10 ms·

What Makes Work Meaningful or Meaningless

208 points by bootload 10y ago

alatkins 10y ago
Full text: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:PV10pZWoBB0J:sloanreview.mit.edu/article/what-makes-work-meaningful-or-meaningless/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:PV10pZW...
- bootload 10y ago
  thx @alatkins
- Xxplosive 10y ago
  Thanks! May I ask how you got this link?
  - rbinv 10y ago
    Google cache:<URL> e.g.: "cache:http://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/what-makes-work-meaningful-or-meaningless/" http://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/what-makes-work-meaningfu... (without the quotes)
    - teod 10y ago
      Also, you can click on the little green arrow next to links on Google and click Cache to view the cached version. This "cache:" operator is pretty nifty though.
- arien 10y ago
  How odd. I was reading it on mobile this morning and the whole article was (still is, just checked) fully available.
  - alatkins 10y ago
    Paywalled for me, but that was from .au.
p4wnc6 10y ago
I wonder how much counter-signalling there is on the part of the interviewees. They are going to be prone to say things that associate far-mode, positive ideals with them. Like, they won't say, "I found a lot of meaning that time my hard work, blood, sweat, and tears were actually meritocratically rewarded with that large bonus" because it makes them sound near-mode, greedy, overly materialistic, etc. Instead, they'll say something far-mode, about how they related to the human element of an experience or a coworker or a client, or how their family finally appreciated the deeper meaning in their work. I'm not sure I really believe that people find work meaning mostly in these far-mode, idealistic things. Rather, I think they want to be seen as someone who values these things because then people will associate good stereotypes with them. This also helps explain why it's more reflective, episodic, and after-the-fact rationalized to be meaningful, rather than being tied to concrete properties of the work itself. I think for myself, I do have some moral and ethical baselines that I don't want the byproducts of my labor to violate, like harming others, perpetuating government oppression, wasting resources. But beyond these things, I don't actually get more or less meaning out of any different topical type of work than some other type. What does make me feel like work is meaningful is to experience lots and lots of autonomy in my workplace decision making and my approach to solving problems. I also like to feel that I have the freedom to pursue whatever quality standards are pragmatic for the problem, and am not constrained by bureaucracy to pursue inelegant solutions when there's no pragmatic reasons why they actually need to be inelegant (this happens all the time). After that, I feel meaning at work most when I am given adequate quiet and private physical space and can reach a state of psychological flow. I could be writing code to process ATM transactions or to cure cancer and I'll feel the same amount of meaning if (a) I can mostly do it my own way within some loose context of the broader team's needs, and (b) I am left alone to actually get work done and I am not interrupted or inundated with an unhealthy, oppressively wide open working space. For me, these resonated more with the comment in the article that good managers are rarely even mentioned in the context of meaningful work, whereas bad managers are often to blame for work that is not meaningful. Good managers are invisible geniuses who know how to fade into the backdrop, get out of your way, allow you to make decisions, and do not feel fear that they have to micromanage or create empty superficial artifacts to justify that they are working. They are so, so hard to find, and when you find one, you are so happy that you will give so much loyalty to working for that manager, and forgive so much other crap the company might pull.
curiousfiddler 10y ago
This article strikes a chord for me. I also read a book sometime back, called Flow [1] by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi which draws similar conclusion and is good, quick read. And then I feel sad, because all the effort to seek that personal connect with work at my current workplace, have been taken away by a disconnected and immature middle management, which only works for meeting the goals and deadlines given to them... 1. Flow: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/66354.Flow http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/66354.Flow
- JSeymourATL 10y ago
  Pair this with 'Give Yourself a Flow Test' > https://www.farnamstreetblog.com/2016/07/the-motivation-toolkit/ https://www.farnamstreetblog.com/2016/07/the-motivation-tool...
deleted 10y ago
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drops 10y ago
There is a word "ikigai", which is a Japanese concept meaning "a reason for being". Pic related: http://i.imgur.com/k6UCbN0.png http://i.imgur.com/k6UCbN0.png Ideally, your work should fall in the center. If only it was so easy though
- happyslobro 10y ago
  And the French have "raison d'être", literally, "reason for being". Maybe part of the problem is that the language of business does not have a strong idiom for this.
  - 77pt77 10y ago
    That is not the same point that diagram illustrates.
    - happyslobro 10y ago
      No, it is not as complete. It does not cover as many points of view. But it is analogous, and it is better than anything that English has. English has enough going for it that it can get away with dropping the ball many times. I like to call it every time ;)
      - deleted 10y ago
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      - deleted 10y ago
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  - metaphorm 10y ago
    in the language of business its called "profit motive" and it excludes almost all of human existence except for the part where you have more stuff at the end of the day than at the beginning.
- 77pt77 10y ago
  Many of those intersections are usually empty in real life.
unabst 10y ago
Workers often blame their superiors for lack of motivation or inspiration, but that wouldn't account for the good workers who show up to work inspired already. They find it before work, and if they can't find it, they move on. They don't stick around and dig for it. That's why you want people who have other options to work for you, and when you work for others, you want to know you could be doing something else. Meaning is defined from the choices we exercise. Why here instead of there is what is meaningful. No one can tell you how to live your life. Similarly, no one can tell you why you're doing your job. You need to figure that out yourself, and seeking it should involve finding other jobs, not just repeatedly digging at the same spot. Good teachers and good managers alike can help you immensely if you already have your reasons. They provide a synergy. And for that, they need you to be inspired and be passionate. Synergy fails if either is void. So if you show up inspired to a boss who isn't, that's a sign you may need to revisit your choices also. Eventually meaning always comes. Maybe it finds us. But if you want to make the most of it, never wait and never settle. All one needs is the courage to move on.
- brokenmachine 10y ago
  Nicely written. I would attribute blame to a manager who is a void however.
deleted 10y ago
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ilaksh 10y ago
There are so many examples of the 'deadly sins' of poor management because the concept of work is not far removed from slavery, and managers are essentially the slave masters. Good jobs and good treatment are the exception. Hierarchies are poor organizational structures.
- davidgerard 10y ago
  Pretty much nobody in a business is there for the purpose of making a profit. You might think that was the point, but a moment's thought will make it obvious that literally everyone except the few actual shareholders is there for their own reasons. So it devolves into small-ape-tribe politics, dominance, etc. (And nerds are in no way immune to this.) This is the same reason telecommuting is so hard to get firmly in place: bugger the business advantages, the manager doesn't have the sense of control.
- bambax 10y ago
  The French word for work, travail used to mean torture, and still designates suffering induced by child delivery (as does labor in English). In Latin there isn't even a word for work, it's just "non leisure" (neg-otium) (I think... it's been a while since I've studied any Latin...) Work isn't supposed to be fun or meaningful.
  - brazzledazzle 10y ago
    I can agree that work isn't supposed to be fun (it's orthogonal really) and if it is fun one should be thankful. But the earliest forms of work mankind engaged in was as meaningful as it gets. It was work done to survive. It's no surprise that work you can't derive meaning from is so emotionally problematic when we evolved in an environment where survival was a day-to-day battle. I wouldn't be surprised if the lack of fulfillment that motivates the wealthy to engage in all kinds of good, bad and weird behavior is driven by the same innate need for one's work to have meaning.
zby 10y ago
Ever since reading http://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/ http://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/ I have been thinking about this. One problem with this is the definition of 'meaningful', it is not very concrete. But I think the phenomenon is true - more and more work feels like doing something unnecessary (bullshit). I don't agree with Graeber explanation why this happens - which is basically a grand conspiration by all business owners to give worthless work to people so that they don't revolt. I think it is the result of the growing complexity of our work - we encounter more and more rules that we suspect to be stupid. Many of the rules are stupid indeed - based on some random past events, but many are not - they are just covering some cases that we have never thought of. It is easier to assume that the rules are stupid than admit incompetence. But as the complexity grows less and less people understand the rules, the bad rules are not revised and it all goes in a vicious circle.
- tonyedgecombe 10y ago
  I've seen the scenario where every time something goes wrong a new rule is handed down from on high, eventually you get to the point where you aren't allowed to prepare food in the kitchen or use the shower to have a shower or more importantly you aren't allowed to do the work you are there for.
  - dmichulke 10y ago
    This is "power corrupts" at play. People in power almost always try to increase their level of control, essentially centralizing the power structure of the entity. At some point of time the entity is completely inefficient and collapses under its own weight (rules, bureaucracy). You can see this everywhere where power can be centralized: companies, organizations, nation states. Ironically, successful leaders these days often do the opposite of leading, they decentralize, making the company much more efficient (assuming there are still sub-entities that can/want to be efficient).
    - zby 10y ago
      This might be a part of the story - but it is not the most important one. It makes a good story - a fight between the good and the evil bureaucracy. But what I have seen is rules created in perfectly good faith and often they are reasonable answers to some immediate threats. The problem is with revising them when the situation changes or understanding how they work in the presence of other rules etc. It is quite analogue to how code becomes bloated - this might be an effect of some programmers believing that this is their work security - but more often than that the programmers hate it. Bureaucratic rules are quite literally the code that the administration runs - and we need them, it is just very hard to understand them all.
jypepin 10y ago
Once thing that always strikes me with those studies, and a lot of other medical, economical or psychological studies and tryouts are the sample size... A study that interviews 135 people? And this is seen as significant? It seems to me saying something like "we tried this on 150 people, and we saw that 60% of them X" proves nothing because of how small the sample size is. what I am missing?
- evilgenius134 10y ago
  135 is certainly not small, depending on the selection methods it can be a very good estimator of a much larger population. Also a large amount of studies are done to show a potential area for further research which will involve larger populations when they are approved.
- arien 10y ago
  Well, this specific one is not about statistics and hard data, but about personal experiences and feelings. Perhaps larger numbers would simply add points that are too specific to include in a generalisation. Or perhaps it takes too much time to interview 1000s one on one :) As small as the sample was, I think it was quite relatable.
- conjectures 10y ago
  There's a place for qualitative research. Work like this could help structure bigger studies, suggest new hypotheses, and refine interview techniques. The sample size you need depends on the strength of the effect in the population. For instance you wouldn't need a sample size of thousands to conclude cyanide capsules were not a safe, effective remedy for tooth ache. Or that people don't like being bullied at work. This work wasn't statistically focussed, so it's not as crucial, but if you interview 135 people under a good sampling scheme and get very consistent responses about what matters to them it can't be dismissed as meaningless out of hand. I would expect plenty of room for change in our understanding of meaningfulness as more work is done though...
- dredmorbius 10y ago
  In statistics, what matters far more than the size of your sample is the method of your sampling. This is where lay and academic understandings of statistics diverge dramatically. There's far more discussion of how to ensure an appropriate sample size (determined generally by the independent variables you're tracking and how you plan on subsetting the sample) and tests for randomness. Which is why the time to call a statistician into your study isn't when you want to run algos over your data but before you even begin collecting data. Oh, and large sample statistics is a thing. You need to have a minimum number of observations before large-sample methods are generally considered accurate, described by n. n = 30. If (and that's a crucial if) your sampling is random, you can draw tremendous inferences from small datasets. This is why many national-level polls rely on samples of about 300 individuals. The key isn't the size, it's making sure those 300 are really, really random. Goof that and you end up with a "Dewey Defeats Truman" headline. Or Trump as the GOP candidate. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dewey_Defeats_Truman https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dewey_Defeats_Truman (Both owe a lot to how phones are used -- in 1948, landline phones were still a sufficient luxury item that it skewed phone-polling methods. In 2016, cord-cutting is having similar effects.) I had the interesting experience a while ago of looking at data as it came in generating an estimate of a population of 2.2 billion individuals, based on a sample of 50,000 (Google+ activity, relying on a sitemap file of profiles, where sitemaps are restricted to 50,000 entries per). Well within the first 100 records, the long-term trend of ~8-10% (my final value was 9%) of profiles showing any public activity was established. Given web polling and delays introduced (I tried, and succeeded, to avoid tripping any bot-denial mechanisms), the data rolled in slowly, so I simply set my stats script to loop over the incoming files every minute or so. Somewhere in my testing I also ran a set of resamplings based on the data I'd ingested -- taking small sets of data from within the larger one and looking for any wildly anomolous trends. This would have suggested that the sitemap file itself wasn't randomly constructed, but eyeball tests of various aspects (including account age, region, and activity) strongly suggested it was. This spared me some more complex sample-generation. (My conclusions were independently verified from a much larger sample of 500k profiles by Stone Temple Consulting and Eric Enge, a pretty heartening validation.) ________ Edit to add: another crucial point is that statistical error is governed by sqrt(n) -- SE = 1/sqrt(n). To halve your error, you've got to square your sample size. So if 30 doesn't work for you, you're looking at 900, not 60. Assuming sampling costs increase with n, reducing error gets expensive fast. And for the pedants, SE is "standard error", as I'm aware.
andyjohnson0 10y ago
PDF full text is at [1]. Looks like it is legitimately published by the principal author's university. [1] http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/61282/1/What%20makes%20work%20meaningful%20or%20meaningless%20accepted%20version.pdf http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/61282/1/What%20makes%20work%20meanin...
- az0xff 10y ago
  Reading the full text, I can't help but notice the mention of "Episodic" meaningfulness, which means that meaningfulness peaks at certain times rather than being present at a constant level throughout. Does this apply to the feelings about what someone is doing that day, or does it apply to the job as a whole?
bambax 10y ago
> our research showed that quality of leadership received virtually no mention when people described meaningful moments at work, but poor management was the top destroyer of meaningfulness Spolsky: > Administrators [code name for managers] aren’t supposed to make the hard decisions. They don’t know enough. All those super genius computer scientists that you had to recruit from MIT at great expense are supposed to make the hard decisions. That’s why you’re paying them. Administrators exist to move the furniture around so that the people at the top of the tree can make the hard decisions. http://avc.com/2012/02/the-management-team-guest-post-from-joel-spolsky/ http://avc.com/2012/02/the-management-team-guest-post-from-j...
- enraged_camel 10y ago
  I follow an imaginary and totally-not-backed-by-science model whereby I view managers as a force multiplier on their teams. The number can be anything between 0 and 10. In this model, a PHB[1] hovers between 0.2 and 0.8 (it depends on how well the team can ignore him/her), whereas the average manager hovers somewhere between 0.8 and 1.2; their effect on their teams is neutral, give or take. Good managers are between 1 and 3 -- they can double or triple their team's output -- whereas excellent managers are 3 and up. Such managers also tend to possess very strong leadership skills. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointy-haired_Boss https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointy-haired_Boss
  - bambax 10y ago
    Very instructive. Using your system, as a manager, if you're not above 1 you should work hard to never ever go below 1. That's the point Spolsky is making, I think. It's a fair point and rooted in a lot of evidence, but somewhat limited, because as you say, there can be great managers whose experience and insight multiply their potential.
  - avn2109 10y ago
    This is a cool model. Though in principle it seems like the multiplier is unbounded on the top end, even if in practice we rarely find it > 10.
amelius 10y ago
> Individuals tended to experience their work as meaningful when it mattered to others more than just to themselves. Can this be applied to art as well? Isn't the meaning of a work of art the greatest to the artists themselves?
- Broken_Hippo 10y ago
  Yes, but for me the meaning isn't necessarily in the finished work outside of creating something I like to look at. Considering I'm pretty prolific - I work on art most days, and have stacks that people haven't seen, I truly have to say I do it for my own benefit. Sometimes I put things that others find meaningful in the work because folks like that stuff. It does give a flutter when other people see meaning in my otherwise meaningless work, though, and I still get giddy when I happen to sell a piece, as I don't sell often. There is some sort of encouragement to be had from others finding meaning in it. Much like getting a better than expected review at work. But I'd do it regardless of outside encouragement.
saosebastiao 10y ago
It was like reading a description of Amazon. Thousands of talented and intelligent employees with thousands of ideas that could make or save godless amounts of money, 99% of which were shot down after they bubble their way up through a leadership telephone game which eventually totally misrepresents the idea, and the remaining 1% of ideas get the resource strangle after some VP decides his pet project needs all the resources and allocates his budget accordingly. Amazon is a place where intelligent ambition is rewarded with plenty of money, but never used for anything but implementing other people's ideas.

208 points by bootload 10y ago

Full text: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:PV10pZWoBB0J:sloanreview.mit.edu/article/what-makes-work-meaningful-or-meaningless/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:PV10pZW...

bootload 10y ago
thx @alatkins
Xxplosive 10y ago
Thanks! May I ask how you got this link?
- rbinv 10y ago
  Google cache:<URL> e.g.: "cache:http://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/what-makes-work-meaningful-or-meaningless/" http://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/what-makes-work-meaningfu... (without the quotes)
  - teod 10y ago
    Also, you can click on the little green arrow next to links on Google and click Cache to view the cached version. This "cache:" operator is pretty nifty though.
arien 10y ago
How odd. I was reading it on mobile this morning and the whole article was (still is, just checked) fully available.
- alatkins 10y ago
  Paywalled for me, but that was from .au.

p4wnc6 10y ago

I wonder how much counter-signalling there is on the part of the interviewees. They are going to be prone to say things that associate far-mode, positive ideals with them. Like, they won't say, "I found a lot of meaning that time my hard work, blood, sweat, and tears were actually meritocratically rewarded with that large bonus" because it makes them sound near-mode, greedy, overly materialistic, etc. Instead, they'll say something far-mode, about how they related to the human element of an experience or a coworker or a client, or how their family finally appreciated the deeper meaning in their work. I'm not sure I really believe that people find work meaning mostly in these far-mode, idealistic things. Rather, I think they want to be seen as someone who values these things because then people will associate good stereotypes with them. This also helps explain why it's more reflective, episodic, and after-the-fact rationalized to be meaningful, rather than being tied to concrete properties of the work itself. I think for myself, I do have some moral and ethical baselines that I don't want the byproducts of my labor to violate, like harming others, perpetuating government oppression, wasting resources. But beyond these things, I don't actually get more or less meaning out of any different topical type of work than some other type. What does make me feel like work is meaningful is to experience lots and lots of autonomy in my workplace decision making and my approach to solving problems. I also like to feel that I have the freedom to pursue whatever quality standards are pragmatic for the problem, and am not constrained by bureaucracy to pursue inelegant solutions when there's no pragmatic reasons why they actually need to be inelegant (this happens all the time). After that, I feel meaning at work most when I am given adequate quiet and private physical space and can reach a state of psychological flow. I could be writing code to process ATM transactions or to cure cancer and I'll feel the same amount of meaning if (a) I can mostly do it my own way within some loose context of the broader team's needs, and (b) I am left alone to actually get work done and I am not interrupted or inundated with an unhealthy, oppressively wide open working space. For me, these resonated more with the comment in the article that good managers are rarely even mentioned in the context of meaningful work, whereas bad managers are often to blame for work that is not meaningful. Good managers are invisible geniuses who know how to fade into the backdrop, get out of your way, allow you to make decisions, and do not feel fear that they have to micromanage or create empty superficial artifacts to justify that they are working. They are so, so hard to find, and when you find one, you are so happy that you will give so much loyalty to working for that manager, and forgive so much other crap the company might pull.

curiousfiddler 10y ago

This article strikes a chord for me. I also read a book sometime back, called Flow [1] by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi which draws similar conclusion and is good, quick read. And then I feel sad, because all the effort to seek that personal connect with work at my current workplace, have been taken away by a disconnected and immature middle management, which only works for meeting the goals and deadlines given to them... 1. Flow: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/66354.Flow http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/66354.Flow

JSeymourATL 10y ago
Pair this with 'Give Yourself a Flow Test' > https://www.farnamstreetblog.com/2016/07/the-motivation-toolkit/ https://www.farnamstreetblog.com/2016/07/the-motivation-tool...

deleted 10y ago

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drops 10y ago

There is a word "ikigai", which is a Japanese concept meaning "a reason for being". Pic related: http://i.imgur.com/k6UCbN0.png http://i.imgur.com/k6UCbN0.png Ideally, your work should fall in the center. If only it was so easy though

happyslobro 10y ago
And the French have "raison d'être", literally, "reason for being". Maybe part of the problem is that the language of business does not have a strong idiom for this.
- 77pt77 10y ago
  That is not the same point that diagram illustrates.
  - happyslobro 10y ago
    No, it is not as complete. It does not cover as many points of view. But it is analogous, and it is better than anything that English has. English has enough going for it that it can get away with dropping the ball many times. I like to call it every time ;)
    - deleted 10y ago
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- metaphorm 10y ago
  in the language of business its called "profit motive" and it excludes almost all of human existence except for the part where you have more stuff at the end of the day than at the beginning.
77pt77 10y ago
Many of those intersections are usually empty in real life.

unabst 10y ago

Workers often blame their superiors for lack of motivation or inspiration, but that wouldn't account for the good workers who show up to work inspired already. They find it before work, and if they can't find it, they move on. They don't stick around and dig for it. That's why you want people who have other options to work for you, and when you work for others, you want to know you could be doing something else. Meaning is defined from the choices we exercise. Why here instead of there is what is meaningful. No one can tell you how to live your life. Similarly, no one can tell you why you're doing your job. You need to figure that out yourself, and seeking it should involve finding other jobs, not just repeatedly digging at the same spot. Good teachers and good managers alike can help you immensely if you already have your reasons. They provide a synergy. And for that, they need you to be inspired and be passionate. Synergy fails if either is void. So if you show up inspired to a boss who isn't, that's a sign you may need to revisit your choices also. Eventually meaning always comes. Maybe it finds us. But if you want to make the most of it, never wait and never settle. All one needs is the courage to move on.

brokenmachine 10y ago
Nicely written. I would attribute blame to a manager who is a void however.

deleted 10y ago

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ilaksh 10y ago

There are so many examples of the 'deadly sins' of poor management because the concept of work is not far removed from slavery, and managers are essentially the slave masters. Good jobs and good treatment are the exception. Hierarchies are poor organizational structures.

davidgerard 10y ago
Pretty much nobody in a business is there for the purpose of making a profit. You might think that was the point, but a moment's thought will make it obvious that literally everyone except the few actual shareholders is there for their own reasons. So it devolves into small-ape-tribe politics, dominance, etc. (And nerds are in no way immune to this.) This is the same reason telecommuting is so hard to get firmly in place: bugger the business advantages, the manager doesn't have the sense of control.
bambax 10y ago
The French word for work, travail used to mean torture, and still designates suffering induced by child delivery (as does labor in English). In Latin there isn't even a word for work, it's just "non leisure" (neg-otium) (I think... it's been a while since I've studied any Latin...) Work isn't supposed to be fun or meaningful.
- brazzledazzle 10y ago
  I can agree that work isn't supposed to be fun (it's orthogonal really) and if it is fun one should be thankful. But the earliest forms of work mankind engaged in was as meaningful as it gets. It was work done to survive. It's no surprise that work you can't derive meaning from is so emotionally problematic when we evolved in an environment where survival was a day-to-day battle. I wouldn't be surprised if the lack of fulfillment that motivates the wealthy to engage in all kinds of good, bad and weird behavior is driven by the same innate need for one's work to have meaning.

zby 10y ago

Ever since reading http://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/ http://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/ I have been thinking about this. One problem with this is the definition of 'meaningful', it is not very concrete. But I think the phenomenon is true - more and more work feels like doing something unnecessary (bullshit). I don't agree with Graeber explanation why this happens - which is basically a grand conspiration by all business owners to give worthless work to people so that they don't revolt. I think it is the result of the growing complexity of our work - we encounter more and more rules that we suspect to be stupid. Many of the rules are stupid indeed - based on some random past events, but many are not - they are just covering some cases that we have never thought of. It is easier to assume that the rules are stupid than admit incompetence. But as the complexity grows less and less people understand the rules, the bad rules are not revised and it all goes in a vicious circle.

tonyedgecombe 10y ago
I've seen the scenario where every time something goes wrong a new rule is handed down from on high, eventually you get to the point where you aren't allowed to prepare food in the kitchen or use the shower to have a shower or more importantly you aren't allowed to do the work you are there for.
- dmichulke 10y ago
  This is "power corrupts" at play. People in power almost always try to increase their level of control, essentially centralizing the power structure of the entity. At some point of time the entity is completely inefficient and collapses under its own weight (rules, bureaucracy). You can see this everywhere where power can be centralized: companies, organizations, nation states. Ironically, successful leaders these days often do the opposite of leading, they decentralize, making the company much more efficient (assuming there are still sub-entities that can/want to be efficient).
  - zby 10y ago
    This might be a part of the story - but it is not the most important one. It makes a good story - a fight between the good and the evil bureaucracy. But what I have seen is rules created in perfectly good faith and often they are reasonable answers to some immediate threats. The problem is with revising them when the situation changes or understanding how they work in the presence of other rules etc. It is quite analogue to how code becomes bloated - this might be an effect of some programmers believing that this is their work security - but more often than that the programmers hate it. Bureaucratic rules are quite literally the code that the administration runs - and we need them, it is just very hard to understand them all.

jypepin 10y ago

Once thing that always strikes me with those studies, and a lot of other medical, economical or psychological studies and tryouts are the sample size... A study that interviews 135 people? And this is seen as significant? It seems to me saying something like "we tried this on 150 people, and we saw that 60% of them X" proves nothing because of how small the sample size is. what I am missing?

evilgenius134 10y ago
135 is certainly not small, depending on the selection methods it can be a very good estimator of a much larger population. Also a large amount of studies are done to show a potential area for further research which will involve larger populations when they are approved.
arien 10y ago
Well, this specific one is not about statistics and hard data, but about personal experiences and feelings. Perhaps larger numbers would simply add points that are too specific to include in a generalisation. Or perhaps it takes too much time to interview 1000s one on one :) As small as the sample was, I think it was quite relatable.
conjectures 10y ago
There's a place for qualitative research. Work like this could help structure bigger studies, suggest new hypotheses, and refine interview techniques. The sample size you need depends on the strength of the effect in the population. For instance you wouldn't need a sample size of thousands to conclude cyanide capsules were not a safe, effective remedy for tooth ache. Or that people don't like being bullied at work. This work wasn't statistically focussed, so it's not as crucial, but if you interview 135 people under a good sampling scheme and get very consistent responses about what matters to them it can't be dismissed as meaningless out of hand. I would expect plenty of room for change in our understanding of meaningfulness as more work is done though...
dredmorbius 10y ago
In statistics, what matters far more than the size of your sample is the method of your sampling. This is where lay and academic understandings of statistics diverge dramatically. There's far more discussion of how to ensure an appropriate sample size (determined generally by the independent variables you're tracking and how you plan on subsetting the sample) and tests for randomness. Which is why the time to call a statistician into your study isn't when you want to run algos over your data but before you even begin collecting data. Oh, and large sample statistics is a thing. You need to have a minimum number of observations before large-sample methods are generally considered accurate, described by n. n = 30. If (and that's a crucial if) your sampling is random, you can draw tremendous inferences from small datasets. This is why many national-level polls rely on samples of about 300 individuals. The key isn't the size, it's making sure those 300 are really, really random. Goof that and you end up with a "Dewey Defeats Truman" headline. Or Trump as the GOP candidate. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dewey_Defeats_Truman https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dewey_Defeats_Truman (Both owe a lot to how phones are used -- in 1948, landline phones were still a sufficient luxury item that it skewed phone-polling methods. In 2016, cord-cutting is having similar effects.) I had the interesting experience a while ago of looking at data as it came in generating an estimate of a population of 2.2 billion individuals, based on a sample of 50,000 (Google+ activity, relying on a sitemap file of profiles, where sitemaps are restricted to 50,000 entries per). Well within the first 100 records, the long-term trend of ~8-10% (my final value was 9%) of profiles showing any public activity was established. Given web polling and delays introduced (I tried, and succeeded, to avoid tripping any bot-denial mechanisms), the data rolled in slowly, so I simply set my stats script to loop over the incoming files every minute or so. Somewhere in my testing I also ran a set of resamplings based on the data I'd ingested -- taking small sets of data from within the larger one and looking for any wildly anomolous trends. This would have suggested that the sitemap file itself wasn't randomly constructed, but eyeball tests of various aspects (including account age, region, and activity) strongly suggested it was. This spared me some more complex sample-generation. (My conclusions were independently verified from a much larger sample of 500k profiles by Stone Temple Consulting and Eric Enge, a pretty heartening validation.) ________ Edit to add: another crucial point is that statistical error is governed by sqrt(n) -- SE = 1/sqrt(n). To halve your error, you've got to square your sample size. So if 30 doesn't work for you, you're looking at 900, not 60. Assuming sampling costs increase with n, reducing error gets expensive fast. And for the pedants, SE is "standard error", as I'm aware.

andyjohnson0 10y ago

PDF full text is at [1]. Looks like it is legitimately published by the principal author's university. [1] http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/61282/1/What%20makes%20work%20meaningful%20or%20meaningless%20accepted%20version.pdf http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/61282/1/What%20makes%20work%20meanin...

az0xff 10y ago
Reading the full text, I can't help but notice the mention of "Episodic" meaningfulness, which means that meaningfulness peaks at certain times rather than being present at a constant level throughout. Does this apply to the feelings about what someone is doing that day, or does it apply to the job as a whole?

bambax 10y ago

> our research showed that quality of leadership received virtually no mention when people described meaningful moments at work, but poor management was the top destroyer of meaningfulness Spolsky: > Administrators [code name for managers] aren’t supposed to make the hard decisions. They don’t know enough. All those super genius computer scientists that you had to recruit from MIT at great expense are supposed to make the hard decisions. That’s why you’re paying them. Administrators exist to move the furniture around so that the people at the top of the tree can make the hard decisions. http://avc.com/2012/02/the-management-team-guest-post-from-joel-spolsky/ http://avc.com/2012/02/the-management-team-guest-post-from-j...

enraged_camel 10y ago
I follow an imaginary and totally-not-backed-by-science model whereby I view managers as a force multiplier on their teams. The number can be anything between 0 and 10. In this model, a PHB[1] hovers between 0.2 and 0.8 (it depends on how well the team can ignore him/her), whereas the average manager hovers somewhere between 0.8 and 1.2; their effect on their teams is neutral, give or take. Good managers are between 1 and 3 -- they can double or triple their team's output -- whereas excellent managers are 3 and up. Such managers also tend to possess very strong leadership skills. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointy-haired_Boss https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointy-haired_Boss
- bambax 10y ago
  Very instructive. Using your system, as a manager, if you're not above 1 you should work hard to never ever go below 1. That's the point Spolsky is making, I think. It's a fair point and rooted in a lot of evidence, but somewhat limited, because as you say, there can be great managers whose experience and insight multiply their potential.
- avn2109 10y ago
  This is a cool model. Though in principle it seems like the multiplier is unbounded on the top end, even if in practice we rarely find it > 10.

amelius 10y ago

> Individuals tended to experience their work as meaningful when it mattered to others more than just to themselves. Can this be applied to art as well? Isn't the meaning of a work of art the greatest to the artists themselves?

Broken_Hippo 10y ago
Yes, but for me the meaning isn't necessarily in the finished work outside of creating something I like to look at. Considering I'm pretty prolific - I work on art most days, and have stacks that people haven't seen, I truly have to say I do it for my own benefit. Sometimes I put things that others find meaningful in the work because folks like that stuff. It does give a flutter when other people see meaning in my otherwise meaningless work, though, and I still get giddy when I happen to sell a piece, as I don't sell often. There is some sort of encouragement to be had from others finding meaning in it. Much like getting a better than expected review at work. But I'd do it regardless of outside encouragement.

saosebastiao 10y ago

It was like reading a description of Amazon. Thousands of talented and intelligent employees with thousands of ideas that could make or save godless amounts of money, 99% of which were shot down after they bubble their way up through a leadership telephone game which eventually totally misrepresents the idea, and the remaining 1% of ideas get the resource strangle after some VP decides his pet project needs all the resources and allocates his budget accordingly. Amazon is a place where intelligent ambition is rewarded with plenty of money, but never used for anything but implementing other people's ideas.