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Perhaps the reason most economic approaches fail to predict this kind of behaviour is because they forget that money by itself is not a motivator—it’s only ever
by zacharyvoase 16y ago
Perhaps the reason most economic approaches fail to predict this kind of behaviour is because they forget that money by itself is not a motivator—it’s only ever a means to an end for all who use it.
Money gives you the freedom to make choices and spend time doing other things—the autonomy and mastery that Dan Pink was talking about. However, earning more money but being stuck in the same job renders this increase in salary effectively useless, because you don’t stand to gain any satisfaction simply by having the money.
- asdflkj 16y agoIt would be interesting to see if in the companies that have a "culture of quitting", money is an additional motivator. $20k worth of crap isn't that exciting, but a year's runway is. This might shed light on whether this is about a mistaken identification of money with value, or if people value the present that much more than the future. The latter would be more profound. Unfortunately, those companies either already basically pay enough (e.g. Google), or they're startups where giving employees more money than necessary is almost certainly the wrong thing to do.
- zacharyvoase 16y agoIt’s worth mentioning that the underlying concept is Marginal Utility: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marginal_utility http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marginal_utility