15 ms·

Motivational Incongruence and Well-Being at the Workplace

152 points by rjdevereux 10y ago

ams6110 10y ago
I quit a job when I felt burnout developing. The cause? Pair programming. I just cannot that close to someone for the majority of the workday without feeling constant low-level stress and annoyance, and I can't focus and think about problems in that setting. When you have to sit in your car for 15 minutes every morning just to summon the resolve to get out and go into the office, something's wrong with your work environment.
- city41 10y ago
  I also left a job due to pair programming. That company pair programmed 100% of the time. It concerns me that might become a norm. I wrote a blog post on why I think that's a bad idea: http://www.mattgreer.org/articles/pair-programming-is-not-a-panacea/ http://www.mattgreer.org/articles/pair-programming-is-not-a-...
  - dasmoth 10y ago
    Thanks for writing this. I particularly like the suggested desk arrangement -- although I'm not sure I can see it catching on given that pairing is often coupled with long tables in open-plan offices. Once upon a time, I thought programming was an introvert-friendly career. That seems to be changing fast.
    - ape4 10y ago
      I guess they want to get rid of the deep-thinking reflective introverts.
      - nikanj 10y ago
        Their idea of a great hacker comes from movies such as Swordfish
      - HarryHirsch 10y ago
        You ask yourself if Agile, pair programming, open plan office and all the other fads of the day may have to do with the economic environment. Back in the day, when the economy wasn't excessively financialized, a company had to develop a product and compete successfully in the market. So management did what it took and treated its developers well. But nowadays, it's all about raising yet another round of funding and selling to an investor, consequently, management subscribes to every idiotic management fad in fashion because that's what investors look out for and what helps the company to stick around for yet a year more. No product development required.
  - billmalarky 10y ago
    >It concerns me that might become a norm. I wouldn't worry too much about this. Most companies see pair programming as paying 2X for the same amount of programming output.
  - s_kilk 10y ago
    I wonder if these kinds of teams are lead by extroverts, who appreciate having a captive audience for their peopley, extroverted shenaniagns. Having a stable of people who are contractually obligated to put up with their outgoing personalities.
    - crmd 10y ago
      It's not nice to belittle individuals whose brains work differently than your own.
      - brokenmachine 10y ago
        That's true, but the problem is that those outgoing types interfere with the introverts brains from working when they interrupt them constantly. I would like more segregation! Enjoy your riotous atmosphere over there (far away) please!
    - ewjordan 10y ago
      I've mostly seen it pushed (as a hard 100% policy, at least) by well meaning but naive people that have done it a few times before, got obsessed with it, and decided it's this week's cure for everything. The reality is, it will make the team produce fewer bugs. It will also help in knowledge sharing, and in some cases result in tidier designs. But you'll basically have half the manpower. So unless you actually have serious problems with bugs, knowledge sharing, or code design, it's not going to be worth it. There are other ways to achieve quality, and most senior people can do that very well without someone pairing with them.
  - pyb 10y ago
    Pair programming is great, but that can only happen between willing and compatible participants. As you say, it should never be imposed from 'above' to any arbitrary pair of colleagues!
    - JoeAltmaier 10y ago
      Agreed. I 'pair program' with my consulting partner. That is, we sit in the same lab and do our own thing, coming up for air to discuss an approach or algorithm, or even to review code. But 99% of the time is spent at our own tasks. This kind of 'pair programming' works best for us.
      - trevyn 10y ago
        That sounds like a nice, collaborative work environment, but I would not file it under any definition of "pair programming". Edit: 99%? So you spend less than five minutes collaborating per 8-hour workday?
        wott 10y ago
        > 99%? So you spend less than five minutes collaborating per 8-hour workday? It sounds reasonable: 0 minute on a day, 10 mn on the next one. You can double it because the "99%" figure was dropped randomly, but that seems fair.
  - zeveb 10y ago
    Now that's a great article — so good I think that it should stand on its own. Submitted as https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12291080 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12291080
- hacker_9 10y ago
  I had a similar experience that made me quit my last job, but for me it was being in an open plan office. I just found that I felt constantly under someones gaze, and I couldn't look around without looking someone in the eye. It was a low level stress like yours, and was really uncomfortable when trying to work through problems. For example I find closing my eyes helps me visualise a process in my head, but then someone sat nearby would see that and use it as a cue to talk to me 'oh are you stuck on something?.. yada yada yada'.
  - freddyc 10y ago
    I had a very similar experience where I actually dreaded going into the office because I knew my productivity would fall off a cliff. I slowly found myself accepting the day would be a loss with pointless meetings and other distractions, and got into the habit of doing my "head-down" work later once I got home. My wife pointed out how stupid that was (and frankly, unsustainable) so I pretty quickly jumped ship to a different company with a much better office design/remote work policy where I felt a lot more comfortable.
    - learning___ 10y ago
      I have the same questions for you as I asked the parent poster, as I mentioned in that post I feel like I am going through something similar to you both right now due to an open office. I also feel like it is hard and rare to get the real "head-down" work done while at work due to constant interruptions. How long at the job did it take you to realize that it caused a constant low level stress? How long did you end up staying there before leaving? Did you reveal the real reason for leaving when you left?
      - freddyc 10y ago
        I would say it wasn't until after the honeymoon phase of being new and excited wore off and I was given meaningful work to complete. It was a while ago now, but I think it was around the 6-8 week mark that I begun to really notice my workdays were a waste. Being a male I suppressed my feelings :) and the stress slowly built up over the next 6 months until my wife finally pointed out that it wasn't healthy and was impacting my relationship with her and others in my life. I'm somewhat rare in the sense that I just quit vs lining up a new job first as we had a decent financial buffer, although if I'm being honest I suspect it was a case of jumping before being pushed as the stress was starting to impact my workplace relationships as well (especially with the CEO who was a chronic time-waster that loved pointless meetings). I've said this elsewhere, but I think it's healthy to mix things up every few years - leaving this company ultimately worked out well for me as I quickly found a new opportunity that opened up doors I had never considered before. I don't know your exact circumstances, but if you have a significant other I think it's worth having a candid conversation with them and work out what the two of you need to live a balanced and fulfilled life. If the workplace stress is leaking into the rest of your life and you find work consuming an unreasonbale amount of your time, it's probably a good sign that it might be worth exploring other opportunities (in my experience, it's much harder to change an organization than it is to just move on). I realize this is different to the "roll-up-your-sleeves" advice elsewhere in this thread, but I view my career as a 40+ year marathon so I embrace the odd twist in the road every now and again.
- a3n 10y ago
  I may be wrong, but my unresearched feeling is that extroverts promote these kinds of things, and introverts (like myself) are made to look bad for not liking and thriving in these imposed environments. Not team players. One size doesn't fit all.
  - wott 10y ago
    > Not team players. For that kind of team, and that kind of play. But if you're like me, you can deal with workmates, it is just that a small amount of interaction with a small number of people is enough to be productive and yet not waste people's time.
- jMyles 10y ago
  This phenomenon is one of the distinct situations where I have found that the effects of cannabis are helpful. Smoke a bit with your partner, go for a walk, maybe apologize or retract some things if necessary. Maybe stop being such a perfectionist and just merge what does work now.
  - dasmoth 10y ago
    I have no objection to canabis or those who choose to enjoy it, but the idea that I might need psychoactives to handle the work environment -- even when I'm doing something I'm widely considered to be pretty decent at -- is repellant.
    - wott 10y ago
      Well, most people build up their own ritual while getting to the work place and starting their work day. It is not much different as a psychoactive mean, it is just one step further, with a substance (this being said, most people already include tea or coffee in their ceremonial). It is just that a good part of them don't even notice what they do and why they do it.
    - jMyles 10y ago
      > the idea that I might need psychoactives to handle the work environment It occurs to me that many people, perhaps even a majority, perceive a need for coffee in order to have the energy and focus they need. My assertion is that cannabis sometimes has a similarly useful effect, and that one distinct example is in how it affects teamwork.
- a-saleh 10y ago
  It seems weird to me that some workplace would mandate physical(?) pair-programming as a default. And I actually like pair-programming, some of my best code was written with somebody sitting besides me and we have solved some really tricky bugs like this. But we tend to do this only rarely. Most of my day is spent organizing stuff and reading emails anyway :-)
  - aantix 10y ago
    I'm pretty sure Pivotal and Carbon Five, two high end Rails consulting firms in SF require pair programming. I'm pretty sure that you can't hire Pivotal without contracting two of their engineering, strictly for pair programming. Some of my best code has been written with pair programming but I can see the flip-side. There's no day-dreaming, there's no zoning out, complete engagement all day long. It's the same mental overhead as with taking care of toddlers; you have to be constantly aware otherwise suffer the consequences.. :)
    - shostack 10y ago
      Any idea how much of that is to juice margins by billing two people minimum? Surely the work is not completed twice as quickly.
      - twic 10y ago
        I work at Pivotal, although in London. We do indeed insist on doing all programming paired. I honestly don't think that's because of margins, though - it's that everyone buys into the XP idea that it's the best way to program. I don't think it does much for margins, because you have to spend twice as much on developers to get that double revenue, so the margin is the same. Our normal thing is to form joint teams of Pivotal and client developers, and in that situation, pairing is also a really good way to teach the clients our way of doing things.
  - BurningFrog 10y ago
    I love pair programming teams, and would not want to work anywhere else. Of course, a team like that needs to only hire people who are up for that lifestyle.
- watashiwa 10y ago
  I don't consider myself particularly extroverted or introverted, and I've personally had both bad and good experiences pair programming. I think it depends entirely who you're programming with and in what context. My bad experience was with a large international consulting company. The consultant members colluded to extend their contract and push their own design, architecture, and tools. The time spent pair programming with them was simply a method of advancing their agenda. It was a horrible experience and I felt burnout just like you described. It was a waste of time and money for the client. My last consulting project was the exact opposite, it was absolutely wonderful. I spent the day pair programming and it involved creative problem solving and an intellectual exchange. It was a great experience, I grew professionally, wrote better code, and can see legitimate a case that it was worth the client's money.
- trentmb 10y ago
  > Pair programming. I haven't had to work in an environment that requires it, and just looking at the wiki page makes it seem miserable. Do you really just sit at one workstation, with another person watching over your shoulder haggling over each line of code? I think I'm just not a quick enough thinker for this approach to work.
  - ldjb 10y ago
    I suppose you could describe it that way. Pair programming certainly isn't for everyone, but under the right conditions, it can be very effective. It can be a good means to share ideas and keep up the motivation. That said, it ultimately comes down to whether or not the pair work well together — sometimes you 'click' and everything's great; other times you don't. A related technique that's quite interesting is mob programming, where an entire team is huddled around a workstation. There's less pressure on each team member as individuals, and the person typing the code is mostly following directions from the others. Really, the approach to development needs to be appropriate for the dynamics of the team. It might be a good idea to at least try out pair or mob programming to see how effective it is. But you can't just be doing it just because it's the 'hip' thing these days. Also, pair and mob programming can be quite draining, so you may not want to be doing it all day. You could do it for part(s) of the day, and work on your own at your own pace at other times.
    - douche 10y ago
      There was a time-lapse video of mob programming I saw on here recently (unfortunately can't find it). At least half of the group that was clustered around the one machine was completely checked out, and you could see that they were so incredibly bored that they were about to drive pencils into their eyes. Also, one guy came in during the lunch break, and got more done than the mob did in the other eight hours...
      - HerpDerpLerp 10y ago
        This? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_pvslS4gEI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_pvslS4gEI This looks more functional. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVqUcNKVbYg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVqUcNKVbYg I am not against the idea... but yeh I can see it has issues!
anbende 10y ago
The title is sensationalist. They found correlational evidence to link their measures of "motivational incongruence" with burnout and physical symptoms. It was NOT causal. They also did not test or control for anything. No tests of stress, social support or anything else that could mediate these effects. Their measure of implicit motivation is also a little rough: they had raters count the number of, for example, affiliation sentences used to describe a picture of a trapeze artist. More sentences equals an unconscious need for affiliation. In the end, they found that if either of two motivational orientations (power and affiliation) are not being met, we are a little more likely to report symptoms of burnout. Interesting, but very preliminary. And it could be totally subsumed by other personality or stress variables.
- sctb 10y ago
  Thanks, we updated the submission from an article which had the title, “Burnout is caused by mismatch between unconscious needs and job demands”.
- stdbrouw 10y ago
  The red flag for me was polynomial regression on such a relatively small sample. As you say, it might pan out but it's very preliminary.
kristianc 10y ago
I'm not sure how much this advice will be heeded. In a lot of places in tech, there seems to be a culture where companies are more concerned about maximizing units of work at the expense of more intangible factors. You see this in Agile, Kanban etc methods of work where personal development is completely subjugated to the needs of the project. Insofar as a guiding principle behind the work does exist, that too tends to be subsumed under 'The Project': 'We're excited about building the future of work!' In more than one company I've worked with, even drawing attention to an article like this would be seen as raising your head above the parapet. It's completely the wrong attitude. Until we start measuring employee performance in new ways and asking different questions of managers, we'll continue to see burnout being viewed as an 'acceptable cost'.
- erkkie 10y ago
  I agree with your general sentiment and have my share of seeing ridiculous ceremonies of current-workflow-fad-of-the-year being enforced on people, kanban is a great system for managing deliverables in an ad-hoc environment. It's a false premise (and unfortunately all too common, both self-inflicted by developers themselves and by managers) to think that tracking and managing work pipeline == maximizing output at the expense of the worker.
- walkingolof 10y ago
  >In a lot of places in tech, there seems to be a culture where companies are more concerned about maximizing units of work at the expense of more intangible factors. I agree, there is allot of focus on all sort of tooling to cram points etc out of the work force and the simple answer to that is that is the easy part, really easy part, everything is already there. The really hard part of building a company is making sure that everyone feel part of it and not just some assembly line drone.
visarga 10y ago
I came to the same conclusion based on an analogy. Humans learn behavior by reinforcement learning, just like AI agents. Reinforcement learning is maximizing rewards by picking the right actions, given the current situation and internal state. Now, humans have a number of inborn reward systems, such as connection (belonging, community, empathy), physical well being (food, sleep), play, autonomy, meaning (competence, efficiency), creativity. So the human reward is the sum of the individual "reward channels". When focused on solving a single problem, there is a tendency to optimize only for part of this multi-part reward function, to the detriment of others. This is the cause of burnout. It's basically suboptimal reward, when considering rewards in all their complexity. Here is a more complete inventory of basic needs (reward channels): https://www.cnvc.org/Training/needs-inventory https://www.cnvc.org/Training/needs-inventory
0xcde4c3db 10y ago
Has the concept of "unconscious needs" been scientifically characterized and validated? The term seems to be used with some frequency in the literature, but mostly mentioned in passing and not as a central component of the phenomenon being studied.
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sctb 10y ago
We updated the link from https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/08/160811171643.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/08/160811171643.h..., which points to a Eureka article which points to this.
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p4wnc6 10y ago
I wrote a blog entry about something similar -- but trying to take it back one level and understand why do certain managers go to the trouble of hiring people only to plug them into physical environments that are demonstrably toxic for human beings (not merely introverts v. extraverts, but for almost any human in general). Sadly, I think it's just age-old politics. You're hired for the political effects it has on your boss -- including looking like a l33t h4x0r in your violently-collaborative open plan office doing Agile. Kills productivity and morale, but managers & executives aren't compensated for actually producing anything, so it doesn't matter. And HR'll always spin some other story about turnover because the one thing they have to avoid at all costs is actually providing a healthy workplace. [0] < http://suitdummy.blogspot.com/2015/05/why-hire-underemployment-autonomy-and.html http://suitdummy.blogspot.com/2015/05/why-hire-underemployme... >
- 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.
T0T0R0 10y ago
It's kind of funny, but when you talk to a lot of fellow worker drones, who lack the kind of free will required to accurately describe their own motivations for holding down a job, most will continuously describe burnout as being at fault and getting fired during a moment when they failed the company. Like: Oh boo hoo, I suffered burnout this one time because I was so incompetant. Good on my boss for firing me when I deserved it! Most worker drones with attitudes like this usually cannot or will not describe their core motivations for maintaining employment (power motives, according to the article) as "needing to pay rent" or something similarly compulsory. Maybe it's just too awful too think in such bleak terms. But this article points to an interesting symmetry of blame: the workers beats themselves up, and the employers express absurd, overbearing demands, or some combination of the two. Worst case scenarios being the blind leading the blind. You rarely see articles that provide a cold look at employer/employee relationships, and explore scenarios where emotional investment is optional on both sides of the table.
flanbiscuit 10y ago
Can someone re-word the abstract in layman's terms? I had to google what "motivational incongruence" was. My partial interpretation attempt: Employees who did not feel like they fit into the culture of the workplace (affiliation motive) led to high job burnout. And people who didn't satisfy their need to have an impact on others, and gain respect and reputation (power motive), predicted increased physical symptoms.
ycombinatorMan 10y ago
I think its quite obvious that burnout comes from overdoing youreself, hardly an unconscious feeling.
treehau5_ 10y ago
Yeah I have expereined this very thing at work right now, but the great thing about being a human is you can change and adapt at the face of adversity. In my case it was either get fired/quit spend a month or two getting a new job and hear it from my wife or suck it up and be the person myorganization wants me to be -- it wasn't that hard at the end of the day because I get paid handsomly, get to sit in an air conditioned room with a comfortable chair (they even got a standing desk for me)great benefits, get to put food on the table, have clean water to drink, you know.. something 90% of the rest of the world will never get to experience. My answer to these situations is to humble yourself. Now of course I am not saying the other option is "wrong" especially if it is just as easy for you to find an accommodating workplace but at the end of the day you are paid to do a job, not have all your feelings babysitted. If you find your workplace is stressing you out, go talk to a therapist (or close friend who understands you, spouse, etc) and see if you can identify ways to overcome it. If not, then maybe consider the switch. I know this will get downvoted here because it sounds very "conservative pull up your bootstraps"-esque
- JoeAltmaier 10y ago
  My old minister used to say "We can have all the morals we can afford". So if quitting isn't an immediate option, good advice to suck it up. In fact just knowing that it will end (eventually) can make it bearable.
- joyeuse6701 10y ago
  Tolerance is largely relative I think. You could have a crank that spits out pennies so long as you crank it. Invariably we will tire of turning the crank because it's monotonous uninspiring unfulfilling work. The argument could be made that someone somewhere does not have the opportunity to so easily spin a crank for money so we ought to be grateful, but the mind's adaptability is a double edged sword. You exalt the mind for it's adaptability, but it's the very same adaptability that accustoms us to our environment, and leads us to be ungrateful for the conditions we live in.
  - JackFr 10y ago
    Inspiring fulfilling work is a luxury not everyone can afford, and it is a conceit of the modern world that meaning and fulfillment in your life should come from your employment.
Xcelerate 10y ago
I've never understood why companies don't have a mix of environments so that each person can choose what works best for them. Allow options for an open floor plan area, a closed floor plan area, and remote work. My PhD advisor didn't care if I worked in my office, from home, or from the top of a volcano as long as I got the research done that he wanted each week (turns out I tend to work best in coffee shops).
- HerpDerpLerp 10y ago
  Money and control (or the perception of control)
DHMO 10y ago
1. I know it is tough collecting data, but a sample size of 97? It seems like there are a number of larger organizations that would be interested in participating in such a study if kept anonymous, and I really start to wonder about conclusions based on such small sample sizes, especially if it was only done at a single company or in a single geographic region. Culture between companies and between geographic regions can be really different. For example, if you performed this study in Mumbai in a company where all of those involved in the study were die-hard workers that didn't believe in burnout, that would have seriously skewed the results and they still might have looked good statistically. 2. While it's evident to many that have been working several years or more that people tend to get promoted even when they'd be happier in lower non-managerial positions, and that promotion can end in unhappiness or burnout, what wasn't mentioned in the study is whether you really want power-hungry people in management positions just because it would be a better fit for their motivations. I had some piss-poor managers that loved power and for them it was a good personality fit. It might be better in many situations to have someone that doesn't want the power, is knowledgeable of the job of those they are managing, is well-respected, and is a great leader to lead for some years and burnout or leave than it would be to have a power-hungry imbecile with no respect from their team leading for many years because they are a good personality fit. That said, I think that if you can find someone that is both a good personality fit and a great fit as a leader of the team, then that's better than promoting someone that will burnout, but only as long as it is just information used for decision between candidates and not a determining factor.
evolve2k 10y ago
"Individual needs and environment supplies were assessed in an online survey of full time employees (n = 97), using a picture story exercise measuring implicit motives and a scale listing affiliation and power related job characteristics" Is 97 respondents to an online survey enough to be statistically significant?

152 points by rjdevereux 10y ago

I quit a job when I felt burnout developing. The cause? Pair programming. I just cannot that close to someone for the majority of the workday without feeling constant low-level stress and annoyance, and I can't focus and think about problems in that setting. When you have to sit in your car for 15 minutes every morning just to summon the resolve to get out and go into the office, something's wrong with your work environment.

city41 10y ago
I also left a job due to pair programming. That company pair programmed 100% of the time. It concerns me that might become a norm. I wrote a blog post on why I think that's a bad idea: http://www.mattgreer.org/articles/pair-programming-is-not-a-panacea/ http://www.mattgreer.org/articles/pair-programming-is-not-a-...
- dasmoth 10y ago
  Thanks for writing this. I particularly like the suggested desk arrangement -- although I'm not sure I can see it catching on given that pairing is often coupled with long tables in open-plan offices. Once upon a time, I thought programming was an introvert-friendly career. That seems to be changing fast.
  - ape4 10y ago
    I guess they want to get rid of the deep-thinking reflective introverts.
    - nikanj 10y ago
      Their idea of a great hacker comes from movies such as Swordfish
    - HarryHirsch 10y ago
      You ask yourself if Agile, pair programming, open plan office and all the other fads of the day may have to do with the economic environment. Back in the day, when the economy wasn't excessively financialized, a company had to develop a product and compete successfully in the market. So management did what it took and treated its developers well. But nowadays, it's all about raising yet another round of funding and selling to an investor, consequently, management subscribes to every idiotic management fad in fashion because that's what investors look out for and what helps the company to stick around for yet a year more. No product development required.
- billmalarky 10y ago
  >It concerns me that might become a norm. I wouldn't worry too much about this. Most companies see pair programming as paying 2X for the same amount of programming output.
- s_kilk 10y ago
  I wonder if these kinds of teams are lead by extroverts, who appreciate having a captive audience for their peopley, extroverted shenaniagns. Having a stable of people who are contractually obligated to put up with their outgoing personalities.
  - crmd 10y ago
    It's not nice to belittle individuals whose brains work differently than your own.
    - brokenmachine 10y ago
      That's true, but the problem is that those outgoing types interfere with the introverts brains from working when they interrupt them constantly. I would like more segregation! Enjoy your riotous atmosphere over there (far away) please!
  - ewjordan 10y ago
    I've mostly seen it pushed (as a hard 100% policy, at least) by well meaning but naive people that have done it a few times before, got obsessed with it, and decided it's this week's cure for everything. The reality is, it will make the team produce fewer bugs. It will also help in knowledge sharing, and in some cases result in tidier designs. But you'll basically have half the manpower. So unless you actually have serious problems with bugs, knowledge sharing, or code design, it's not going to be worth it. There are other ways to achieve quality, and most senior people can do that very well without someone pairing with them.
- pyb 10y ago
  Pair programming is great, but that can only happen between willing and compatible participants. As you say, it should never be imposed from 'above' to any arbitrary pair of colleagues!
  - JoeAltmaier 10y ago
    Agreed. I 'pair program' with my consulting partner. That is, we sit in the same lab and do our own thing, coming up for air to discuss an approach or algorithm, or even to review code. But 99% of the time is spent at our own tasks. This kind of 'pair programming' works best for us.
    - trevyn 10y ago
      That sounds like a nice, collaborative work environment, but I would not file it under any definition of "pair programming". Edit: 99%? So you spend less than five minutes collaborating per 8-hour workday?
      - wott 10y ago
        > 99%? So you spend less than five minutes collaborating per 8-hour workday? It sounds reasonable: 0 minute on a day, 10 mn on the next one. You can double it because the "99%" figure was dropped randomly, but that seems fair.
- zeveb 10y ago
  Now that's a great article — so good I think that it should stand on its own. Submitted as https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12291080 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12291080
hacker_9 10y ago
I had a similar experience that made me quit my last job, but for me it was being in an open plan office. I just found that I felt constantly under someones gaze, and I couldn't look around without looking someone in the eye. It was a low level stress like yours, and was really uncomfortable when trying to work through problems. For example I find closing my eyes helps me visualise a process in my head, but then someone sat nearby would see that and use it as a cue to talk to me 'oh are you stuck on something?.. yada yada yada'.
- freddyc 10y ago
  I had a very similar experience where I actually dreaded going into the office because I knew my productivity would fall off a cliff. I slowly found myself accepting the day would be a loss with pointless meetings and other distractions, and got into the habit of doing my "head-down" work later once I got home. My wife pointed out how stupid that was (and frankly, unsustainable) so I pretty quickly jumped ship to a different company with a much better office design/remote work policy where I felt a lot more comfortable.
  - learning___ 10y ago
    I have the same questions for you as I asked the parent poster, as I mentioned in that post I feel like I am going through something similar to you both right now due to an open office. I also feel like it is hard and rare to get the real "head-down" work done while at work due to constant interruptions. How long at the job did it take you to realize that it caused a constant low level stress? How long did you end up staying there before leaving? Did you reveal the real reason for leaving when you left?
    - freddyc 10y ago
      I would say it wasn't until after the honeymoon phase of being new and excited wore off and I was given meaningful work to complete. It was a while ago now, but I think it was around the 6-8 week mark that I begun to really notice my workdays were a waste. Being a male I suppressed my feelings :) and the stress slowly built up over the next 6 months until my wife finally pointed out that it wasn't healthy and was impacting my relationship with her and others in my life. I'm somewhat rare in the sense that I just quit vs lining up a new job first as we had a decent financial buffer, although if I'm being honest I suspect it was a case of jumping before being pushed as the stress was starting to impact my workplace relationships as well (especially with the CEO who was a chronic time-waster that loved pointless meetings). I've said this elsewhere, but I think it's healthy to mix things up every few years - leaving this company ultimately worked out well for me as I quickly found a new opportunity that opened up doors I had never considered before. I don't know your exact circumstances, but if you have a significant other I think it's worth having a candid conversation with them and work out what the two of you need to live a balanced and fulfilled life. If the workplace stress is leaking into the rest of your life and you find work consuming an unreasonbale amount of your time, it's probably a good sign that it might be worth exploring other opportunities (in my experience, it's much harder to change an organization than it is to just move on). I realize this is different to the "roll-up-your-sleeves" advice elsewhere in this thread, but I view my career as a 40+ year marathon so I embrace the odd twist in the road every now and again.
a3n 10y ago
I may be wrong, but my unresearched feeling is that extroverts promote these kinds of things, and introverts (like myself) are made to look bad for not liking and thriving in these imposed environments. Not team players. One size doesn't fit all.
- wott 10y ago
  > Not team players. For that kind of team, and that kind of play. But if you're like me, you can deal with workmates, it is just that a small amount of interaction with a small number of people is enough to be productive and yet not waste people's time.
jMyles 10y ago
This phenomenon is one of the distinct situations where I have found that the effects of cannabis are helpful. Smoke a bit with your partner, go for a walk, maybe apologize or retract some things if necessary. Maybe stop being such a perfectionist and just merge what does work now.
- dasmoth 10y ago
  I have no objection to canabis or those who choose to enjoy it, but the idea that I might need psychoactives to handle the work environment -- even when I'm doing something I'm widely considered to be pretty decent at -- is repellant.
  - wott 10y ago
    Well, most people build up their own ritual while getting to the work place and starting their work day. It is not much different as a psychoactive mean, it is just one step further, with a substance (this being said, most people already include tea or coffee in their ceremonial). It is just that a good part of them don't even notice what they do and why they do it.
  - jMyles 10y ago
    > the idea that I might need psychoactives to handle the work environment It occurs to me that many people, perhaps even a majority, perceive a need for coffee in order to have the energy and focus they need. My assertion is that cannabis sometimes has a similarly useful effect, and that one distinct example is in how it affects teamwork.
a-saleh 10y ago
It seems weird to me that some workplace would mandate physical(?) pair-programming as a default. And I actually like pair-programming, some of my best code was written with somebody sitting besides me and we have solved some really tricky bugs like this. But we tend to do this only rarely. Most of my day is spent organizing stuff and reading emails anyway :-)
- aantix 10y ago
  I'm pretty sure Pivotal and Carbon Five, two high end Rails consulting firms in SF require pair programming. I'm pretty sure that you can't hire Pivotal without contracting two of their engineering, strictly for pair programming. Some of my best code has been written with pair programming but I can see the flip-side. There's no day-dreaming, there's no zoning out, complete engagement all day long. It's the same mental overhead as with taking care of toddlers; you have to be constantly aware otherwise suffer the consequences.. :)
  - shostack 10y ago
    Any idea how much of that is to juice margins by billing two people minimum? Surely the work is not completed twice as quickly.
    - twic 10y ago
      I work at Pivotal, although in London. We do indeed insist on doing all programming paired. I honestly don't think that's because of margins, though - it's that everyone buys into the XP idea that it's the best way to program. I don't think it does much for margins, because you have to spend twice as much on developers to get that double revenue, so the margin is the same. Our normal thing is to form joint teams of Pivotal and client developers, and in that situation, pairing is also a really good way to teach the clients our way of doing things.
- BurningFrog 10y ago
  I love pair programming teams, and would not want to work anywhere else. Of course, a team like that needs to only hire people who are up for that lifestyle.
watashiwa 10y ago
I don't consider myself particularly extroverted or introverted, and I've personally had both bad and good experiences pair programming. I think it depends entirely who you're programming with and in what context. My bad experience was with a large international consulting company. The consultant members colluded to extend their contract and push their own design, architecture, and tools. The time spent pair programming with them was simply a method of advancing their agenda. It was a horrible experience and I felt burnout just like you described. It was a waste of time and money for the client. My last consulting project was the exact opposite, it was absolutely wonderful. I spent the day pair programming and it involved creative problem solving and an intellectual exchange. It was a great experience, I grew professionally, wrote better code, and can see legitimate a case that it was worth the client's money.
trentmb 10y ago
> Pair programming. I haven't had to work in an environment that requires it, and just looking at the wiki page makes it seem miserable. Do you really just sit at one workstation, with another person watching over your shoulder haggling over each line of code? I think I'm just not a quick enough thinker for this approach to work.
- ldjb 10y ago
  I suppose you could describe it that way. Pair programming certainly isn't for everyone, but under the right conditions, it can be very effective. It can be a good means to share ideas and keep up the motivation. That said, it ultimately comes down to whether or not the pair work well together — sometimes you 'click' and everything's great; other times you don't. A related technique that's quite interesting is mob programming, where an entire team is huddled around a workstation. There's less pressure on each team member as individuals, and the person typing the code is mostly following directions from the others. Really, the approach to development needs to be appropriate for the dynamics of the team. It might be a good idea to at least try out pair or mob programming to see how effective it is. But you can't just be doing it just because it's the 'hip' thing these days. Also, pair and mob programming can be quite draining, so you may not want to be doing it all day. You could do it for part(s) of the day, and work on your own at your own pace at other times.
  - douche 10y ago
    There was a time-lapse video of mob programming I saw on here recently (unfortunately can't find it). At least half of the group that was clustered around the one machine was completely checked out, and you could see that they were so incredibly bored that they were about to drive pencils into their eyes. Also, one guy came in during the lunch break, and got more done than the mob did in the other eight hours...
    - HerpDerpLerp 10y ago
      This? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_pvslS4gEI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_pvslS4gEI This looks more functional. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVqUcNKVbYg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVqUcNKVbYg I am not against the idea... but yeh I can see it has issues!

anbende 10y ago

The title is sensationalist. They found correlational evidence to link their measures of "motivational incongruence" with burnout and physical symptoms. It was NOT causal. They also did not test or control for anything. No tests of stress, social support or anything else that could mediate these effects. Their measure of implicit motivation is also a little rough: they had raters count the number of, for example, affiliation sentences used to describe a picture of a trapeze artist. More sentences equals an unconscious need for affiliation. In the end, they found that if either of two motivational orientations (power and affiliation) are not being met, we are a little more likely to report symptoms of burnout. Interesting, but very preliminary. And it could be totally subsumed by other personality or stress variables.

sctb 10y ago
Thanks, we updated the submission from an article which had the title, “Burnout is caused by mismatch between unconscious needs and job demands”.
stdbrouw 10y ago
The red flag for me was polynomial regression on such a relatively small sample. As you say, it might pan out but it's very preliminary.

kristianc 10y ago

I'm not sure how much this advice will be heeded. In a lot of places in tech, there seems to be a culture where companies are more concerned about maximizing units of work at the expense of more intangible factors. You see this in Agile, Kanban etc methods of work where personal development is completely subjugated to the needs of the project. Insofar as a guiding principle behind the work does exist, that too tends to be subsumed under 'The Project': 'We're excited about building the future of work!' In more than one company I've worked with, even drawing attention to an article like this would be seen as raising your head above the parapet. It's completely the wrong attitude. Until we start measuring employee performance in new ways and asking different questions of managers, we'll continue to see burnout being viewed as an 'acceptable cost'.

erkkie 10y ago
I agree with your general sentiment and have my share of seeing ridiculous ceremonies of current-workflow-fad-of-the-year being enforced on people, kanban is a great system for managing deliverables in an ad-hoc environment. It's a false premise (and unfortunately all too common, both self-inflicted by developers themselves and by managers) to think that tracking and managing work pipeline == maximizing output at the expense of the worker.
walkingolof 10y ago
>In a lot of places in tech, there seems to be a culture where companies are more concerned about maximizing units of work at the expense of more intangible factors. I agree, there is allot of focus on all sort of tooling to cram points etc out of the work force and the simple answer to that is that is the easy part, really easy part, everything is already there. The really hard part of building a company is making sure that everyone feel part of it and not just some assembly line drone.

visarga 10y ago

I came to the same conclusion based on an analogy. Humans learn behavior by reinforcement learning, just like AI agents. Reinforcement learning is maximizing rewards by picking the right actions, given the current situation and internal state. Now, humans have a number of inborn reward systems, such as connection (belonging, community, empathy), physical well being (food, sleep), play, autonomy, meaning (competence, efficiency), creativity. So the human reward is the sum of the individual "reward channels". When focused on solving a single problem, there is a tendency to optimize only for part of this multi-part reward function, to the detriment of others. This is the cause of burnout. It's basically suboptimal reward, when considering rewards in all their complexity. Here is a more complete inventory of basic needs (reward channels): https://www.cnvc.org/Training/needs-inventory https://www.cnvc.org/Training/needs-inventory

0xcde4c3db 10y ago

Has the concept of "unconscious needs" been scientifically characterized and validated? The term seems to be used with some frequency in the literature, but mostly mentioned in passing and not as a central component of the phenomenon being studied.

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sctb 10y ago

We updated the link from https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/08/160811171643.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/08/160811171643.h..., which points to a Eureka article which points to this.

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p4wnc6 10y ago

I wrote a blog entry about something similar -- but trying to take it back one level and understand why do certain managers go to the trouble of hiring people only to plug them into physical environments that are demonstrably toxic for human beings (not merely introverts v. extraverts, but for almost any human in general). Sadly, I think it's just age-old politics. You're hired for the political effects it has on your boss -- including looking like a l33t h4x0r in your violently-collaborative open plan office doing Agile. Kills productivity and morale, but managers & executives aren't compensated for actually producing anything, so it doesn't matter. And HR'll always spin some other story about turnover because the one thing they have to avoid at all costs is actually providing a healthy workplace. [0] < http://suitdummy.blogspot.com/2015/05/why-hire-underemployment-autonomy-and.html http://suitdummy.blogspot.com/2015/05/why-hire-underemployme... >

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.

T0T0R0 10y ago

It's kind of funny, but when you talk to a lot of fellow worker drones, who lack the kind of free will required to accurately describe their own motivations for holding down a job, most will continuously describe burnout as being at fault and getting fired during a moment when they failed the company. Like: Oh boo hoo, I suffered burnout this one time because I was so incompetant. Good on my boss for firing me when I deserved it! Most worker drones with attitudes like this usually cannot or will not describe their core motivations for maintaining employment (power motives, according to the article) as "needing to pay rent" or something similarly compulsory. Maybe it's just too awful too think in such bleak terms. But this article points to an interesting symmetry of blame: the workers beats themselves up, and the employers express absurd, overbearing demands, or some combination of the two. Worst case scenarios being the blind leading the blind. You rarely see articles that provide a cold look at employer/employee relationships, and explore scenarios where emotional investment is optional on both sides of the table.

flanbiscuit 10y ago

Can someone re-word the abstract in layman's terms? I had to google what "motivational incongruence" was. My partial interpretation attempt: Employees who did not feel like they fit into the culture of the workplace (affiliation motive) led to high job burnout. And people who didn't satisfy their need to have an impact on others, and gain respect and reputation (power motive), predicted increased physical symptoms.

ycombinatorMan 10y ago

I think its quite obvious that burnout comes from overdoing youreself, hardly an unconscious feeling.

treehau5_ 10y ago

Yeah I have expereined this very thing at work right now, but the great thing about being a human is you can change and adapt at the face of adversity. In my case it was either get fired/quit spend a month or two getting a new job and hear it from my wife or suck it up and be the person myorganization wants me to be -- it wasn't that hard at the end of the day because I get paid handsomly, get to sit in an air conditioned room with a comfortable chair (they even got a standing desk for me)great benefits, get to put food on the table, have clean water to drink, you know.. something 90% of the rest of the world will never get to experience. My answer to these situations is to humble yourself. Now of course I am not saying the other option is "wrong" especially if it is just as easy for you to find an accommodating workplace but at the end of the day you are paid to do a job, not have all your feelings babysitted. If you find your workplace is stressing you out, go talk to a therapist (or close friend who understands you, spouse, etc) and see if you can identify ways to overcome it. If not, then maybe consider the switch. I know this will get downvoted here because it sounds very "conservative pull up your bootstraps"-esque

JoeAltmaier 10y ago
My old minister used to say "We can have all the morals we can afford". So if quitting isn't an immediate option, good advice to suck it up. In fact just knowing that it will end (eventually) can make it bearable.
joyeuse6701 10y ago
Tolerance is largely relative I think. You could have a crank that spits out pennies so long as you crank it. Invariably we will tire of turning the crank because it's monotonous uninspiring unfulfilling work. The argument could be made that someone somewhere does not have the opportunity to so easily spin a crank for money so we ought to be grateful, but the mind's adaptability is a double edged sword. You exalt the mind for it's adaptability, but it's the very same adaptability that accustoms us to our environment, and leads us to be ungrateful for the conditions we live in.
- JackFr 10y ago
  Inspiring fulfilling work is a luxury not everyone can afford, and it is a conceit of the modern world that meaning and fulfillment in your life should come from your employment.

Xcelerate 10y ago

I've never understood why companies don't have a mix of environments so that each person can choose what works best for them. Allow options for an open floor plan area, a closed floor plan area, and remote work. My PhD advisor didn't care if I worked in my office, from home, or from the top of a volcano as long as I got the research done that he wanted each week (turns out I tend to work best in coffee shops).

HerpDerpLerp 10y ago
Money and control (or the perception of control)

DHMO 10y ago

1. I know it is tough collecting data, but a sample size of 97? It seems like there are a number of larger organizations that would be interested in participating in such a study if kept anonymous, and I really start to wonder about conclusions based on such small sample sizes, especially if it was only done at a single company or in a single geographic region. Culture between companies and between geographic regions can be really different. For example, if you performed this study in Mumbai in a company where all of those involved in the study were die-hard workers that didn't believe in burnout, that would have seriously skewed the results and they still might have looked good statistically. 2. While it's evident to many that have been working several years or more that people tend to get promoted even when they'd be happier in lower non-managerial positions, and that promotion can end in unhappiness or burnout, what wasn't mentioned in the study is whether you really want power-hungry people in management positions just because it would be a better fit for their motivations. I had some piss-poor managers that loved power and for them it was a good personality fit. It might be better in many situations to have someone that doesn't want the power, is knowledgeable of the job of those they are managing, is well-respected, and is a great leader to lead for some years and burnout or leave than it would be to have a power-hungry imbecile with no respect from their team leading for many years because they are a good personality fit. That said, I think that if you can find someone that is both a good personality fit and a great fit as a leader of the team, then that's better than promoting someone that will burnout, but only as long as it is just information used for decision between candidates and not a determining factor.

evolve2k 10y ago

"Individual needs and environment supplies were assessed in an online survey of full time employees (n = 97), using a picture story exercise measuring implicit motives and a scale listing affiliation and power related job characteristics" Is 97 respondents to an online survey enough to be statistically significant?