"How is managing a team of techies different from managing other kinds of office workers? Technical people are motivated by interesting work. They will put up with abominable working conditions if they get to work on something that interests them. I've managed people who had to be sent home at night. But technical people without interesting work are very difficult to manage. Their active minds tend to get them into trouble. A happy team is a group that is busy and too intrigued with their project to get mired down with internal politics. In contrast, I find office workers to be more interested in the overall job than the task at hand. Environment, recognition and security are more important to them.
I've also found that technical people need to have adequate playtime. Ideas are exchanged and expanded while they play ping-pong or walk around the parking lot. Allowing people the freedom to wander when they need to returns high rewards that far offset the apparent lack of focus. Technical workers work all the time. Their minds are constantly mulling over problems and possible solutions. What looks like slacking off may be the most productive time they spend. Give them the freedom to work."
As a developer, I hate being involved in sweeping generalizations about developers.
I'd honestly, like those that I work with to understand and recognize me as an individual with tastes and needs that may or may not be like any other member in any other role in a project.
Human language is full of figurative generalizations, and no author expects them to be taken literally (there are two in this sentence alone).
What the author means to say is "It is commonly believed that X is generally a good motivator. While sometimes true, there exist some professions (ie. much of software development), for which the reality is more subtle, and Y actually motivates people better", where X is various rewards (ex. financial) and Y is different opportunities for autonomy, mastery, and purpose. But that wouldn't fit in a title, so you get a simple generalization, with the deduction of specifics assumed to be an exercise for the readers.
I see this as something that must be solved at the my-immediately-superior manager level. And when one of these managers has at most 10 people immediately underneath. I think that should scale.
I was actually trained in chemistry but I left the field and got into software development for two reasons:
1. By and large, it's a meritocracy. Your degree matters a lot less than the quality of your code.
2. Two people in a garage can still make an impact. Most other technical fields require large teams and big budgets to explore.
A single good developer can make a huge impact and seeing my work make a big difference in the everyday lives of other people is my primary reward. Nothing is more demotivating than being mired in an awkward bureaucracy that resists any change or improvement.
I think the budget part is the largest one -- the extremely low capital necessary compared to almost any other field. Paul Graham has an essay on, I think, things noticed in the startup culture by someone native to a different field -- who observed that you can found Google or Reddit for less than it costs to remodel a kitchen...
Working on boring things, in addition to random revisions of boring things will suck the soul right out of you. This is why you shouldn't make bad financial or life decisions which enslave you to a high paying, soul-sucking job. God help you if you're not getting paid.
There is also significant psychological research linking depression with an external locus of control. (For example, Benassi, et al; 1988)
Personally, having sweated a high-paying job for "the man" for a few years and feeling increasingly burdened by it, I was a bit surprised by the number of upvotes for comments about money being the most important factor. I would happily take a pay cut for an opportunity to develop expertise and to take control over my work. (Which, in a sense, is what entrepreneurship purports to offer -- along with high blood pressure.)
I have never asked for much, or pushed for raises. I was motivated by other things and figured hey, my managers are good guys, they'll do what's right. Turns out that when you discover you've been lower paid for years than some complaining bozo, it can be demoralizing. Or motivating - to get another job.
The (sometimes unspoken) assumption in such articles is that you are paid fairly. So, basically, each of them needs a disclaimer in the first line "This is not a guide to cheat people. If you don't pay them fairly the following advices won't cut it."
In my recent ploy to get you upvoted, I'll point out that some of the most brilliant programmers I know break the generalization in the article and follow this philosophy. They work as consultants making 5x the salary of their full-time counterparts, with precisely your mentality: I don't care if you respect me or honor me with social motivation or whatever. This is a business transaction, and I'll crank out amazing code at amazing speeds as long as you keep paying me $250/hour.
I need to get into this business. Couldn't agree more with the style. Somehow my managers have been convinced that financial incentives don't work in tech. Screw that. I think we should make t-shirts saying 'Fuck You, Pay Me'. startup anyone?
Well, we have dueling anecdotes, which makes it sound like it's time for a study. ;-)
(Unfortunately from what I can tell, the studies on how different kinds of motivation [intrinsic, tangible extrinsic, social, etc.] relate are all over the map, and appear to depend sensitively on the specific kind of task and setting.)
I don't think you have dueling anecdotes, just observation of the existence of red weasels and blue weasels. Until someone starts claiming that most weasels are some color, or that certain colored weasels tend to occur in certain kinds of environments, there's no need to fund extensive studies ;)
If you left off the preamble, you probably would be at -4. People feel bad about downvoting someone after they say "I know I'll probably get downvoted for this, but...". Now we just need a greasemonkey script to prepend the phrase automagically.
"They don’t care about money, actually, unless you’re screwing up on the other things. If you start to hear complaints about salaries where you never heard them before, that’s usually a sign that people aren’t really loving their job. If potential new hires just won’t back down on their demands for outlandish salaries, you’re probably dealing with a case of people who are thinking, “Well, if it’s going to have to suck to go to work, at least I should be getting paid well.”
That doesn’t mean you can underpay people, because they do care about justice, and they will get infuriated if they find out that different people are getting different salaries for the same work, or that everyone in your shop is making 20% less than an otherwise identical shop down the road, and suddenly money will be a big issue. You do have to pay competitively, but all said, of all the things that programmers look at in deciding where to work, as long as the salaries are basically fair, they will be surprisingly low on their list of considerations, and offering high salaries is a surprisingly ineffective tool in overcoming problems like the fact that programmers get 15" monitors and salespeople yell at them all the time and the job involves making nuclear weapons out of baby seals."
I might receive an offer for a reasonably interesting job soon, and have been wondering how to justify going "employed".
So far my impression is that the bitterest pill for me to swallow would be having no chances. If I come up with a great idea, I won't benefit. I assume here that the usual corporate "bonuses" are not even worth talking about. Salary raises tend to be < 10%, which hardly makes up for inflation. Boni of a couple of 1000 bucks are also not interesting. A flat costs 200000€ where I live, so 3000€ here or there don't make an essential difference (being able to buy a flat as one example of relevant income metrics).
Therefore I wonder if employees are even the best choice for corporations, as likely they will never give the company their best effort.
Sure, in an ideal world, I would only be motivated by doing interesting things. The corporation would take care of the rest of my life (enough money for rent, health insurance, family etc), so that I could focus on my job without another worry in the world.
First flaw: what if I lose my job? Corporations don't pay enough for me to build a safety cushion of money. So I'll have to live in permanent fear of losing my job. Living in permanent fear is neither healthy nor fun.
Second flaw: my idea of being motivated by doing interesting things died pretty soon in my first job, during the dot.com area. That is when they brought in the consultants, a ka people who where paid three times what I was paid, got assigned the interesting tasks, despite often being less skilled. Now my tasks back then weren't that interesting, either, but I am pretty sure the experience would have demotivated me, no matter how cool my tasks would have been.
Doing interesting work can factor into my earnings estimate (ie instead of having to invest two weeks of my private time, I can learn technology X on the job. Fine - so that is maybe worth one quarter of my monthly salary, as a one time payment). So if you offer me interesting things to do, I might consider working for you for slightly less money.
I don't know what area you're from, but calling (supposedly yearly) salary raises of (just) under 10% to 'hardly make up for inflation' seems like, to put it mildly, a stretch.
Similarly, "Corporations don't pay enough for me to build a safety cushion of money." What sort of spending habits must one have for that statement to be true?
Sounds like the parent commenter is making excuses.
Suppose I need about 2000€ per month - my rent is 500€ and my health insurance is 700€ (unfortunately). Also there might be family to support.
So to survive for a year, I would need 24K of savings. It takes several years to build that up with a normal salary.
To pay for a house or flat, most people work 30 years where I live. And that is with 50K they pay in cash in the beginning - which I don't have, as I don't have rich parents. It takes several years to save 50K with a normal salary. I haven't worked as an employee for a while, but there are taxes to be paid, social insurance, pension plans and what not (mandatory where I live). I think with 60K, maybe < 10K would be left over per year. That's not counting iPads, new Computers, car, whatever (meaning I won't be able to save all that). Also, the pension plan is supposed to be worthless (they've been saying for years that the system will collapse), so I'd have to put some money into a private pension plan.
As a freelancer, I was up to 80K savings in about 3 years (sadly, since then severely reduced, but still).
Yes, you can live comfortably as an employee - as long as you don't lose your job for 40 years.
Mostly, it sounds like you've just had bad experiences in the past, or you live in a place that makes life harder.
I live in the US, make an average salary for a software engineer, and live an incredibly comfortable life. I'm not going to retire at 30 or own a private yacht, but life isn't the dickensian struggle you present.
I did not have to think much about expenses either. But did you plan to buy a house, or start a company? That is, have you tried to get significant savings on the side?
Also, how old are you? I think when young, one doesn't really have a feeling for how much money one might need in the long run. Alone, I don't need more than maybe a 30m^2 flat. I don't crave any luxuries (except a fast computer+internet). Once family enters the picture, things might change dramatically. Suddenly you need a 4+ bedroom flat, a car, finance your kids education etc. Also, the older you get, the more you realize that you need savings for old age, good health insurance, and you might not be able to always work as hard as you used to.
I'm 26, living alone in a 3 bedroom apartment, there is no need for a car in Vienna and higher education is free here ;)
My burn rate is about 18k a year.
When earning 35k Euros per year I managed to save a bit less than 1/3 of my nett salary (taxes + social & medical insurance added up to about 30% (not counting tax refunds I got at the end of the year), which I think is lower than I would have payed in Germany).
I've since quit that job and my most recent offers have been for 45k euros a year.
I did try to start my own 1-man shop (and failed) with the money I saved while working, my savings lasted for about a year (actually it could have lasted more, I didn't deplete all of my savings - I did get unemployment benefits during that time tho).
I've never needed a car, either, but I suspect things might change with a kid, even when living in the city. Though I'd prefer to stay car free. Time will tell.
Higher education is mostly free in Germany, too, but students still need to live somewhere and eat.
Savings rate might go down with family, too.
As I said, I have lived OK so far, too. I just don't feel it is possible to get very far in terms of financial independence and security being employed.
If you aren't working (or not earning enough) you'd get 'Familienbeihilfe' [1] as a student (something like 600-700 euros a month) until you're 26 or no longer a student.
That should cover the bulk of your expenses if you live frugally in Vienna (I lived for about 800-900 euros a month as student).
Regarding getting fired - you don't seem to take unemployment benefits into account (~55% of your salary after taxes, probably the same or similar in Germany, state also pays your medical and social insurance in that case).
This should also cover the bulk of your expenses - so the amount you need to save is a lot lower then you think.
I'm not saying working as a programmer is your ticket to wealth and fame, but come on: you'll earn a significantly higher than average salary and you won't be promptly thrown to the wolves if you get fired.
The Germanic countries have fairly extensive social safety nets and at the end I really don't think such a level of worrying (about financial security) is justified (btw you also pay less taxes if you have children).
People earning far less than either of us raise families and buy homes here (and in much poorer countries) just fine.
Sounds as if you are not 30 yet. Maybe your outlook will change when you get older. I don't know the conditions in the US, though. I suppose houses are cheap for one thing (by now).
Houses are decently cheap, rent is cheap in most places (not Silicon Valley). The US is overall not a terribly expensive place to live, if you don't want to be in Manhattan, Hollywood or Silicon Valley.
Being a decent software engineer, your raises can outpace inflation pretty handily though I'm pretty sure I'm not managing 10% annually over my career. My salary is 2.3 times what it was when I started, about 12 years ago. My calculator widget thinks that's about 7% annual increase and I'm now living much better than I did in 1998, despite living in a more expensive area.
I'm earning 8 times more than I did when I started, also 12 years ago (six figures now). Though to be fair, I didn't have a degree when I started and began in tech support.
Where the hell in the EU do you live that medical insurance cost 700 Euros a month??
I haven't payed medical insurance since starting to work (as the employers pay them here), but when I did the cost (for plain vanilla public medical insurance, which in Austria covers pretty much everything in my experience) was a bit over 20 Euros a month.
Germany. Insurance is a percentage of your income, up to a maximum (something around 700 to 800EUR). That's if you are on "public insurance". At the moment I can't switch to private insurance, also not sure if it would be a good idea in the long run.
I suspect a lot of Germans are not consciously aware of how much health insurance costs, because the employer pays half of it. So they would think they only pay 300€ for health insurance, when in reality they pay 600€.
It depends how you count, though. I recently read a book that claimed inflation is more like 6 or 7% - for the things that matter.
The government decides what goods to put into the "standard basket" to calculate the inflation. They can choose goods that make inflation numbers seem good.
Yes I know it is usually not 10% (although we might still be in the middle of an economic crisis - Greece, one of the Euro countries, just going bankrupt). I am not sure if a typical salary raise is 10%, either. I am pretty sure that with salary raises alone, you won't be making significant headway as an employee (your company won't upgrade you from 50K/year to 100K/year). The only way to earn more is typically to switch jobs.
I never had a contract that said "salary will be raised by 10% every year", it was just a number I took out of thin air.
Depends how much you believe the official inflation numbers. These people < http://www.shadowstats.com/ > seem to think the official US rate underreports by about 2-3%.
the society of open-source hackers is in fact a gift culture... in which the only available measure of competitive success is reputation among one's peers.
But I think that only applies to open source, not to what we do for a living.
The speaker in the TED video didn't actually say that people weren't motivated by carrots in the tasks that required creative thought, just that carrots didn't improve performance in those situations.
So I think a good portion of us agree that this article is somewhat bullshit, and the consensus is "pay me what I am worth, dammit!". Fair enough, but what would you rather and which would motivate you more?
A decent salary + big performance bonus or a high salary and no bonus? Even at the end of the year, if they were equal it is my thought that a decent salary + large bonus would seem more rewarding, psychologically. Thoughts?
In the absence of politics, with a guarantee of a fair boss, and if [(decent salary+bonus) > high salary] this would be true. As things stand, and people being people, I (and most people, I think) would prefer the high salary, especially if the two figures equal.
Really, who would prefer (X-10)+p*(10) where p lies between 0 and 1 over X?
Bonuses are the first thing to go at the slightest hint of any sort of economic wobble in the macro-environment.
Unless you have it locked in, very explicitly, in writing - fuck the bonus, give me higher base.
I worked at a company with a bonus scheme, which seemed groovy in the first year I was there.
From year 2 till year 5 (when I quit), I did not see even a whiff of a bonus, despite knocking my perf. reviews out of the park. It was always canceled because of some external factors.
In the video, Daniel makes the argument that extrinsic motivators harm productivity, based on the candle experiment. However, in this experiment, the reward caused short-term mental stress. I'm not sure that long-term monetary rewards would create the same effects.
Surely they aren't the best motivators, but I'd argue that they do more
good than harm.
I think the money motivator is important, but as presented in the TED vid, it can definitely narrow your focus. I.e. pay me enough and let me spend some of my time on interesting work and you'll benefit more than pay me alot and micro manage me.
Honestly? I would at least consider it; I'm a pretty well paid senior developer in a lower cost of living area relative to the coasts (upper Midwest).
Why? As I get older I am less and less capable of sitting in front of a computer screen all day: I just get antsy and want to go outside.
I'm not afraid of hard physical work: I live on a small farm and there are plenty of chores to do every day. If I could be paid my current salary to do something where I didn't have to sit under fluorescent lights all day I would really think seriously about it.
a hypothesis: it's easier to come to a (tentative, possibly false) conclusion that the reward is not worth it, than to execute a high level task to completion. The carrot works for mechanical tasks because high level cognition shuts down.
I find the "developers aren't motivated by money" thing demeaning. Of course developers are motivated by money. It's not the only motivation, but it's in there.
It's demeaning because what you're really saying is "I shouldn't have to pay for creative work, since money is for important people like me."
I think developers are motivated by money, but here's the difference: If a developer finds out that the incompetent sitting across from him is making $10k more per year, because of being hired at the right time, he's not likely to care all that much, as long as he's happy with what he makes. It's not taken as a affront, the way it would be among traditional business people. Status in software is measured by access to interesting work and opportunities, not compensation.
We start caring at the 20-50% level, but not about minor differences. Even then, it's not always worth it to get bothered by it. It's mildly irksome to see utter douchebags, at the same age and with not 1/10 my level of talent, making $500k in private equity for literally no good reason, but I can't do anything about it and it doesn't directly affect me (except via New York's absurd rents, but that has more to do with government mismanagement of the property market) so I don't really care enough to think about it that much.
Can you expound upon why government mismanagement of the property market has caused NYC's absurd median rent? Or, at the very least, point me towards an interesting/insightful article on the subject?
The problem isn't anything that the local government did, but what it didn't do. There are a lot of steps that could have been taken to lower the rent and property prices. For example, one measure is disallowing anyone to own property in New York that they don't live in at least 6 months plus 1 day. (The same is true of rent control, since a lot of RC people now live out of the city but keep the apartment because it's cheaper than staying at a hotel for 2-3 weeks.)
Finally, the underemployed and parentally funded (trust fund kids) should not be allowed to drive up the rents. (The fact that they ruin the city is an ancillary annoyance.) This can be accomplished by making it illegal to pay more than a certain percentage of one's after-tax salary (say, 40%) in rent.
...disallowing anyone to own property in New York that they don't live in at least 6 months plus 1 day...
Near as I can tell, this would drive up the price of rentals quite significantly. Any landlord would need to factor the risk of getting caught being a landlord into your rent.
I like your second idea of punishing people who are not part of my tribe.
By the way, a more realistic way to lower rent prices would be to end rent control. One could also move the projects out to distant brooklyn/queens, and rent the projects out at market rates.
Near as I can tell, this would drive up the price of rentals quite significantly. Any landlord would need to factor the risk of getting caught being a landlord into your rent.
Fail on my part. I meant to apply this to ownership without renting, with the intention of kicking out the damn speculators.
By the way, a more realistic way to lower rent prices would be to end rent control.
The original rent control regime (where rents couldn't increase with inflation) turned out to be a huge disaster. It left a bunch of well-connected non-productive rich white people with an arrangement better than ownership, at the rest of our expense. The concept of rent control I don't have an issue with, but the original implementation was awful.
I don't mind government interfering with the rental market if all tenants benefit. In a city like New York, government meddling is necessary because the free market fails catastrophically, as we see in these four-digit rents, but I do think the 60+ year-old sweetheart deal that some people have, just because they've been here forever, needs to be ended.
Latter idea is interesting. It certainly would have slowed the gentrification of Williamsburg, and kept it an interesting neighborhood for longer.
It would have also prevented the multitude of overpriced (and undersold) condos littering that area - along with the empty lots that were going to be overpriced condos before the bust.
The last seems like it'd have a lot of ways to backfire, though. Will there be a grace period in bad economies, so people who lose their jobs, or involuntarily get moved to part-time work, don't also have to move out? What about people bootstrapping startups by living off savings from a previous job?
Doesn't NYC have the strictest renting laws? For example, you have to prove you make 52x the monthly rent to sign a lease. Obviously, sublets are a way around that income floor.
It's 40x, but it's not a legal requirement, and if you can get a "guarantor" making 80x, you can circumscribe that, so the parentally-funded unproductives who are ruining this city get a pass.
It's not the same. This is about, "what brings out the best work/commitment in people?"
What you're actually talking about is presumably a perceived injustice, which might anger people if they felt it was undeserved.
If we're playing poker together, I'm motivated more by fun than trying to actually get your money. That doesn't mean if you take my money by cheating I wouldn't get upset.
I'd wager that even people who flip burgers want autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Anyone with half a brain would want those things. Well any male at any rate. ;)
Smart people also like money to a certain degree, because the more money you get the shorter amount of time you have to be someone's bitch. So it's all 4.
I've also found that technical people need to have adequate playtime. Ideas are exchanged and expanded while they play ping-pong or walk around the parking lot. Allowing people the freedom to wander when they need to returns high rewards that far offset the apparent lack of focus. Technical workers work all the time. Their minds are constantly mulling over problems and possible solutions. What looks like slacking off may be the most productive time they spend. Give them the freedom to work."
-Judy McKay, author of Managing the Test People
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/300537/Career_Watch