
What Marshmallows Tell Us About Silicon Valley - fab1an
http://priceonomics.com/what-marshmallows-tell-us-about-silicon-valley/
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stevewillows
This is an interesting read along with the article [1] where the Google Reader
developer suggests that the retirement of Reader will prevent new ideas at
Google for fear of the same treatment regardless of the adoption.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5981630](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5981630)

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jejune06
I think it was an interesting take on the marshmallow test, but these
principles don't solely apply to Silicon Valley.

Incentives power everything -- good and bad. Looking at the financial crisis
of 2009, rent seekers taking advantage of Medicaid, etc. You could come up
with a million examples.

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milfot
Particularly bad.. incentivisation schemes create proxies for success and
inevitably get gamed. Why bother with all the hard stuff when you can shortcut
your way to success?

Good incentives are life really.. look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs. I
believe most people work because they have to, but most people who work hard,
work hard because they want to. The pay off is growth, progress, self-
actualisation.

As an aside, this is why I question the whole gamification thing. The best
games life-ify the game. Why would you want to remove meaning and complexity
from work?

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johnvschmitt
Nice.

Along similar lines, I believe that _individuals_ can make decisions that go
counter to the incentives provided to them.

But, when you take an aggregate of thousands or more of individuals, you can
often predict accurately that the aggregate behaviors will align with the
incentives in the system.

You'll find where there is accountability & consequences & FEEDBACK, then
things improve.

This article is just one dimension of that larger concept on feedback &
incentives.

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Retric
FEEDBACK is always there it is not always positive. I have had two jobs where
I stared out working Stupid hard, never did not get a reasonable pay raise and
quickly became unmotivated.

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pacaro
This really resonates with how counter productive the review system is a
Microsoft, especially at and above the middle levels, the incentives become
decoupled from effort and productivity.

When doing good work was reasonably correlated with promotion, stock and pay
the system worked. When what was measured became uncertain the system falls
apart

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peteratt
I would add a corollary: the lack of future reward is the root cause of the
outright failure of socialism/communism. No matter what you do, in an
_utopian_ communism you'd get only what you need. The wealth you could create
has no return.

Obviously, in the end everyone will be equal, equally improductive. Equally
poor.

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PavlovsCat
When was either of those ever implemented? How much do you even know about the
theory to start with, if you talk about " _utopian_ communism" as if you read
Marx back to back? Or are trigger words like "Stalin" and "East block
countries" enough to make you enter and stay in the back of just any old van?

I wish people at least spoke for themselves. Because know of a lot of examples
where I went above and beyond simply because I felt good about the work and
enjoyed finding out about and increasing my potential. I can work hard in a
cancer ward for lodging and meals and love it; but you could hardly pay me
enough to sell people something they don't need, or that actually hurts them.
I know I'm not alone with that either, I am in awesome, priceless company.

Ever watched horses in the wild? Or dogs play? They exert themselves because
they can. Those who need to be forced or tricked are _sick_.

Then there is also this: "The trouble with the rat race is, even if you win
it, you're still a rat." (Lily Tomlin) Capitalism doesn't solve anything, it
just shifts the problem out of the range of short-sighted people. Even those
often feel it subconsciously, and cannot hide their confusion and despair
trickling through the cracks of the facade.

This article essentially points out that humans have defensive strategies in
situations of uncertainty and distrust. The suggested reaction is not to
reflect on what causes them, where they might be justified and where they
might not -- but simply assumes as given that "life isn't fair" and that it
would help to better deceive people into thinking it was. I'm making another
connection to marshmallows here: "white and spineless, without any traces of
intellectual honesty".

Problem: People don't trust Facebook and are less engaged because they either
feel it's just a thinly veiled mechanism to shove them into marketing
segements, or because they're uncomfortable with the cooperation with snoops.

Solution: PR campaign. Yeah, Facebook is "just a company", and "needs" to make
money at whatever cost, so all of this and worse would be to expected in
_utopian_ capitalism, but Skinner showed us ways around that.

Instead of, you know, having a decent society, this article is about the tools
we are supposed to use in broken one. It's sweet, but no thanks, because it
just sticks between the teeth and makes you fat. Can't think well with a fat
brain.

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16s
Long article, but worth reading. Interesting take as well. I never thought of
the marshmallow test in terms of trusting the reward (more marshmallows) will
come, but that makes a lot of sense.

I trust they'll bring more, that's why I wait and work hard.

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lettergram
Guess that explains why I want to work hard... I want to make my own
marshmallows

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michaelochurch
It's better to drink milkshakes.

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marcosscriven
I'd love to go back in time and do the experiment on Zuckerburg - I expect
he'd have held out for a _billion_ marshmallows.

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ArekDymalski
Not necessarily. I'd say that the IPO is some form of _not_ delaying the
gratification in opposition to slow, organic growth.

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michaelochurch
I think this explains a lot about why corporate life (and this includes VC-
istan) seems to lead to mediocrity in what is ultimately a trillion-dollar
destruction of human capital.

When people start to associate work with endless subordination and minuscule
reward, they're effectively conditioned for laziness (in the long term). They
stop believing that anything is worth waiting more than 10 minutes for.

