I had a similar experience at work (IT company). I was complaining about how nobody seemed to care about learning new technology, and one of my staff said "most people are not like you. They want to go home at 4:30, plop on the couch, and not worry about this stuff." It struck me that's the difference between a real professional and everyone else --- a professional does want to keep up with technology, does want to learn better ways of doing things, does want to succeed. Many people in white-collar positions (yes, even in the tech industry) have no other desire than to collect a paycheck while doing the least amount of work they can get away with. Maybe that's also the difference between tech-geeks and say, the marketing department.