HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

Actually profit as a motivation does not work for highly skilled work. If you put a monetary reward for solving a problem the solution usually gets worse.

"Based on studies done at MIT and other universities,[4] higher pay and bonuses resulted in better performance ONLY if the task consisted of basic, mechanical skills. It worked for problems with a defined set of steps and a single answer. If the task involved cognitive skills, decision-making, creativity, or higher-order thinking, higher pay resulted in lower performance" source: book The Drive by Dan Pink https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drive:_The_Surprising_Truth_Ab...

Ted talk https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation

⬐ goatinaboat

Actually profit as a motivation does not work for highly skilled work.

If that is true then it logically follows that management is not highly skilled work, no?

Do the people who come up with these theories even bother to think it through at all?

⬐ acd

I was trying to say that high compensation levels on management level may not lead to the best results for the company. Neither may chasing quarterly profits to have a good stock level.

Thus engineering goals and management goals may not be the same.

⬐ solidasparagus

I take it you couldn't be bothered to read the links or look at the research behind the theory before ridiculing it? The idea is that after a certain point, financial motivation doesn't lead to better work - to motivate you need to fulfill higher-level needs like ownership, purpose, autonomy, etc.

Your statement about management not being skilled work makes no sense. Do you have some evidence that paying managers more leads to better performance?

⬐ goatinaboat

Do you have some evidence that paying managers more leads to better performance?

There is no such evidence yet manager’s reward themselves and their peers lavishly anyway. That’s the point. The research is a scam to justify underpaying skilled workers so management can keep it all for themselves.

⬐ solidasparagus

That is literally the opposite of what the research says. It says that after a certain point, financial reward is not a good way to encourage strong performance. It says low-wage workers can be incentivized with higher pay, but high-wage workers need more intrinsic reward because pay is not an effective incentive once people are financially comfortable.

At least open the wikipedia page before making such completely incorrect statements.

⬐ goatinaboat

financial reward is not a good way to encourage strong performance

And yet managers are highly paid and incentivised with large bonuses. How do you explain that paradox if pay is not an incentive? Managers can reward themselves and their peers with literally anything and they always choose more money. How do you explain it?

Theory and Wikipedia are fine but look at what actually happens in the real world. I read the original research in HBR when it was first published by the way. I didn’t believe it then either.

⬐ solidasparagus

Because people prioritize their personal finances over company performance? That doesn't sound surprising to me.

This is also relatively new and it takes time for traditions to change. When it comes to the real world, you can clearly see this research in action, particularly in the world of software. There has been a shift from offering pure financial incentive (e.g. working in finance) towards more intrinsic rewards (mission-driven, autonomy, ownership, etc that most top-end software companies prioritize)

⬐ goatinaboat

mission-driven, autonomy, ownership, etc that most top-end software companies prioritize

“Top-end software companies” like say Google? Once again you look at the real world and find that companies find a reliable means of attracting and retaining staff is high pay.

What if you got paid your bonus not in cash but in paid time off? You could use that time for more self-actualisation. But (pretty much) zero companies offer it and no employees demonstrate a preference for it. In the real world money is what people want.

⬐ solidasparagus

Uh Google is one of the most obvious examples of a company spending a ton of money to boost the non-financial rewards of being an employee. In fact, Google is one of the best examples of this research being applied successfully in the real world...

I don't think you have a very open mind in this discussion. People who aren't struggling to pay their bills prioritize things like autonomy, happiness and purpose above cash all the time.

⬐ atq2119

Maybe they did, and the correct conclusion is that (excessively) high pay for management is entirely unjustified?

⬐ ilaksh

That's exactly the type of hogwash executives promote in order to avoid rewarding engineers so they can keep more profits for themselves.

⬐ swagasaurus-rex

There's one very important thing keeping me and everybody from destitution: an income.

Profit motive might not make me more creative (debatable) but it will certainly enable me to work for years on end.

Dan Pink’s TED talk on motivation speaks about this: https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation/transcript?...

Human beings are complex, love doing interesting (to us) things, love being in the flow, love contributing to others and hate the feeling of being ordered around or obviously manipulated into something we don’t like.

> Why are companies so bad at coming up with a system that keeps more competent people and eases out less competent people but that also doesn't hurt morale by being a dystopian nightmare?

Dan Pink wrote a book and gave a took about this: http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation?language=en

I think the issue systemic and might need an overhaul.

Mm, I'm really not an expert and don't have anything constructive to add except to simplify what I said:

IMO the key thing is that the work is done in open mode, and the results are observed critically.

This means that the constraints, implicit or explicit, should be as unlimiting as possible, because all constraints will limit the space of solutions that people can think of. This includes such limits as performance metrics and various financial incentives. Which means if you want creative output, you should generally fund peoples and projects, and not milestones. And then when they deliver something, gauge that critically, and if the thing they make sells well, give them a bonus so they will feel fairly treated. But don't incentivize the innovation process itself and don't hold the bonus up as a promised gift they will wait for.

This is of course completely different way than you would incentivize sales people or people doing linear repetitive tasks where performance based incentives are shown to work pretty well.

Dan Pink's TED lecture is pretty good.

https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation?language=en...

Dan Pink struck a cord on the subject of primary motivators - autonomy, mastery, and purpose. > https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation?language=en

Gamification is used a lot in UK education, at least PBL appears everywhere.

The problems with gamification centre mainly around intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation. Some studies strongly suggest that you're teaching kids to seek the rewards of games rather than helping them to find fulfillment in their education.

Gamification works well if you're looking for mechanical responses; it might work better for deeper thinking if the game element is well designed.

Kids feel that fun education is better, but that doesn't necessarily mean it is/isn't the best method.

Some things in studies - money - turn out to be bad motivators for tasks, with larger sums interfering more in people completing more complex tasks. PBL probably follows a similar model.

https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation/ is worth a look.

⬐ gboudrias

> helping them to find fulfillment in their education

This did not happen to me or my friends until university. I doubt anything would've fooled us into liking school, but learning games at least would have passed the time quicker.

http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation

http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation (I know it isn't a study, but this was the one video I remember mentioning that more money doesn't equal more motivation)

There's a lot of studies that show that money is a poor motivator long term once you pass the essentials for life (which admittedly in the Valley is higher than many other places). As important, some of those studies show that especially in roles requiring creativity (like engineering, design, etc) it actually negatively effects motivation and output.

See Dan Pink's Drive for a good summary of many of this research, which has led to his Autonomy - Mastery - Purpose framework that is part of his more well-known TED Talk on the subject: http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation

Coincidentally, those 3 pieces of his framework hit on many of the aspects of this thread and especially the Gallup research on the desire for goals and growth.

⬐ childpsychismeh

This response has always seemed meaningless to the point of insult; and the conspiracy theorist in me wonders how much of "they don't REALLY want/need money" is motivated by the people who have to pay out.

(sorry, this comes off as very blunt, please take it as only a comment on the argument and not you, but I needed to use strong words to express the strength of what it makes me feel)

As you say, "essentials for life" are different in the valley, but are also different per-person. My essentials were MUCH simpler when I was living alone. When I got a fiancee in industry, my essentials became easier to support Now that she went into academia, it suddenly became a struggle.

Combine this with area of living, and what do you see? That the "essentials" are far more dynamic than your argument typically lets on, not only in terms of material differences like spousal compensation/how many children you're supporting, but psychological/learned response, e.g. "I have to get my used car repaired every year or so because I can't afford a new one off the lot".

Is that essential? Different people could probably make different arguments. Does it hurt when you have that thought pulling in next to someone driving a Porsche? You better damn well bet it does.

So to bring this back to the root: VERY LONG TERM maybe I could agree with you, but life isn't just a very long term calculation, the dominating thoughts day to day are (at least for the less zen of us) very now-focused, and expose many situations in which a little more money (as a parent comment said) would drastically increase the quality of life.

⬐ ryandrake

I fully agree, and thank you for taking the time to comment on what's now a very old thread. I'll put it even more bluntly:

Cavemen had "the essentials of life." That's not what I'm going for, and not what most people are going for. Every little bit extra helps.

⬐ st3v3r

But what are you willing to trade for it? Keep in mind that I'm not talking about people who are just above making ends meet; I'm talking about people who are already making 6 figures. I would imagine that most of us, the additional money, unless it is a very significant sum, like a 30% raise, would rather not have the additional stress and the additional responsibilities, and instead be able to use that time and energy on things that we want to do, like hobbies or being with family.

⬐ existencebox

I am rather well paid. I push very hard in my job, to try and aim for monetary promotions. I live in such a high cost of living area, however, that even on my salary it is difficult to afford a house. and start a family, ESPECIALLY competing with double income households.

This leaves me with three options. Rent forever, at increasing rates. (not a feasible option). Buy a house now, ride the constant increasing prices like everyone already in the market, be glad I'm not a buyer any more. (trying, but very hard to compete when 10% above listing is common.) Save up and move the hell out.

In any of these situations, a 5%, hell, a 1% raise compounded over a decade, makes a _meaningful_ difference in how long you'd be able to sustain living in a better cost of living area (e.g. if I moved out into the country somewhere), if not also on how much I can put out as a down-payment or as a lifeline to keeping up with increasing rent.

Perhaps it's a sign of what would have in the past been comfortably middle class being more and more stretched, but every little bit counts; it's an oddly similar feeling to when I used to be far less well off a few decades back.

⬐ None

None

⬐ jevanish

Except for maybe some Buddhist monks who have given up all material things, everyone would like another dollar. However, there's also fulfillment at work.

Go take the absolute highest paying offer the next time you interview for jobs, and if you do that a series of times, I think you'll find you won't be as happy as taking the best overall offer that takes into account things like:

- Role/responsibility

- How interesting the work is

- Whether you're excited to work with your future peers

There's a reason people leave finance despite the high pay. There's more to life than money.

⬐ jevanish

Yes. You are right it's dynamic and does change. Certainly as more people are in your family (single->married->children) your cost structure that makes you happy definitely changes.

Issues tied to financial stability certainly will drive you to want to get a higher salary, especially with how impossible home ownership is in places like Silicon Valley.

With that being said, if you aren't having to stare at your bank balance every morning and sweat your salary, then what makes you happiest at work is those other factors of things like Pink's framework of Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose. It's also the lack of those 3 areas that will make a job that pays sufficiently pretty damn miserable leading you to seek a more fulfilling job if you can find one that meets your salary needs. I bet there's a limit to what you'd put up with at work even if they paid you $1 million per year.

Having worked in a number of early stage startups I have talked to a number of older members of teams I've been on who have forgone as much as $50-60k in salary to move from a giant company to a mid-size startup. That definitely affected their quality of life to do it, but it was worth it to wake up happy, despite perhaps making some sacrifices. As they told me, they had to make some adjustments in their lifestyle but then got used to it and it was okay.

The other important factor that I would encourage you to look at Pink's research for is that it turns out if you use financial incentives to tie to creative tasks (like an engineer shipping features) it actually has been found in psychology studies to lower the quality of the work and the motivation of the person. This means bonuses are often a really bad idea. The good thing about a salary is that it is disconnected from a specific creative task.

The article is very cool. It made me remember that I saw it somewhere, and that's the candle problem TED talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation I had a good time watching it.

On a somewhat related note, you may enjoy this TED talk if you haven't seen it. It's on the paradox of incentives and motivation: http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation?language=en

Hi there, I'm quite new to engineering management as well, with approximately one year of experience. I've had some great mentors, as well as a reading list passed down to me. I'll highlight those I found as having the most impact for me.

At the top of the list is "Managing Humans: Biting and Humorous Tales of a Software Engineering Manager" by Michael Lopp[1], which was recommended to me by a manager who helped me get my start in engineering management. This book touches on a lot of the nuances in dealing with people and, as an introvert, I found this really helpful. The same author blogs under "Rands in Repose[2]" which has much of the content from the aforementioned book available for free.

While in the people category you'll also get a lot of recommendations for "Drive!" by Daniel Pink[2], which is a book about intrinsic motivators (autonomy, mastery, purpose) and how they are more important and effective than extrinsic motivators (e.g. money), particularly for knowledge workers. My personal advice, however, is to watch his TED talk[3] which is a great summary of basically the entire book. In this same category I could also recommend "The Great Jackass Fallacy" by Harry Levinson[5].

Now on the wall between people management and engineering/project management is "Slack" by Tom DeMarco[6], which is about how organizations and managers tend to run their staff at 100% capacity. As the book points out, however, this is a good way to not only burn people out, but it also sends response times through the roof (from queuing theory), and stifles change ("too busy to improve"). You can read this one on a plane. For some shameless self promotion, I've also written a tiny blog post relating Slack and the need for upkeep (software operations and maintenance)[7].

Next, fully in engineering/project management, I have to recommend "Waltzing with Bears" by Tom DeMarco and Anthony Lister[8], which is specifically about managing risk on software projects. The authors highlight the common practice of project/engineering managers communicating their "nano date", which they point out is typically the lowest point on the uncertainty curve. In other words, the project has the lowest possible chance of shipping by this date when you look at the possible timeline as a probability distribution. This book changed the way I talk about projects and the way I manage my team's various risks and I have been more successful as a result.

One final recommendation I'll make, since you're in the midst of a transition, is "The First 90 Days" by Michael Watkins[9]. It's a wonderful book that outlines how and why one should develop a transition plan in order to hit the ground running - and in the right direction. For my last engineering management opportunity, developing a preliminary 90 day plan as part of a "starter project," was a major factor in being given the job.

I believe that a subset of these will give you a great start. After that, you should read on the areas you feel the need for the most amount of help with or the areas that interest you. If you are avidly interested in project management, for example, you should read books on various methodologies, particularly the one that you or your organization practice.

[1]: http://www.amazon.com/Managing-Humans-Humorous-Software-Engi...

[2]: http://randsinrepose.com/

[3]: http://www.amazon.com/Drive-Surprising-Truth-About-Motivates...

[4]: http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation?language=en

[5]: http://www.amazon.com/Great-Jackass-Fallacy-Harry-Levinson/d...

[6]: http://www.amazon.com/Slack-Getting-Burnout-Busywork-Efficie...

[7]: http://www.charleshooper.net/blog/on-slack-and-upkeep/

[8]: http://www.amazon.com/Waltzing-Bears-Managing-Software-Proje...

[9]: http://www.amazon.com/The-First-90-Days-Strategies/dp/159139...

Science says that will give you worse results:

http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation

The biggest reason many managers are bad managers is because they haven't defined measurable goals and outcomes for the individuals on the team and for the team as a whole.

This leads them to micromanage, be stressed and every other characteristic associated with the stereotype.

If you are able to define measurable outcomes/goals - then how those are achieved really should be left in the hands of the individuals/team.

This is what makes you (imo) a capable manager.

If you want to take it up a notch, learn how to motivate them.

I highly suggest watching

a) Dan Pink's talk on Motivation for this (and perhaps also picking up his book "Drive"): http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation and

b) Simon Sinek's talk on leadership (and also picking up his book) on starting with why: http://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspi....

I think this will give you a strong foundation to build off of.

In no particular order:

http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation

http://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspi...

http://www.ted.com/talks/amanda_palmer_the_art_of_asking

http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_crea...

http://www.ted.com/talks/derek_sivers_how_to_start_a_movemen...

http://www.ted.com/talks/nancy_duarte_the_secret_structure_o...

I can't count how many times I've seen these.

⬐ massung

That was my list - almost exactly. Especially Ken Robinson and Dan Pink. +1.

⬐ ASquare

Life altering stuff for sure.

I don't understand what you're trying to argue here. On the one hand, this is obviously true. On the other hand, it is also true that art forms can essentially die out. Who works with stained glass murals or illuminated manuscripts anymore?

It is certainly true that the US constitution can be amended. Nevertheless, we live in a world in which what you want is not [just not the law of the land] but explicitly [forbidden by the land's highest legal authority].

As I see it, there are two separate conversations here. The first one is whether the changes you're proposing would have the effect that you intend. The second is whether the changes you are proposing could be made in our society.

My original comment was meant to convince you that this second point wasn't reasonable. To change something that's unconstitutional is a much bigger deal than just changing something that is currently a law.

For the record, I also strongly disagree with you on the first point. I think, and have expressed elsewhere in this thread [0], that the current copyright regime is far too strong to be maximize social welfare.

To directly address your original points: 1) Increasing incentives for authors does not necessarily produce better works. It turns out that money is an exceptionally poor motivator of creative work. Dan Pink has a rather famous TED talk [1] in which among other things he describes how offering people money for a task can make them perform worse at it. 2) Stronger copyright regimes do not reward creators, they reward rights holders -- a crucial difference. The creative industries are notorious bad actors with respect to the artists that do the work. See for example, Hollywood Accounting [2], the RIAA failing to pay musicians [3], and even when everything goes according to plan "For every $1000 worth of music sold, the average musician makes $23.40." [4]

3) Allow me to quote you for a second. You write

  > The worst case (and unrealistic) scenario of a stingy heir just doesn't matter. If someone deprived us of Sherlock Holmes or Harry Potter or Mickey Mouse or whatever, we would all be just fine. None of them are essential.

If these works aren't essential why should we as a society subsidize the creation of new works through long-lasting monopoly rights? I am rather confused by what difference you perceive between yet-to-be created works and already created works.

I've written a lot that probably won't be read by anyone, but in conclusion, arguing for an extension of copyright law requires a lot more thought than you seem to have put in.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8143683

[1] http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting

[3] https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120305/04332117978/how-b...

[4] http://www.theroot.com/articles/culture/2010/07/the_root_inv...

"Attempts to tie CEO interests to owner interests by tying compensation to the company's performance have thus far failed, mostly because a) the fraction of compensation isn't sufficient to overcome the CEOs self-serving motivation or b) the specific tying system can be gamed to the CEO's advantage."

and/or c) extrinsic motivators aren't effective for non-mechanical work.

http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation

⬐ gjm11

What Dan Pink describes is that for non-mechanical work, extrinsic motivation is ineffective in improving performance: how quickly or accurately or insightfully or imaginatively one accomplishes a particular task.

But the question with CEO pay is a bit different, and I don't think the studies Pink refers to say anything about it: what can you do to encourage CEOs to act in the best interests of the companies they manage?

This isn't a matter of, e.g., whether they notice opportunities to attack a previously unaddressed market -- which is the kind of thing for which Pink finds extrinsic motivation isn't good at improving. It's a matter of whether, having noticed such an opportunity, they further notice that taking it would be good for the company but bad for them personally because, e.g., it would have short-term costs that would drive down the value of the shares they were hoping to sell next year to buy a new house.

In which case, the findings Pink describes might actually be good news: the prospect of personal gain may be ineffective in making unscrupulous CEOs good at spotting opportunities to screw their company over to make a quick buck.

And what's interesting about this experiment is that it's not an aberration. This has been replicated over and over and over again, for nearly 40 years. These contingent motivators -- if you do this, then you get that -- work in some circumstances. But for a lot of tasks, they actually either don't work or, often, they do harm. This is one of the most robust findings in social science, and also one of the most ignored. https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation/transcript I'm linking to a TED talk transcript because it makes the point better than I can.

⬐ VMG

Running a TOR node is not what I would call a "creative endeavor". It consumes electricity and bandwidth, and is a legal risk if it is an exit node.

I'd say watch this TED talk first on Motivation (if you haven't already): http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation Its 18 minutes but a very important 18 minutes to spend.

Once you watch this, get a better sense of what any company is like with respect to the concepts Dan mentions in the talk (ie Autonomy/Mastery/Purpose)

Ultimately, if their philosophy aligns with what Dan says, you're odds of being intrinsically motivated are much higher which by definition means you will be happier.

I can't think of a better framework to get a sense of how happy you might be in any job.

Hope that helps

This immediately reminded me of Dan Pink's - The puzzle of motivation - ted talk.

http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html

It focuses on how incentives affect the efficiency of creative jobs.

There is a popular TED talk on motivation, he postulates that growth is one contributing component of motivation. This may be his anecdote, but this guy has helped many people get back their motivation. http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html

Well, first of all, I'm not arguing for equal pay for everyone, I'm in favor of a guarenteed minimum income. Secondly, money doesn't work as a motivator for non menial tasks.[1] And you know, a task that seems boring and uninteresting to you might not for someone else. As for how many of us would even develop software at all, I need only point to the open source community. Extrinsic notivation has its place, but it is no substitute for that internal drive.

[1] http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html

⬐ jiggy2011

I don't think it's true that money doesn't work as a motivation for non-menial tasks, if that were the case then there would be no incentive for tech companies to offer developers anything over a sustenance wage since they would show up to work for free.

Open source software is an interesting example, but I think it mostly supports my case.

If you look at the projects out there, you can divide them into roughly 3 camps.

1) Projects that have a lot of paid developers working for companies or organisations that pay wages to their developers. So stuff like Android , V8 and Ubuntu would fall into this camp.

2) Projects that people were not necessarily paid to develop , but were developed mostly as a biproduct of something that they were or as a way to do that thing more effectively. "Scratch an itch" software effectively. I guess something like RoR would fall into this category.

3) Pure passion projects that were developed for fun. This is the only group that is purely intrinsically motivated.

The thing with projects that fall into camp #3 is that they tend to be stuff that the developer themselves found useful or interesting rather than something that necessarily serves society at large, though the two may sometimes intersect there is no guarantee.

If you don't make peoples incomes at least somewhat dependant upon the software they develop you will see far more camp #3 projects than camps #1 or #2.

Interestingly, a lot of those techniques are extrinsic motivators, which studies have found to actually reduce self-motivation.

(A classic book on the subject is Alfie Kohn's "Punished by Rewards."[1] Dan Pink's TED talk[2] is a entertaining overview of the same concepts.)

That's not to say that I have any answers. But when I tackle the problem, I'll probably focus on intrinsic motivators (love of the material, sense of challenge, joy of solving problems, sense of mastery, etc.) rather than extrinsic motivators (badges, prizes, employer threats).

[1] http://www.alfiekohn.org/books/pbr.htm

[2] http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html

Cool essay, but :

> Many employees would work harder if they could get paid for it.

is just wrong. See http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html

⬐ neogodless

I love Dan Pink's wisdom, and absolutely believe in the motivators of autonomy, mastery and purpose, especially for software developers, but I would say that, in this context, the phrase "work harder" is not specific enough.

If you worked for a company and you knew you'd be rewarded for producing some software on the side, you would likely play around with some ideas and put in more of your time. You also might work more efficiently.

You would not be a more productive employee by being better at code or faster simply because more money was offered to you. But you might make a conscious effort and decision to spend more time on your work and less time with inefficient uses of your time.

The studies are useful and accurate, to a degree, but they are, ultimately, somewhat contrived. "Solve a puzzle faster and we'll give you $2" is very different from "any software you build on top of your maintenance work will be rewarded with a percentage cut of sales."

(Slightly off topic...) I'd also say that "autonomy" is an interesting one for me personally. I like having lots of freedom in choosing technology and the process I go through to sort through programming problems and learn new things, but at the same time, I struggle with unclear objectives and goals, ambiguous deadlines and of course, insufficient domain knowledge about a project. I want autonomy of choice, but not freedom to wander the wilderness of a client project, especially when there are so many new things to learn and achieve. So autonomy, yes, but guidance and clarity are helpful in achieving mastery.

⬐ kamaal

No its very true.

Money remains a big motivation factor for those who don't have it.

In general people don't get motivated by what they already have.

⬐ k__

Motivation/Money is a logarithmic curve.

⬐ devcpp

The original statement is thus valid.

⬐ k__

For small values of money.

⬐ zentiggr

Until I'm far enough up that curve, this is still a strong motivation... QED

you can also see his TED talk video: http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html

My personal concern when I looked at the site was it reminded me of a time when a boss gave me a gift card, and I was infuriated because I hadn't had a real raise or a proper employee review in years. It felt like a cheapshot.

I could see the program working in certain businesses, but managers need to be trained to use it correctly, especially in creative fields: http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html

There's lots of research to support this: http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html gets posted just about every other day, but it's worth repeating.

The reference to autonomy in motivation reminded me of this Dan Pink TED talk I keep coming back to: http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html

I completely agree with this article. Perhaps we're the first generation to realize the old style of work and business actually negatively impacts productivity and motivation, and we're going to outright reject it. Everything about that is good.

Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose. People want them because they're the true ways to success, and they know it. The old fake style of business based on carrot-and-stick mentalities and personal image is going out the window faster than an MBA can climb a ladder... or at least we can hope.

⬐ jlarkin353

Don't forget that plenty of people are a lot more productive with some kind of structure in place. No amount of 'skinny jeans wearing' gen Y'ers will change that fact.

⬐ bking

I am gen Y and I freely admit that I do more work in a 'designated working environment'. I hate monotonous work, and it has led me to building scripts etc to do the boring work for me. Our strength comes from that desire to not be bored, so we come up with creative solutions to bypass them. If a company can't bend to that mentality, and we aren't completely financially stuck with having to work, we will quit for a place that does.

⬐ sequoia

"Our strength comes from that desire to not be bored, so we come up with creative solutions to bypass them." Ugh, barf. This sort of egomania is exactly what many people don't like about "we" gen Y'ers (I'm 27). "We" didn't invent the concept of creativity or innovation, it makes you sound silly to suggest "we" did.

Sorry to come off so strong; this stuff irks me because I'm from your generation and this sort of self-obsession reflects badly on me and other humble, hard-working gen-y'ers.

⬐ gnaritas

> Our strength comes from that desire to not be bored, so we come up with creative solutions to bypass them.

This has nothing to do with your generation.

⬐ bking

Maybe it is just the timing of being in our 20s then?

⬐ freehunter

I had a difficult time convincing management that it was worth spending 30 hours developing a script to automate a task that normally takes 10 hours to do, even though we do that task at least once a week. Finally, I just ended up doing it on my own "free" time at work and showing it off in a meeting. I got chastised for spending the time doing it, but they were still impressed that the task now only took 5 seconds to complete. I ended up winning an award for it.

Unfortunately, that didn't mean I had less work to do. If you find a way to make your job more efficient, don't be surprised when management finds a way to expect more work from you.

⬐ wheaties

This is more indicative of your work environment. That said, this unfortunately happens in a lot of places regardless of age, gender or merit.

⬐ jfoutz

Nah, that's just displaying competence. The vast majority of cross generational pop psychology is just evergreen bs to sell adds.

There are entitled brats in every generation. Put another way, there are plenty of ivy leaguers throughout history who's dads called a friend to get their kid a raise. just keep doing good work, you'll be fine.

Relevant TED talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html

Appreciate that, thanks, and I'm happy to share it.

Deming was a fascinating guy. His ideas (mostly applicable to factories but easily applied to all companies) helped bring Japan out of its post-war recession and give it the respected reputation for high-quality goods they have had for some time. His concepts have been largely ignored since (partly due to his horribly dry writing style) but I think they're very valuable to our current economic situation in the west as well.

The focus is on quality, and the path is through process-based management. You have to realize your employees are a system just like your software is: mostly understandable, and statistically predictable. You can shape your system of people just like you can a manufacturing line, and traditional beliefs about punishments and rewards simply do not apply if you look at what's truly effective in improving quality and improving production.

It was remarkably successful in Japan partly because their philosophical backgrounds are so completely different: it is easier for someone brought up with ideas of Zen buddhism or other eastern religions to think of the whole rather than the individual; the process rather than the part.

In the US, where we're very much an individual and self-focused society, we track immediately to individual motivation without thought to how it affects the whole company. The unsubstantiated belief that "what's best for the individual is best for the whole" is embedded in us and very difficult to shake. Indeed, it's fairly core to our democracy and has ties to political beliefs as well. Deming himself had the breaking of this habit as one of his prerequisites (his System of Profound Knowledge): that everyone in the entire company must understand this holistic way of thinking, not just the management. Surely there is a balance to be struck, but Deming covers that as well, focusing on the psychology of personal motivation and work quality rather than belief systems. And it's all backed up by great process engineering and experience.

Honestly I think it's better if you completely ignore the monetary rewards and simply focus on what makes people work the best; the process of work. Here's another great TED talk on the subject: http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html

The office will most likely change and what has traditionally been the office of cubicles or whatever can be benefitted by these sorts of things. Having a huge salary won't always motivate people, which reminds me of an interesting TED talk by Dan Pink [1], mentioned in the article on page two.

[1] www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html

There is so much truth packed into that 36 mins -- so many juxtapositions -- it would take several hours to reference them all.

For starters, see Rich Hickey's talk on "Hammock-Driven Development" for more on the "background mind" (http://blip.tv/clojure/hammock-driven-development-4475586), and then see how what Dan Pink is saying about motivation (http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html) and what Sebastian Deterding is saying about gamification (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZGCPap7GkY) all connect into what Cleese is saying about creativity.

Don't forget to review Dan Pink's talk on motivation:

http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html

Having said that my personal favorites are unlimited free books a la Matasano, and flexible work environment (working from office or remotely are interchangeable), and flexible vacation policy (several recent HN posts on this).

Completely distributed teams like SpiderOak are pretty awesome, so set up your company to work like that as the default, and have an office people can work/meet in when they want or need, but connect to the servers the same way whether in or out of the office (a universal API, so to speak).

Let me work when I'm most productive, be it 6am to 3 in the afternoon, or noon to midnight, or whatever. Trust in my incentive to care about the company's success (and by extension my own cashflow). I don't even mind a pager in setups like that, as long as it's used for emergencies only and not abused.

Very similar to Autonomy, mastery, and purpose.. from a TED talk. http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html

It's completely rational to think that people will be intrinsically motivated by money, and they are on some level. But people are irrational - what drives them is usually a lot different than what you would expect.

Dan Pink is at the forefront of demystifying motivation. When you have time, check out this TED Video, it's very insightful - http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html. TL;DW - Cash incentives alone make people slow and stupid for cognitive tasks.

Being a good manager in the startup field is an extraordinary difficult thing to do.

Here's an awesome TED talk that you can watch which is a good introduction in the field - http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html - it shows that performance in creative fields can decrease when the payout is greater.

Salary is just one factor in job satisfaction, there are lots of other ways, most of them cheaper from a costs perspective, which can improve the "mood". Here's a list:

  - equity
  - 20% time (autonomy to work on self-driven projects)
  - a perceived notion of fairness (i.e. no bozos as managers,
  promotions done right on merit and payout/hierarchy that
  correlates with the actual job performance, not politics)
  - free drinks/food/catering (or at least joint cafeteria area
  for lunch bonding/discussions)
  - awesome hardware
  - high employee/manager ratio to avoid micro-management
  - a tech ladder allowing growth without becoming a manager

> I'd highly suggest reading Drive by Daniel Pink.

This video shows Daniel Pink delivering an 18-minute presentation at TED on the same topic: http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html

Dan Pink's TED talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html

And a transcript for those who want to skip the video: http://dotsub.com/view/e358ac0c-314e-473a-b051-f0a2deaa3a7b/...

Regarding the Incentive system actively promotes bad behavior on slide 7, Dan Pink gave a very interesting talk on Motivation at TED — with surprising results:

http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html

⬐ Splines

TED appears to be down. Here's the same (I think) video on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrkrvAUbU9Y

⬐ kreek

or with animation http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc

⬐ Silhouette

Watching that was a very worthwhile 10 minutes: an interesting set of ideas, brilliantly presented.

You should read Drive, by Dan Pink.

It's not a management book, per se, but it's great for gaining undersanding into why people work and what truly motivates them.

EDIT: His talk at the TED conference:

http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html

This idea goes in the opposite direction of what Daniel Pink talks about in his book "Drive" ( or TED talk here: http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html )

What Daniel Pink says is that extrinsic motivators (such as money,) have actually been found to be _harmful_ to performance when used to reward cognitive or intellectual activities. I would imagine "getting an education" to fall under this category, but maybe not so much.

Conversely, extrinsic motivators are still known to work fine for repetitive, "mechanical" tasks (think: assembly line).

⬐ jessriedel

Does he study children? The parenting schedule I have heard before is

(1) Young children are compelled to act by rewards/punishments. (2) Older children are compelled to act because they respect their parents' directions, even if they don't understand or agree with the directions. (3) Young adults choose to follows their parents because they understand and agree with the directions.

The point is that young children are just not cognitively able to appreciate adult reasoning. Yes, it's great if we can get 2nd graders excited about multiplication tables, but that's usually not possible.

⬐ shawndrost

And yet, the results in this article show extrinsic motivators to be beneficial to performance on some cognitive activities. Seems like it's an area that merits more research.

On a slightly more meta level, it seems like TED and Gladwell are making more topics bikesheddable.

⬐ hoop

Re: Meta - Perhaps, although the talk on Daniel Pink was something that was first shown to me in a class. After seeing it, I decided to read his book on my own time.

Also, for anyone who is interested in the book, I recommend just watching the video as it sums EVERYTHING up. The book just provides slightly more evidence and explanation.

⬐ qq66

I'm not sure that these kinds of experiments on adults can be applied to kids. We need to run a separate set of experiments on kids, the motivations are too different.

⬐ dhess

I was just reading about extrinsic motivators today in the book, What the Best College Teachers Do. The research cited there dates back to the 1970s and the work of Edward L. Deci. Apparently what he and his colleagues found is that most extrinsic motivators (money, prizes, grades) actually do work as long as they continue to be applied, but their effect on motivation or engagement is lost once the extrinsic motivator is removed; and, in fact, application of an extrinsic motivator appears to weaken any intrinsic motivation that existed before the extrinsic motivator was applied.

This theory has ramifications not only for paying students to go to school, or for good performance, but also whether grades are ultimately harmful to long-term student learning and comprehension. The research suggests that students who perceive getting good grades as a reward for studying tend to view learning as a performance or competition, not as a quest for mastery or self-fulfillment. When they graduate into the real world and are no longer rewarded with grades, they tend to stop learning, because the extrinsic motivator (grades) is removed. They also tend to "study for the test" and forget the lessons soon after, as the goal is always to perform well on the next exam, not to retain knowledge.

Not all extrinsic motivators appear to be damaging to intrinsic motivation. For example, the researchers (and those who have continued Deci's work) found that encouragement and praise were extrinsic motivators that often reinforce, or at least sustain, intrinsic motivation. The theory is that people (especially children) lose intrinsic motivation if they think they're being manipulated by the external reward: verbal encouragement and social acceptance are supposedly less transparent means of motivation than, say, money or grades.

Before reading this part of the book, I had thought that perhaps paying students for good academic performance was a good idea. Now I wonder if perhaps paying parents for their child's good performance is the right way to go, accompanied by a short course on developmental psychology for the parents.

Yes.

Different people are different. There is no such thing as "universally shitty" about jobs. Jobs are jobs and different people have different motivations about them. Luckily, the free market does not give you any right to try to stop or judge these jobs which you claim are "universally shitty".

I would suggest reading the book 'First break all the Rules'. Dan Pink also gave an insightful talk on motivations. You could find it here. http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html.

Sorry for the lack of specifics. I'm thinking of Daniel Pink's book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. It references studies showing that the presence of a monetary reward in situations that require abstract thinking tend to result in worse performance than no reward at all.

Maybe my assumption that this is a widely held belief was wrong.

It seems to work for Google. I'm just curious what it is about their implementation or culture that makes this the case.

This TED talk summarizes the book: http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html

⬐ andreyf

Ah, yes, I'm actually a big fan of Pink's book. The Founders' Awards aren't really "financial incentives", though, but rather about recognizing work that really affected the history or technology of the company.

Speaking generally again, I think Pink's ideas oversimplify "work" when they label it as "creative" or "manual". This goes doubly wrong when if we try to incentivize one or the other. At least from my experience, successful projects require both great creativity and a hell of a lot of grunt work.

Your post is very interesting to me, as I'm currently examining a project to address a similar issues.

I'm curious. Do you find that you have trouble finding goals on your own which are worth pursuing? Or is it more of an issue that you just don't seem to have take the actions necessary in pursuing a goal?

I saw a clip from the founder of Patagonia (climbing gear and outerwear) who said that when he has an idea, he takes the first step toward his goal. If that feels good, he takes another step. Before you know it, you've summited the mountain.

If motivation is your issue, have you checked out Daniel Pink's work? http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html

Dan Pink would suggest that if you're trying to drive performance by tweaking monetary incentives, you're doing it wrong. http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html

I liked (in the order they show up in my del.icio.us stream):

* Dan Buettner How to live to be 100 http://blog.ted.com/2010/01/how_to_live_to.php

* Dan Pink on the surprising science of motivation http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html

* Kamal Meattle on how to grow fresh air http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/kamal_meattle_on_how_to_g...

* Ian Dunbar on dog-friendly dog training http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/ian_dunbar_on_dog_friendl...

* Mark Bittman on what's wrong with what we eat http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/mark_bittman_on_what_s_wr...

* Hans Rosling shows the best stats you've ever seen http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_be...

* Sugata Mitra shows how kids teach themselves http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/sugata_mitra_shows_how_ki...

* Alan Russell on regenerating our bodies http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/alan_russell_on_regenerat...

* Robert Lang folds way-new origami http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/robert_lang_folds_way_new...

* John Maeda: Simplicity patterns http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/172/

Somehow I never bookmarked

* Dan Gilbert's talks http://www.ted.com/speakers/dan_gilbert.html

* Dan Ariely's talks http://www.ted.com/speakers/dan_ariely.html

Which I've now remedied

There was also one about regenerating local ecosystems that I somehow can't seem to find right now.

My Favorite Ted Talk is Dan Pink on the surprising science of motivation. http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html

⬐ jbellis

It's a good talk, but if you go read the research he's citing, he took a great deal of liberties. :-|

⬐ mattmcegg

do you have any examples?

⬐ Maven911

Where can I find the research and the liberties he used?

I really liked the RSA drawed-up version of the talk, and I thought it was based on real hard science..

⬐ jbellis

scholar.google, search for the authors names he cites

The lecture sounded really familiar - from here: .html" rel="nofollow">http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/dan_pink_on_motivation.htm...

⬐ nnutter

I thought I had seen this before. I remembered some candle/tacks/box task. I believe it was this TED video.

Dan Pink's TED talk on the Science of Motivation shreds the notion of bonuses and performance pay.

http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html

Joe Bob says "check it out."

Also, obligatory-TED-video-exposing-counterintuitive-point: http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html

Providing higher rewards decreases performance.

⬐ ryanelkins

Actually providing rewards decreases performance in creative problem solving. He actually said that it worked really well ("kicked butt") in getting people to perform simple mechanical skills based tasks.

Besides, the point isn't about increasing performance in situations where people are highly engaged regardless, it's about increasing engagement where motivation can wane, especially in more menial type of tasks/jobs.

Same idea as Dan Pink's talk on intrinsic vs extrinsic rewards/motivators: http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html.

This may be more theoretical than you are hoping for, nonetheless, I'd like to suggest Dan Pink's TED talk on The Surprising Science of Motivation http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html

Pink explains how financial incentives often have the opposite effect on motivation than we would want or expect. He suggests that the causes of true motivation boil down to autonomy, mastery and purpose. The video is worth the 20 minute investment.

⬐ joseakle

Great! I watched it.

So now i'm really thinking if we should have financial incentives ...

The thing is most articles that say incentives don't work area about pay for performance, but the problem is if performance is not measured in money it's kind of hard to compare.

>> the possibility of starting a spin-off company is a motivator to do great research

There's appallingly little rational justification for what you're saying, or historical evidence. Oxford, for example, has done nothing but slip down international rankings since diverting its focus from its international academic reputation towards commercialisation. The science of motivation, meanwhile, seems to operate on very different lines to the ones you assume in making that statement: http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html

In my experience researchers are already motivated to do great research - the whole citation/impact scoring system they compete in already has plenty of external motivation to add to their internal one, and unlike financial external motivation you advocate, this system is fully geared towards producing quality research Don't forget these are often quite selfless people, and they certainly don't often have the distractions of directing their work down low-risk, high commercial viability channels. They wear socks and sandals, not suits, and do PhDs, not MBAs - and their research is just fine, thanks very much. Better they stay motivated as they are, and not have to face onerous intellectual property blocks to going about their work, than the opposite you advocate as being more productive.

⬐ nagrom

However, we see that a lot of great researchers are being motivated to leave research because the financial markets and large corporations can offer salaries 3-4x those available to people in universities, while working fewer hours. By allowing people to exploit some of their work for commercial gain, you offer an amount of freedom and potential economic gain that corporations cannot. And often, the university gets some of the money from the company that gets ploughed back into research. So the university gets some money, the researchers get some extra benefit from staying in the university system and are usually motivated by the university to share the results of their work in some sense - not the commercial secrets, perhaps, but the pure science behind what has been done. They then continue to produce results that can be shared with the public.

Everyone wins - the university gets more money, the researchers stay in science and produce more results and the public gets the benefit of having the most driven, creative people staying inside the university system producing public gain rather than private gain.

The citation/impact scoring system offers no motivation to do 'great' research, in my experience. Rather, it offers a lot of motivation to do the administrative work that gets your name on papers with little to no risk, rewarding networking skills and knowledge of the system over any great creative insight. In fact, I would say that this requirement to have citations and impact statements actively drives away the people who are most likely to do the research.

I don't think that universities should focus on commercial exploitation, that's for sure. It's not fair to private companies, it's not fair to students and it's not fair to taxpayers who fund the university system. But stereotyping anyone who is good at research as a selfless, socks-and-sandals proto-hippy shows a certain lack of familiarity with a large cross-section of researchers. And to say that the culture of research that we have right now is just fine? Wow. The way I see research right now, the science 'managers' get rewarded and long term research is put at risk by political meddling at the highest levels. Of course, we may come from completely different cultures.

I'm glad to see the Economist raise this subject. I've known so many people who hate their jobs, it really does seem like it should be higher up on the political agenda than it is.

This article brings up two particularly interesting points for me.

Firstly, do performance measures increase productivity? Apparently, they actually decrease productivity, at least if productivity involves creative problem-solving: http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html

Secondly, can standard corporations genuinely recognize and implement the 'human side' of management, as the article says they should. I would argue not. The standard corporation is owned by a large number of shareholders with no personal connection to the corporation and no interest in anything other than profiting from their shares. Because of this arrangement, it is inevitable that profit is the only value that counts in corporate management. If management adopts a 'touchy-feely' approach it can only be justified if this is found to increase profits, and it would do nothing to prevent their being discarded as soon as it becomes profitable to do so. A genuine recognition of the 'human side' of management would be a recognition that humans are ends in themselves, not means to an end. But in a standard corporate structure, employees are inevitably just cogs in a profit-making machine.

⬐ weaksauce

Thanks for the TED link. I agree with the statement that Dan states in the video about results oriented work spaces. I would like (more) to work for a company that offers this as part of the corporate culture. I think it can only work in the context of managers that can actually set realistic goals though which seems to be tough in software development.

⬐ None

None

> Managers have to force-rank their employees. The more > Machiavellian managers make a point of telling their > employees where they stand.

Haven't other articles (and other research) shown that force ranking is not an effective strategy? And if my manager regaled me with daily "ranking updates," I'd go insane.

http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html

[Edit: added link to Dan Pink's TED Talk]

⬐ csallen

Interesting talk. Usually when people are challenging conventional wisdom, it's not difficult for me to see where they're coming from. In this case, however, I find myself struggling to agree.

Yes, there are benefits to autonomy, mastery, and purpose... but c'mon, isn't that blatantly obvious? Is anyone actually surprised that employees are more engaged when they're working on their own projects?

Regarding the "candle problem" that Pink brings up, I'm not sure if easy-candle-problem vs hard-candle-problem is analogous to mundane-career vs challenging-career. The candle problem takes minutes or even seconds to solve: It's not difficult to see why those under pressure may jump into action prematurely, before considering multiple possibilities. The correct solution is non-obvious, so those who act the fastest actually perform the worst. In other words, the people with the higher incentives are actually working harder, but it's backfiring because this is a special case. I doubt employees at big companies run into this issue when offered incentives, as their projects take months/years to complete, not seconds.

I haven't seen anything to suggest that incentives are ineffective. The "old" wisdom isn't wrong: people are willing to work harder for higher returns. If anything, incentives work too well. When poorly designed, they can actually go against the best interests of a company. If you tell ProgrammerJoe he'll get a raise for working quickly, then he's going to write craptastic code as fast as possible. If you tell him he'll get a raise for every new feature, then he's going to create a barrage of unnecessary and poorly-designed featured.

By all means, dangle carrots in front of your rabbits. Just make sure you're leading them in the right direction.

I totally agree with your sentiment here:

Why are we still stuck in the industrial age, where working during the day hours, being at a certain location, and hammering away for 8 hrs was equivalent to producing a certain amount of output?

If you haven't seen the Ted talk below, it's a must watch:

http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html

⬐ hackoder

What a great talk..

Now, to forward to boss or not to forward....

After watching a TED presentation on External motivation, which stated it did more harm than anything. I was nodding in full agreement and trying to think of one job where it was not true. The only job I came up with was sales, I was just not sure for this one. I would really like to see a one year after report on this, this should be telling. I think it will prove commissions are not working.

BTW the TED talk is http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html

⬐ trebor

Thanks for linking to the talk, it was very thought provoking. And, by what I see, adds more support to the article's conclusion.

This was also the topic of Dan Pink's TED talk, http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html, which came across the RSS feed about 9 hours ago, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=782171.

In that presentation, the speaker talked about the candle experiment and some of its variations. He mentions that for purely mechanical skills, rewards indeed have been shown to repeatedly increase productivity. But for non-mechanical tasks, where the task is not immediately solvable or requires calculation, the promise of a reward to the top performer often diminishes the time in which the task is completed.

He didn't mention any deeper analysis though. For instance, one can wonder about the difference in the attitude between the top performers in the reward and non-reward groups. Does a participant get pre-occupied with the fact that they have not solved the problem first, and thereby reduce the amount of attention they are giving to the problem at hand? Do they have the same amount of concentration throughout the task, or after what they perceive to be a "deadline" do they stop caring.

A major difference between Pink's talk and this article is that this posits that the previous questions don't matter. Instead, it hints at the fact that once any reward is offered, the work done suffers because it diminishes one's intrinsic motivation. I wonder if this can be tested against the hypothesis that the reward becomes an object measuring stick to the quality of work; while another person's respect or praise might not be as easily objectified and measured motivating one to do more work.

⬐ mrbgty

The material in this talk doesn't only apply to business. imo, every parent could benefit from considering an angle other than rewards and punishments.

⬐ extension

At least one school figured it out 88 years ago: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summerhill_School

"Summerhill is noted for its philosophy that children learn best with freedom from coercion. All lessons are optional, and pupils are free to choose what to do with their time."

The idea that coercion stifles creativity is an old one and there have always been people on the fringes of society who know it. Until recently, the western world has been able to make progress with the factory model, leaving the creative work to those few fringe people, but it looks like that has run its course.

It may be that the next model is everybody doing creative work, but I have no idea what that would actually look like.

⬐ mixmax

The guy is an amazing speaker. Look at his body language, his build-up and his timing. A lot of people could learn from that.

⬐ caffeine

The idea was more interesting than his speaking, at least for me. I felt like Walter from The Big Lebowski - "... I did not know that...".

⬐ tc

The talk claims to be about motivation, but his main piece of evidence only points to a link with spontaneous creativity. If you reran the candle experiment but gave the participants the problem statement 24 hours in advance, I would wager that the incentivized group would be more motivated to think through the problem the night before.

⬐ aik

Even if that is so, a majority of work (that requires thought) is progress that results from spontaneous creativity.

⬐ azanar

If you reran the candle experiment but gave the participants the problem statement 24 hours in advance, I would wager that the incentivized group would be more motivated to think through the problem the night before.

Motivation is a vector, not a scalar. The problem isn't that the people who are incentivized by reward aren't motivated, it is that the motivation they are given makes them behave a different way. In the case of largely creative work, the motivation they are given modifies their behavior in entirely suboptimal ways.

It's not just that you motivate people, it is what you motivated them toward.

⬐ geezer

Its not just the business world. Most of our academic system is built around carrots and sticks. Exams and tests are the primary basis that determine our academic success. Creativity is the last thing that will help you in a timed exam. You have to get to the correct answer in a short amount of time. It is very mechanical.

The same system of measuring competence seeps into the corporate world. Job interviews, especially technical interviews are very similar to the exams, maybe worse.

⬐ discojesus

This kind of stuff that Mr. Pink (someone should invite him out to dinner and find out if he doesn't tip :P) mentioned and guys like Alfie Kohn harp on about is intriguing, but there is one huge hole in the plot that I have never seen them address: The Problem of the Paycheck.

The studies that are being referenced lead naturally to the hypothesis "what would happen if I didn't give my employees any kind of artificial incentive at all?" (let's assume that they are all knowledge-work employees, say programmers for example).

The studies referenced in the talk and in Alfie Kohn's books suggest that you would see an increase in productivity, since that pesky, harmful incentive has moved out of the way.

Common sense (and experience, should anyone be foolish enough to actually try it) suggests that your workers will simply walk.

So while I think there is a lot of valuable insights to be gained from these experiments (e.g. people work like hell when something has meaning for them - see the works of Viktor Frankl for more on this), I think there's too much of a tendency to oversimplify and say "incentives are bad, mmkay?"

⬐ delackner

Actaully he addressed the paycheck problem quite directly: pay people decently, fairly, and then the team can focus properly without being distracted with worries about money (lack thereof or competing for bonuses). The logical extension of this is not "don't pay people" but pay everyone well enough and then ask them to impress you.

⬐ discojesus

OK then that naturally leads to a slightly different hypothesis: take the candle problem, but have 3 groups: a control group that is paid nothing, a group that is paid "decently and fairly", and a group that is paid according to incentives.

⬐ PieSquared

The idea isn't that a group is paid vs unpaid.

Salary, in this case, is not the type of incentive we're talking about. Having a decent salary is just to get the employee willing to work - not as an incentive to work at max capacity.

What we're talking about, really, is already past salary: is a group of fairly paid people more efficient and creative when motivated financially (say, by extra bonuses or salary increases) or by promises of autonomy (say, 20% time).

Thus, the candle problem, when placed in the real world, would have three groups: a control group which is paid 'decently and fairly', and a group that is paid 'decently and fairly' and is given financial incentives beyond that, and a group that is payed 'decently and fairly' and is given autonomy as an incentive.

⬐ discojesus

Thus, the candle problem, when placed in the real world, would have three groups: a control group which is paid 'decently and fairly', and a group that is paid 'decently and fairly' and is given financial incentives beyond that, and a group that is payed 'decently and fairly' and is given autonomy as an incentive.

That's fine, but you still need a control group that is given no compensation at all as a baseline.

⬐ PieSquared

Not if that type of compensation is irrelevant to what you're testing. That would be like having a control group which wasn't fed.

⬐ discojesus

A valid point, however not providing such a control group in this case would mean that you're simply assuming that your definition of 'decent and fair payment' is accurate, which is quite a large assumption.

⬐ IsaacSchlueter

I find that I work best when I know I'm being compensated well, and can just forget about it and get to my job.

Salaries should be fair, based on market value, and completely out in the open. I don't understand the absurd secrecy and awkwardness around compensation, culminating in the unholy obscenity of the yearly performance review. You make what you make because that's what it takes to keep you there. If you don't love it, leave. If you're not happy with the money, get another offer. Apart from that, your work should be what motivates you, not the paycheck.

The Netflix culture slides captured my feelings on the topic well: http://www.slideshare.net/reed2001/culture-1798664 If I ever go to another BDC after Yahoo, it'd probably be Netflix.

⬐ marc28443

This might be the most annoying TED speaker ever (come to think of it, the only one).

He might have something valuable to say but his voice and attitude are just too aggravatating to keep listening.

⬐ Tichy

I thought he was OK, but noticeably trying too hard.

⬐ aik

What does that mean exactly?

⬐ Tichy

The jokes and gestures seemed studied to make an impression. It didn't come across so natural. But it did not bother me too much - I don't like being manipulated, but his words were entertaining enough, therefore the "OK" verdict.

⬐ PieSquared

I think that the fact that he was enthusiastic about his subject and clearly wanted to tell people about it came across as unpleasant or pushy or something.

I thought that just made it better - people who are interested in what they're talking about and want to tell you about it tend to be more interesting than those that just do it because they need to.

⬐ mian2zi3

I agree. I couldn't watch to the end.

⬐ petercooper

If you think that's annoying, I can beat it:

http://www.ted.com/talks/gordon_brown.html

Not only does he have the stage manner of an uncaring dentist, it's worth remembering he's an undemocratically elected leader espousing all sorts of nonsense about democracy.

⬐ a-priori

he's an undemocratically elected leader

Care to explain what you mean by that?

⬐ ZeroGravitas

I assume what is meant is that Tony Blair stood in the election, his party won and then later Gordon Brown was chosen to replace him by the party, not by the ordinary voter.

⬐ a-priori

Oh, I suppose someone who doesn't understand the Westminster system might think that... but it's important to understand that the people never elected Tony Blair to the position of Prime Minister either.

(I should point out that people might not understand the Westminster system even if they live in a country that uses it. In Canada last year, there was a fiasco about how three opposition parties wanted to form a coalition government to replace the Prime Minister without an election. Perfectly legal, but a lot of Canadians were convinced that it was a sort of coup. The current Prime Minister exploited this and ended up keeping his seat.)

⬐ petercooper

but it's important to understand that the people never elected Tony Blair to the position of Prime Minister either.

That's legally true but pragmatically false. Sure, we vote for the MP to represent our local seat and then a majority of MPs results in a leading party, but that's not how elections are pitched.

Back in 1997, we had a worse than useless Conservative party headed by John Major and a fresh, rebranded "New Labour" party headed by Tony Blair. People voted for Labour MPs in their droves to get Tony Blair into power. He was not technically democratically voted to the position of PM but that was considered the natural result of voting Labour.

We did not, however, vote for Brown in any form, legally or pragmatically. Indeed, it was not even considered at the time that he would be a successor. The same situation occurred with both Callaghan and Major but I personally feel the British public has less of a taste for the old school Westminster style and has a better feel for the almost presidential style brought in by Blair.

⬐ discojesus

I found him non-trivially annoying, but nowhere near as douchechill-inducing as David Pogue.

⬐ thisduck

I disagree, I thought he spoke well. And at one point he got very passionate, and that's simply the way he expresses himself. It was refreshing to see.

⬐ None

None

⬐ xenonite

yes, he talked very well.

Still, I had to pause and rewind the video several times, because he talked too fast. Thats because several links sprung up in my head, and ideas came.

⬐ mitko

It explains very nicely the average case. For people like the HN or TED audience and Google employees autonomy could be really effective motor. Yet among them there could be some individuals that really work better given carrot and stick.

I think one nice example in which autonomy works really well is academia. Neither there are big salaries for professors, nor they are dependent of a boss (in case they got tenured).

⬐ dasil003

There's another problem no one has raised here, which is the problem of recruiting the best people. If you have the most exciting business, sure you can recruit great people. But for a lot of important-yet-boring businesses, incentives are the only place you can compete. So do you sacrifice your current employee's productivity or your recruiting potential?

⬐ llimllib

Counterexample: the netflix prize.

⬐ cglee

I don't think a significant prize is what the talk is about. It's talking about being paid a salary, being rewarded with extra vacation vs. not being paid and freedom/mastery/purpose.

A significant reward past some threshold (which will differ by society) is bound to motivate.

⬐ llimllib

> A significant reward past some threshold (which will differ by society) is bound to motivate.

This seems questionable, though likely, without empirical evidence. Especially given what data we do have.

I'm merely trying to think about where that threshold could be, or what the differentiating factors are in the netflix prize, that could cause it to be fundamentally different than Ariely's rewards. Was his "large reward" simply not large enough? Is it on "medium difficult" tasks that his result holds, but not on very difficult tasks combined with very large rewards?

⬐ llimllib

don't downvote without explaining why you disagree! It's a creative task for which a monetary prize was extremely effective.

⬐ req2

A true counterexample would show that the monetary prize gave a faster or better result than no prize. Without a control, you haven't shown anything.

⬐ discojesus

A true counterexample would show that the monetary prize gave a faster or better result than no prize. Without a control, you haven't shown anything.

Fair enough. A counterexample: "the paycheck." :)

⬐ llimllib

Would you care to defend the claim that the netflix contest would have attracted anywhere near the amount of effort it did, without a million dollar prize at the end?

I understand that the Netflix "experiment" has no control, but that doesn't mean we should dismiss it as evidence. (And start talking X-Prize, Darpa grand challenge, etc. My assertion is that payments work sometimes, and clearly don't work other times, and I'm wondering why that is.)

⬐ req2

You're still missing what the experiments showed- money expands the time taken to do a finite task. Indeed, the base argument is that without a million dollar prize, much less effort would have been expended... yielding the same degree of success. The defense rests on the experimental data and the similar evidence of Wikipedia and kernel patches.

The X-Prize and Darpa challenges are qualitatively different in that the tasks require (expensive) material components, not just the undervalued resource of time. Nothing in the talk covers this scenario, and I'd suggest extra experiments.

⬐ llimllib

> The defense rests on the experimental data and the similar evidence of Wikipedia and kernel patches.

This is where we disagree; I don't think the netflix prize would have been successful without a monetary reward.

I don't have a good argument at the moment, mainly because I don't think anybody has a good argument why Linux and Wikipedia worked.

I also think the X-Prize and Darpa challenges are more similar than you think they are, but need some time to think. Thanks for responding intelligently and giving me food for thought.

(Also, if you want to follow Pink's argument exactly, you need to claim that success would have come faster not merely as fast had there been no monetary reward.)

⬐ caffeine

Personally, I think the million dollar prize is just a way to justify it to your spouse / boss / whoever holds the carrots and sticks in your life. It's an appeasement tactic so that those who love tinkering with this stuff can do so guilt-free, because it "might" lead to That Ultimate Approved Outcome.

Same with the X-Prize, and the Darpa grand challenge. Those teams spent way more on their entries than the challenge money brought back. Throwing in a few million just legitimizes the fun that everybody's having; it's not actually the motivator. I mean seriously; you think Red doesn't build robots when Darpa doesn't have prizes?

⬐ llimllib

> you think Red doesn't build robots when Darpa doesn't have prizes?

I assume Red is some dude who builds robots. I apologize for not knowing who you're referring to.

But anyway! I'll assume he's a Darpa grand challenge winner and some awesome robotics dude.

I don't think he would have gained as much as he has, technologically, without the competition that most certainly wanted to win the Darpa challenge.

These competitions don't change the dominant players in the game; what they do is move the margin, and force the dominant players to be that much better, because they want to remain dominant.

My theory is that $1 million -> prestige -> more entrants in DGC -> better tech than would have been created otherwise. Thoughts?

⬐ caffeine

http://www.frc.ri.cmu.edu/users/red/

Yes. Your theory is correct. But the key link is prestige. The DGC entrants aren't really expecting make a profit.

⬐ llimllib

But I think the prestige is dependent on the million.

⬐ petercooper

Two factors cause the Netflix prize to be an exception to the rule:

1) The prize was so large as to throw usual rules of motivation out of the window. Anyone would attempt almost anything for $1 million.

2) The prize is a once-off, not an individual form of motivation. There's only one prize and to get it means prestige, beating others. The competition element counts for a lot. If your boss offers $10 to all workers who beat a certain quota, that's not the same thing.

⬐ llimllib

I think that there's something to either one or both of your arguments, and that there are lots of further arguments:

3) The "candle experiment" applies only to medium-scale creative tasks

4) The "candle experiment" is one of a small class of lateral thinking problems for which monetary reward is negatively correlated with success

5) The "candle experiment" result only holds on tasks that last a short time

My question is, which hold, what's your evidence, and what experiments should be done next? I can think of a bunch, so if anybody wants to fund some research, let me know :)

⬐ philfreo

I thought this was great. I typed up a few summary notes that I can refer back to on it: http://philfreo.com/blog/interesting-ted-talk-on-motivation/

⬐ rodyancy

When he mentioned the experiments where monetary reward is shown to stifle creative problem solving, it made me think of the frequently quoted advice: do what you love and the money will come. I wonder if there is a link there?

⬐ ramidarigaz

I think a lot of old proverbs have a significant amount of truth in them.

⬐ ryanwaggoner

Does this apply to goals you set for yourself? I've always been very goal-oriented, and I record and track my goals. I review and adjust them as I go, to try and avoid becoming a slave to some decision I made five years ago, but are goals still likely to end up blinding you to creative possibilities because you're too focused on what you already see?

⬐ feverishaaron

CEOs and analysts/associates at our fine US financial institutions are probably going to be a little miffed by this talk.

⬐ rajat

Of course they won't. They'd love it if the rest of us gave up monetary rewards and benefits and worked hard for intangibles, and they'd get to keep theirs and most of ours.

Oh, you mean the CEOs will give up their financial incentives? I think they're laughing their collective heads off.

⬐ Perceval

I hope they begin to reconsider their model of giving multi-million dollar bonuses and 'guaranteed bonuses.' The TED speaker pointed out that when incentivized, workers' range of thought focused rather than thinking about the big picture.

A great deal of the current meltdown was caused by focusing on the immediate task of making the day's trades, but missing the looming crisis of fundamentals. Some called this, "picking up nickels in front of a bulldozer."

⬐ 10ren

relation to hackers (esr) http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/homestead...

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/motivation.html

⬐ azanar

I think that the disconnect between science and business that he alludes to is not entirely accidental; it is a form of short-term, selfish risk mitigation.

The benefits of the organizational system Dan Pink lays out include increased satisfaction, increased autonomy, and increased productivity and increase responsibility. There are drawbacks though; things such as increased workload and increased responsibility, and a sense of decreased security.

This last point is extremely problematic. The current primary purpose of this thing called a job is not to be productive, creative or anything positive. A job is aligned as an mechanism to avoid a negative; you have a job to protect the security and comfort of you and your family, and perhaps to protect your sense of social class. The other purposes are tangential except to where they help distance you further from the negative.

In the case of attempting to avoid a negative, a road map on where to go comes in extremely handy. By following the map, you are reasonably well assured not to fall off any cliffs. This is where incentives and requirements come in for the business world; they are like a road map on how to keep your job.

However, by following the road map, you also miss the chance to discover parts of the area few if any other people have explored. Where you miss the lows, you also miss the highs. But, when you are scared almost motionless of the cliffs, this would appear a net win. So goes the thinking: new discoveries are interesting, but cliffs are deadly.

Then someone like Dan Pink comes along and says "you'd be happier and more productive if you had more autonomy," and you think he is completely insane. More autonomy means more responsibility, and more responsibility means less to separate oneself from the short-term negatives. You don't give a damn about happiness; your focus is entirely on survival. Your intrisic motivation is to follow the extrinsic motivations, because anything else seems like suicide.

The problem that Dan didn't allude to that I will is that by focussing on survival, you completely screw both. Where people assume this sort of extrinsic motivation, and the lower productivity that comes with it, a feedback loop kicks in. Lower productivity begets lower revenue begets lower available cash begets lower headcount, and repeat until either the equation stabilizes or everyone is gone. The difference is that the employees remained another six months or so, and no one in the future will hold them responsible for the death of the organization. No surprise, they constructed an entire organization around not being held responsible for anything.

Hell, even as a society we don't -- at least in the USA. It just occurred to me; if you need proof of that, look no further than our unemployment insurance system. The entire premise of that system is that, if you were laid off from an employer, it was through no fault of your own. The system even encourages you to get back to a place where you can't be held at fault again, and threatens to cut benefits if you aren't actively looking. If you were fired, in many states you don't get UI. If you quit, even fewer if any provide UI. If a business you built goes bankrupt, you are likewise screwed.

The entire incentive system in this country is based around cowering in a cubicle, because everyone is convinced the risks are an absolute certainty, and outside of a narrowly incentivized path there is no hope for survival.

As I mentioned above, the problem with this is that it screws us in the long term really badly. We end up running like an extremely badly tuned engine, operating at some small fraction of our total possible productivity. We make ourselves less rich than we might otherwise be, we make ourselves less secure because we flirt much closer with the break even point of productivity in a monetary sense, and we make ourselves less happy because we are all abjectly aware of our own precarious condition. I don't have the data for this, but I honestly wonder if cracks in this precarious balance aren't what drove some of this recession we are now in.

For what its worth, this is where I look very positively upon the startups of the world. To all of them on HN who are listening, huge props to all of you. Likewise, props to the other companies who have figured this out. You all give me the hope that by serving as a testbed for some of Dan Pink's ideas -- perhaps by necessity --, you push all the people who drag their feet into the better world they are so desperately afraid of.

sigh. And sorry about the length of this; it would probably take me some time to edit it down to a smaller size, and I'd rather get the ideas out there now.