2022), and $5702 for those from Singapore Management University (Ministry of Education, 2022). This naturally creates an intense demand to be accepted into SoC despite SoC only having limited capacity for students. This also allows SoC to uphold a high level of academic quality among their students, which students compete to meet and maintain (Ben, 2023).
With this context, I argue that while passion considerations are present for SoC students, they, as ends in themselves, do not play that big a role in student’s lives. Instead, passion is often viewed as a means to an end of displaying certain attractive qualities to increase employment opportunities, and for employers to identify qualities that they seek. However, this is not to say that passion and genuine emotional investment in work are not important to students. Alternatively, these are merely bonus features that students would also hope to achieve in work but are not key deal-breakers.
Consistent to meritocratic values, success according to SoC students is a combination of industriousness and aptitude (Ben, 2023). The interview with Ben revealed that in his eyes, industriousness is the biggest factor that contributes to success because the nature of computing work requires specialised skills. Hence, the ability to spend more time practicing such skills are essential to be proficient and adept in them. This also includes transferrable skills such as strong knowledge in Mathematics and logic that can help students grasp computing concepts more easily.
Passion hence acts only as an indicator of how likely one has spent significant time in an area (Ben, 2023). Passionate students are more likely to engage in side projects and therefore are more likely to have spent more time practicing the skills. However, it is not a definitive benchmark since more industrious students are likely to surpass passionate but “lazy” ones.
Additionally, passion is limited in measuring one’s aptitude since aptitude involves natural skill and talent, which can only be assessed through technical assessments. For example, the prestigious Smart Nation Scholarship that develops students for Singapore’s digital transformation conducts rigorous aptitude tests to measure applicants’ general, logical, and numerical reasoning abilities (BrightSparks, 2019). Companies also conduct extensive technical tests and interviews for tech roles, involving take-home assignments, and live coding exercises (Page, n.d.).
The range of specialisations and fields within the tech industry also results in students viewing passion as a means of simplifying job application processes rather as an end in itself (Ben, 2023). For those who have a better idea of where their passions lie, it is a convenient way to filter out large amounts of job positions that they are disinterested in. This effectively creates a more efficient job search since each student has limited capacity, hence optimising the chance of securing an internship or job.
Passion also acts as an indicator of loyalty to employers. Given the highly competitive nature of the tech industry and the high quality of SoC’s education, graduates are often able to jump towards better opportunities (Adam, 2023). This results in the job-hopping phenomenon where tech professionals rotate through organisations every 1 to 2 years to gain new technical knowledge (Robert Walters, n.d.). However, this practice is costly for organisations since resources are spent in hiring processes, and they wish for talented employees to remain with their company for a longer duration. Students passionate about the tech and cause of the company become prime candidates since they are more likely to remain loyal to the organisation.
However, employers’ primary goal is not in passionate employees, but rather in employees that can do the job (Adam, 2023). For organisations, each job has a specific role with specific tasks and deliverables, and the ability to execute the role well is the immediate consideration over passion in employees. Ultimately, many also recognise that the search for one’s passion is a long process and can often take years of experimentation.
Given the meritocratic competition that students are in, passion no longer is the genuine emotional attachment that one puts into work, but instead becomes a method of branding one’s résumé. Since aptitude is the key criteria for job compatibility, students are already technically well equipped for specialised work with SoC’s competitive academic system (Adam, 2023). Hence, students are often required to use “passion” as a means to set themselves ahead of their peers. Yet, passion is difficult to assess, and instead is perceived. As such, students must be able to effectively brand themselves, and properly articulate their area of interests, and how they have explored it. This also means, as conceded by Adam, that it is possible for students to fake their passion, since what is ultimately important is that others perceive them to be passionate.
This is also consistent with Ben’s belief that competitions and hackathons are merely signals of one’s aptitude and not passions. It implies that for most students, the demand to participate in these events and other side projects are merely a proof of competence rather than an extension of their passions. This is likewise reflected in the industry, where they, in meritocratic fashion, believe that “passion” must involve actions to justify one’s interest in a subject. In fact, both students and employers look past true passion, and instead are more concerned with aptitude and capabilities.
By extension, observations of students’ struggles are not exploitations of passion, but merely natural results of the context that SoC students are in. For example, the competitive environment in SoC naturally invites students who are willing to expend significant efforts to achieve high academic standards (Ben, 2023). With the majority of the cohort adopting such an attitude, everyone else must also contribute that same effort to survive among their peers, contributing to the overall overworked student population, struggling to find ways to one up each other. This would also explain why students are compelled to overspecialise into niche areas beyond the scope of an undergraduate.
The use of passion as a means to an end reveals a practical approach that students take to cope with their stresses and pressures. Recommended by Adam and Ben, this approach involves students not worrying over things out of their control and instead act on those within their control. As shown, the demands of SoC and the industry are not controlled by students, so students instead use passion as a branding to be perceived as competent candidates.
Ben also notes how students are acutely aware that their limits and capacity as a functioning human is out of one’s control, and performing at a postgraduate level as a fresh graduate is extremely unrealistic (Ben, 2023). Hence, students should not spend excess efforts and stress in trying to be an industry expert in niche fields at this stage, but instead set them as long term goals. This involves other stressors such as those relating to academics and job security that cannot be removed, but dealing with them is controllable by identifying and avoiding unhealthy motivations such as obsessive comparison to peers, or compulsions to be an expert in all technologies. Stress can also be managed with consistent self-care routines that can involve meditation, exercising, or participating in entertainment and wellness events that SoC and the Students’ Computing Club jointly conduct.
Students genuinely seeking their passions usually also recognise that the process of finding their passion will take time and is out of their control (Adam, 2023). Very often, many people take years and decades to find their passion, and even if found, one’s passion can change over time. However, what is within their control is how they approach this process. Students should not stress themselves over this passion seeking mission since it is a long and gradual process. Additionally, since it is a trial and error process, students can keep experimenting with different aspects of work to expand their experiences and increase their chances of finding their passions. Most importantly, instead of worrying about finding their passions, they should learn to not worry about fields that are definitely not their passions, despite the drive to be proficient in all fields. Students need to be aware of their limits and be ready to set aside topics that they know they are disinterested in to maintain whatever capacity they have left.
Students are also in control of how they prepare for their careers and are advised to seek out the school’s career advisors for assistance when possible. The career advisors are highly trained in understanding the industry and are available to share with students the different career options in terms of roles, industry, and organisation. Relating to passion, they can also help students to explore their interests, find their passions, and derive methods to showcase one’s talents to future employers. Students can also safeguard against exploitation by doing research to better estimate their worth, with the help of career advisors. By understanding the salary ranges of one’s intended job role, students are able to better understand the market demands and expectations and would be better equipped to evaluate compensation packages offered to them.
In all, while societal pressures pushes students to prioritise passion in their career, much of their struggles seem to originate from the meritocratic competition that SoC students are in. Instead, the demand for passion is a means to an end of securing a good job, and not necessarily as an end in itself. This reveals a practical approach students take to cope with their stresses.
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