We're apparently back to making psychoanalysts out of interviewers:

   I'll dedicate a post to specific ways you can identify motivation
   during hiring, but in short, look for: the obvious one: evidence that
   they indeed exhibited these external signs of motivation (in an
   unforced way!) in past jobs; signs of grit in their career and life
   paths (how did they respond to adversity, how have they put their past
   successes or reputation on the line for some new challenge);
   intellectual curiosity in the form of hobbies, nerdy interests that
   they can talk about with passion

10 years ago I bought into the idea of hiring for nerdy interests and hobbies as a proxy for motivation. I will say I met some excellent people during this time, but looking back those same people would have been hired anyway due to their accomplishments at companies.

> though it's a great way to keep your Slack channels full of zesty, nerdy, non-remunerative enterprise during the core hours everyone has to actually ship code together.

Spicy take, but that's 100% consistent with my experience. Hire a lot of people for their nerdy interests and hobbies and your company comms become full of chatter about nerdy interests and hobbies. Meanwhile the "boring" people who ship code and then go home to their families (or pets, or anything) are trying to ship code and get the job done.

Nerdy interests and hobbies is not a good proxy for work ability. Hiring someone primarily for nerdy interests and hobbies is probably a red herring. Focus on what matters.