
Why Do People Work Hard? - mhb
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/25636/
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lionhearted
> in environments where they are poorly monitored and paid a fixed wage ...
> Surely any rational worker would do the bare minimum to get by.

This line of thinking drives me crazy. Work your ass off, not for your
company, but for _yourself_ \- someday you're going to have a project you
really love and care about, or start your own company, or something important
for yourself. If you've built habits that are lazy, bad, procrastinating, and
blaming others and avoiding responsibility - you can't just flip those off. If
you're mopping the floor, be the best damn floor mopper the world has ever
seen. This will serve you later when you're working for the causes you care
about.

~~~
SkyMarshal
WTB more upvotes for this. Habits are everything. Maybe even the key to life,
or at least professional success.

~~~
rudyfink
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”

Your sentiment made me think of that quote. I completely agree.

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edanm
I was really surprised by the first few paragraphs of this article:

"There's a puzzle at the heart of our economy that has troubled economists for
decades. The question is this: why do people work hard in environments where
they are poorly monitored and paid a fixed wage, rather than a performance-
related one.Surely any rational worker would do the bare minimum to get by."

Really? Every rational worker would do the bare minimum? Even more surprising,
the following paragraphs mention peer pressure and employment contracts.

Do we honestly not believe anyone wants to work hard because they like working
hard? Because they feel better living up to promises, or even just plain like
what they do?

I know the term "rational worker" is used in a scientific sense for Economics,
but this article is talking about actual workers in real life, not some
theoretical construct.

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philwelch
Yes--more specifically, it's a behavioral study into how they differ.

A rational economic actor tries to maximize profit. That means expending less
effort to get the same fixed wage. The puzzle in economics is how, exactly,
humans are irrational.

~~~
billswift
The real problem with economics and human psychology is not so much that
humans are irrational Though they often are, they are actually less so in
economic contexts than in most others. I think the bigger problem is that
classical economics has a rather limited view of "rationality". Just because
something doesn't give an immediate or narrowly quantifiable return does _not_
necessarily make it irrational in any reasonable sense.

~~~
kalid
Exactly. Classical economics assumes everyone's utility function == income.
What about the pleasure of a job well done, companionship/relationship, job
satisfaction, etc.? Well, since they can't be quantified they are ignored.

~~~
mhb
That's silly. In order to make comparisons, utility (including the intangibles
you mention) can be and is estimated in terms of money. If they don't do that
here, that is their failing and not one of economics in general.

~~~
anamax
> That's silly. In order to make comparisons, utility (including the
> intangibles you mention) can be and is estimated in terms of money. If they
> don't do that here, that is their failing and not one of economics in
> general.

How about you go tell all of the economists that they're doing it wrong?

While you're fixing economists, the rest of us will get along just fine with
"economics doesn't model the real world very well". That may be pedantically
wrong, but it's far more efficient.

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RobIsIT
Last year, I took on an interesting role with Mahalo.com. I was a "Vertical
Manager" responsible for managing labor, defining tasks, etc. Here are 3
things that I learned:

Educate people. Don't "teach" or "instruct" them. Truly educate them on what
you need done, why, and what you expect the results to be. Education is a
talent learned through experience. Not everyone is good at it and more often
then not a failure in labor can be explained in part by the quality of
education distributed.

If … Then rewards often fail. They can be demotivating and worst of all,
people will naturally do the lowest amount of work or preform the lowest
quality labor for the "then" reward. Dan Pink author of Drive authored an
exceptionally good book on the subject of reward and motivation. You should
read it.

Kindness, honesty and respect are conveyed in every action that one makes and
if people know that you will treat them well, they will treat you well.
Motivation isn't some secret science and "doing onto others" is perhaps the
most significant cornerstone of it.

~~~
chc
What is the difference between "teaching" and "educating"? These are perfect
synonyms in my mental lexicon, so I can't really get the distinction you're
trying to draw there.

~~~
gvb
I prefer to use the terms "train" vs. "learn" (educate). Big Companies talk a
_lot_ about training their employees and government agencies talk a _lot_
about retraining laid off workers. Big Company Training in my experience only
addresses the "how" and not the "why". As a result, it generally is non-
transferable knowledge and often is inaccurate to boot.

Training is what I do to my dog when he pees on the carpet.

I don't want to be trained, I want to _learn._

~~~
Goladus
I actually think of training and learning orthogonally.

Learning is about increasing your knowledge and comprehension. Training is
about increasing your skills. Learning involves study. Training involves
practice. Obviously, the boundary is not stark, but you get the idea.

Contrast the feeling of wonder and amazement when you first learned some
difficult theory or algorithm, with the feeling of power and confidence that
comes from repeated practice using it to solve problems. In my mind, the first
is learning, the second is training.

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JangoSteve
_This kind of work fascinates psychologists, economists and managers because
it raises the possibility that productivity in the workplace can be
manipulated by clever management rather than by expensive financial
incentives._

In my experience, I've had the best luck simply being clear and consistent
about assignments and desired expectations (from both the manager and the
worker end). For instance, in regards to this experiment on Mechanical Turk, I
would probably include in the description that each photo should have around
10-15 tags if that was the level of categorization that I wanted.

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butterinmycafe
Why don't we start by defining what is meant by "hard"?

Essentially worthless article without that information. Are you working as
hard as you can? Is what you consider hard considered hard by everyone?

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yason
I try to follow the rule that whatever you do, do it well. When you have to
cut down, reduce the number of things you do, not the quality of work.

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duffbeer703
Amazing how clueless the MIT guys can be sometimes.

While compensation and work product are great metrics for economists to argue
about, they aren't the only factor driving people. In fact, I think in most
instances work output has no correlation to compensation.

People instinctively do things for seemingly intangible reasons that apply in
various circumstances. They figure that the best workers are more likely to
get promoted, will get the best shifts, want to help their coworkers, are less
likely to get laid off and have personal standards.

Think of it this way... soliders, even conscripted soldiers, commit acts of
bravery that are above and beyond the call of duty in combat. Instead of
staying out of the line of fire, they charge machine guns, throw back hand
grenades, and rescue wounded comrades. To an economist, these things are
completely irrational or crazy, because all of economics is focused on
studying or manipulating a datapoint on a supply/demand curve.

Life is more that supply/demand. Economics influences life, but doesn't
consume it.

~~~
lvecsey
I thought it was pretty much determined that most employees just need a
minimum amount of salary met, at which point they're fine. Kind of like
maintaining a lawn or pool; don't add a stressor by cutting things so close to
the limit, but rather keep things plush, so there are no issues.

The combat soldier takes a calculated risk, and is there to assist because not
doing so would be too powerful of a demoralizing force and fill themselves
with regret. People leap into action at those moments because the alternative
is incomprehensibly unacceptable.

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Ardit20
Times Roman is so very hard to read on the internet :(

~~~
mhb
Fortuitously, there's Readability:

<http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/>

~~~
jacobolus
Sorry to be obnoxious, but this use of _fortuitously_ as an all-purpose
synonym for _fortunately_ or _happily_ or _thankfully_ really gets on my
nerves. _Fortuitously_ means “by coincidence” or “by accident”, or sometimes
“by happy accident”. The creation of Readability did not happen by chance.
(Though of course, through long and increasing misuse, the word is now often
used as you use it here).

~~~
nopassrecover
Unless the parent was being ironic e.g. "its raining on me - well by pure
chance they invented this amazing invention called the umbrella" (I suspect
not as knowing Readability exists is not expected, though this ironic use is
probably where the convergence of the terms began).

