I understand where you're coming from. PASSION (with capital letters) is important. PASSION for programming is what got me to get a BA and MA in computer science. It's what makes me sit in front of my computer working on side projects whenever I have a chance to. However, the point of this article and the original one is not that. These articles speak of the day to day stress loaded routine job of a regular* developer. And this is where passion (with lower case letters) is not important. My point about the 1% vs the 99% is that not everyone works for Google, Facebook ... In fact, all the contract workers I know struggle a great deal to make ends meet. We need to broaden our analysis to the sate of programming in the whole world. I am not talking about silicon valley or the bay area, which I consider to be the 1%. I had the chance of working in mid-west USA and in a foreign country and I have friends working in other countries. All I can say is that the majority of them don't want to be programming when they are 50.