
Top Motivators For Developers (Hint: not money) - gacba
http://www.lessonsoffailure.com/developers/autonomy-mastery-purpose/
======
wallflower
"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."

-Judy McKay, author of Managing the Test People

<http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/300537/Career_Watch>

------
hipsterelitist
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.

~~~
rapind
Doesn't scale. I don't mean that negatively. I believe it's representative of
the mindset.

As to whether or not your company should be scaling, that's another matter.

~~~
mapleoin
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.

~~~
rapind
Theoretically sound. Manager's that _get_ this probably don't come cheap.

------
cageface
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.

~~~
compay
I couldn't agree more. I left linguistics 10 years ago for the same reasons
you described and never once looked back.

~~~
dkimball
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...

------
Mc_Big_G
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.

~~~
prosa
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.)

------
Isamu
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.

Pay is another aspect of recognition.

~~~
sgift
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."

------
einarvollset
In my recent ploy to get downvoted, I'll sum up my view of this: Fuck you, pay
me.

~~~
andreyf
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.

~~~
_delirium
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.)

~~~
allyt
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 ;)

------
j_baker
I agree with Joel on this subject:

"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."

[http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/FieldGuidetoDeveloper...](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/FieldGuidetoDevelopers.html)

------
Tichy
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.

~~~
roel_v
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.

~~~
lotharbot
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.

~~~
Tichy
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.

~~~
yalurker
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.

~~~
ido
Sounds like it to me too.

I never had to think too much about expenses as a (single, childless)
programmer here in Vienna (which is not known for very good developer
salaries).

Looking at other programmers here it seems my experience is not out of the
ordinary.

Sounds like a very exceptional situation.

~~~
Tichy
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.

~~~
ido
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).

~~~
Tichy
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.

~~~
ido
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.

[1] <http://www.help.gv.at/Content.Node/8/Seite.080712.html>

------
richcollins
Status probably trumps all three. I'd attribute most of github's popularity to
the desire for status.

~~~
jazzdev
Yep. Eric Raymond has a good write-up of this phenomenon, which is called a
_gift culture_.

[http://catb.org/esr/writings/homesteading/homesteading/ar01s...](http://catb.org/esr/writings/homesteading/homesteading/ar01s06.html)

 _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.

------
kowen
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.

------
plesn
Motivators for cognitive tasks: not money but "autonomy, mastery, purpose."

Hey guys: it's not anarcho-socialism, it's science!

------
signa11
Money is like a sixth sense without which you cannot make a complete use of
the other five.

    
    
      - W. Somerset Maugham, 'Of Human Bondage'

------
Snark7
I think this article is much better:

<http://hbswk.hbs.edu/archive/5289.html>

------
mattwdelong
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?

~~~
ajju
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?

~~~
heresy
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.

------
abentspoon
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.

------
forinti
Maybe it is money, except that developers want to earn it their way and be
recognized for it.

~~~
enjo
I have a family to support, and as I pass 30 years old..trust me.. money
motivates me.

~~~
jrockway
Really? Would you take a $10,000 pay raise to clean the inside of sewage
holding tanks?

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
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.

------
jaekwon
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.

------
dailo10
This article is eerily reminiscent of a recent post by Bruce Eckel
<http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=287521>

------
zachbeane
Not a top motivator: <http://www.xach.com/img/doing-it-wrong.jpg>

------
api
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."

------
pw0ncakes
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.

~~~
warfangle
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?

Thanks!

~~~
pw0ncakes
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.

~~~
yummyfajitas
_...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.

~~~
pw0ncakes
_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.

------
houseabsolute
Give all your programmers a ten percent salary cut and get back to me about
how many of them were motivated by money.

~~~
ekanes
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.

------
Gogome
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.

------
tripa
less of [something]? Wait, no, let's parse that again. less on/off [something
else]? Oops, parse failed again. lessons off...ered? Aargh...

Word split fail for me. Picking the right domain name is so hard. And yet it
seems so obvious once you've integrated it in global word reading zone...

