10 ms·

76% of high-performance employees say trade mastery, not money, most important

132 points by wbelk 10y ago

jarjoura 10y ago
Could it be because they're already at the highest earning brackets?
danielamitay 10y ago
In a simplistic sense, the "esteem" and "self-actualization" levels of Maslow's hierarchy of needs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs
- bhaak 10y ago
  Or in the even more simplistic Herzberg's dual-factor theory: Money is just a hygiene factor. If you have not enough, it will negatively impact job satisfaction and motivation. OTOH if you have enough, it doesn't raise job satisfaction or motivation.
blahman2 10y ago
Meanwhile their bosses retire in their thirties and do whatever they want. Funny people
rdm 10y ago
That survey feels like the sort of thing I've filled out to get a temporary free trade publication subscription. But what's interesting to me is that my current situation has enough twists to it that I literally could validly answer with several different conflicting choices on a number of those questions. So... I'm not going to fill that out - doing so would induce too much stress against my internal need to be accurate in my answers.
zelos 10y ago
OK, try paying below market rate and see how long your best engineers hang around then.
- robodale 10y ago
  Company I used to work for did this. They held raises/bonuses down to the point we all knew we were underpaid. Entire software engineering team turned over in 18 months. They hired 1-2 year experienced developers replacing all of us who had 8-12 years experience at the company. Take a guess at how that department is doing now.
- HarryHirsch 10y ago
  At Berkeley they are doing exactly that. If you've ever seen the movie "At Berkeley" there's a scene where the university president discusses that very issue, the University of California system cannot hope to match the salaries offered by the private universities. It would be instructive to go over the list of who stays and who decamps to Stanford.
  - jhpankow 10y ago
    Wow if people go to Stanford for more money I can't imagine how low Berkeley pays.
simonsarris 10y ago
What a weird setup for a false dichotomy. > My latest data shows that 76% of HPEs are not primarily motivated by money. But why? When you come across a peculiar result, "But why?" shouldn't be the first question you ask. Maybe more like "What have I missed? What am I not accounting for? What am I conflating or grouping together? What assumptions did I make, and did I allow my respondents to make any implicit assumptions?" Did the author ask what the cutoff is for money? Is it non-zero? Is he suggesting that his data shows that 76% of HPEs would rather be starving artists with great recognition? Or is there an implied "gobs of money" that's already on the table? I'm guessing the latter. There is no acknowledgement that "not motivated by money" and "not motivated by more money" are two very different things. The way he phrased the question, there's no way to parse out what's implied. He simply asked: > Are you motivated more by mastery of skill/craft, or motivated more by earning money? Lots of people may answer one or the other for very disparate reasons. > The mysteries are hard to explain. Or maybe the author crafted the same poor questions that usually fill these surveys. The data he gathered is probably useless. There are no profound mysteries here. Just the average tea leaves reading. > an HPE’s connection to their trade resembles more a mysterious spiritual illumination and growing devotion than it does an evolution of practical decisions aimed in a concise direction. Tea leaves.
- kough 10y ago
  > There is no acknowledgement that "not motivated by money" and "not motivated by more money" are two very different things. Exactly what I came here to comment. Once you're guaranteed to make no less than $X00,000/year, of course you'd start thinking about the work itself.
- walshemj 10y ago
  And when you ask this sort of question people will lie about how important the say money is.
  - beefield 10y ago
    My understanding is there is actual behavioral research on some of these kind of claims. An entertaining video (which does note that money is not completely irrelevant. After certain point it is just not that important motivating factor) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc
googletazer 10y ago
Don't kid yourself, - its because monetary reward is already implied.
fred_is_fred 10y ago
Once you already have all the money you need it turns out not to matter as much anymore. Not surprising at all.
gbrown_ 10y ago
It's not explicitly stated but reading this I get the feeling the idea of "trade mastery" is centered around the individual when reading this post. Personally the most significant developments in my career and skills have been when working with others who are better than me. For me that means finding a workplace with skilled individuals who are capable problem solvers in their own regard (their own specialty and methods - with overlap of course). Second to that, and only by a very slim margin is that in such a workplace I would want be working on an interesting product/ service. So prefacing this with the fact I am currently on a good salary. Would I take a pay cut to work in somewhere where I am more closely surrounded by superlative talent? Fuck yes I would.
madengr 10y ago
Money isn't everything, but it sucks being poor. The older I get, I'm finding money is more important. Between the costs of college savings, retirement savings, medical savings, you'd better be paying your high performance employees well. They may like their work (like me), but money still talks. Regarding the medical savings it's a race to the bottom for employer provided benefits. I no longer have dental insurance at a Fortune 50 company. Medical insurance has increased 3x and now it's essentially a catastrophic plan with $10k max OOP. Far cry from 10 years ago. I put $600/month into HSA for a family of 4. Been doing this for several years and still can't save up the $10k. The damn OOP is now higher than the max HSA contribution. Whenever I do get a raise, it just goes into another expense for some other benefit that has been cut. $17k/yr 401k max * 2 people = $34k $12k/yr edu savings * 2 kids = $24k $7.2k/yr HSA contribution (that's a fucking car payment). $26k/yr mortgage It all adds up.
- BatFastard 10y ago
  I can appreciate what you are saying, esp with health care. However as I grow older I find money matters less to me (and not because I have a lot of it), I would just much rather ENJOY my craft. Crazy deadlines, horrible tech debt, bad management, are all things I have been thru and do not wish to repeat. "Life's too short to be in a hurry" - batFastard
  - a3n 10y ago
    I'm sort of experiencing that now, and not in a good way. I'm out of work ATM, and so when I work on something technical, I work on it because I want to and when I want to. I have found surprising pleasure in having the luxury of stopping progress at an interesting point, and exploring what's around what I'm working on, because I have the time and I'm not required to produce a certain thing by a certain date. For example, yesterday I followed my nose on control characters, the history of which are absolutely not important for or relevant to what I'm working on. Even though I'm old enough to know, I didn't know that the null character was used as a spinning no-op to give electro-mechanical teletypes time to return to the home side. Right there in 'man ascii', the very first character has a history, that goes back to the 1870s (Baudot), or even the 1600s if you like Bacon. You'll have to follow your own nose to get past this link to Bacon. It's not that far. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Null_character https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Null_character That isn't directly craft-building, but it does contribute to an appreciation for my craft. Disclosure: I am not an HPE.
deleted 10y ago
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alphonsegaston 10y ago
The thing that's so weird about a Late Capitalist society like the U.S. is the amount of time spent ritualizing inequality into a quasi-religious phenomena. The lower classes have no desire for wealth, but instead an ascetic mastery of whatever lot the divine order of the market has handed them. Meanwhile, our gilded class of saints must be free and untroubled by worldly concerns(mostly taxes), so they can harness their benevolent energies towards curing the ills of we small mortals. I guess it makes sense given our history of religious nuttery, but I never expected to live in such a "mythical" world.
- Roboprog 10y ago
  Watching TED Talks is like this. Sometimes they are interesting, but sometimes, sickeningly self congratulatory.
- dmix 10y ago
  Why would high performing employees with office jobs be "lower class"? As others mentioned once you hit a certain income threshold and job security, then you can start prioritizing the parts of the job you enjoy. This is who the article is talking about. This means keeping a $60k job instead of sacrificing your happiness for $90-100k. That's hardly quasi-religious phenomena. It's a luxury of skilled people living in a western society. If anything it's the result of the push back against capitalism, such as the type of comment you just made. We're all told since we're kids to do what we love. And to since the late 1980s this anti-consumerism Fight Club-style mantra has been pushed hard to the point it's basically mainstream now, which is why marketing is so hard these days, even kids see through ads and demand authenticity. The primary issue of inequality is largely the result of the fact that ~90% of recent job growth since the 2008 recession has been temporary/contract jobs, with little job security. These aren't the type of people who are valuing 'mastery' over money'. Middle class job growth is largely dead. And big incumbents dominate markets and global economic systems push wealth to a few. Entrepreneurship has also declined recently. There's plenty of reasons. I don't suspect it's some cultural, original sin, type of thing that we should all feel guilty about.
  - alphonsegaston 10y ago
ng12 10y ago
People have written books about this stuff (the field is called Organizational Behavior) but in classic Sillicon Valley fashion we have to reinvent the wheel. Higher pay will rarely attract employees, but it will prevent them from leaving. Low pay will increase the odds that other reasons (lack of motivation, work, environment) will cause an employee to leave.
deleted 10y ago
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mikeash 10y ago
"My latest survey data shows that 76% of high-performance employees say trade mastery is more important than money when considering career decisions." "My latest data shows that 76% of HPEs are not primarily motivated by money." It seems unwise to just assume, without even saying so, that what people say motivates them is what really motivates them. People are not actually very good at understanding their own thinking, and there are countless examples of people (sincerely!) stating that their motivations are X while their actions reveal it's really Y.
QuantumGravy 10y ago
Trade mastery also equates to future money on a scale which may render quibbling over an extra ten grand of current compensation meaningless. Failing that, it at least helps secure future employment, which still translates to money.
inputcoffee 10y ago
Okay, now ask the highest-paid employees what is most important to them. Compare.
badosu 10y ago
The headline can be true, if you have financial guarantees to maintain a healthy lifestyle and also connections that ensure your trade mastery is actually employed. If not, your psychological condition may deteriorate for the first case and your trade mastery may not have the perceived value in the second. As always, it's a little bit more complicated.
elastic_church 10y ago
ha yeah none of them are to do the same job in Poland for 1/5th the wages. its like the question itself means something else to most people, in order for them to say "no" to it, but every onlooker could see a clear relationship to money.
archeantus 10y ago
This is what matters to my job satisfaction: 1. Fully remote 2. Great pay 3. Developing for a platform I am passionate about (iOS) I am fortunate enough to have all three of these things right now, but anytime I've considered making a job change, being fully remote is the requirement that continues to surface as the most important thing to me (and my wife :).
Stasis5001 10y ago
This study is suspect. First, using self-identification as high-performance is already troublesome. Second, the author never defines what an HPE is, and the most concrete specification is from this article they backlink to: >For example, in a software or tech company they would be: > Software Engineers > Data Scientists > Visual Designers > Structural & 3-D Prototype Designers > Narrative Developers This certainly doesn't agree with what almost anybody else uses to define high-performance employees. Third, the question they use to resolve this is from their survey: >Are you motivated more by mastery of skill/craft, or motivated more by earning money? > Mastery of skill or craft > Money > Other I don't think we can draw any conclusion from the fact that 76% of the people who answered this public google form chose 'mastery'.
pjungwir 10y ago
> 76% of HPEs are not primarily motivated by money. "Primarily" is a pretty slippery word here. So they are motivated by money, but motivated more by mastery? In that case, how much more? Is it close? Also, money has diminishing marginal utility. The first $50k of your salary is worth more than the next $50k, and so on. So how much are these people already compensated? If they are the top performers, chances are they are already the top earners too. How much do you have to earn before marginal mastery is worth more than marginal money? Finally, how do you make this actionable when hiring? If you offer me more salary, I fully trust I will receive it. If you promise me greater mastery (or autonomy, challenge, better peers, making-the-world-a-better-place, etc), I will tell myself that everyone says that. Anyway, I've learned that good work is correlated with good salary, so seeking high compensation is a trustworthy proxy for seeking better mastery. As an employer, how would you answer that? Of course there is also the question, To make his comparison, how is motivation even quantified and measured? The truth is his whole survey is suspect, but it's interesting nonetheless to see what a willing suspension of disbelief leads to.
test6554 10y ago
The marginal benefit of money decreases the more money you earn. Each extra dollar earned is less valuable to you than the previous dollar earned. Eventually the costs of earning that dollar in time, stress, etc. overpower the benefits of the dollar itself.
ianbicking 10y ago
I thought the latter part of the article did a good job of getting out of standard incentive-thinking. Why is someone good at doing something? Maybe they've responded to incentives to develop themselves to satisfy market desires. But it seems more likely that the person has themselves been part of some positive feedback cycle of self-development. You can call that feedback cycle "passion" or "a love of the craft" or "flow" or "talent" or a bunch of things – and there probably are many distinct reasons to enter into that cycle, they aren't just words for the same thing – but in the end there was self-motivation and a personal desire for improvement. Why would that stop? If you got to be good through that motivation, wouldn't you want to keep satisfying it?
qntmfred 10y ago
Reminds me of the video/book from Daniel Pink on Drive https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc
valuearb 10y ago
Another angle to this beyond the data being useless because of how it was collected. High performance workers likely recognize that skills get them paid, so the opportunity to get better skills should always come before money, if you want to earn the most money. Example: A young engineer is offered a job at MSFT at $100k per year being a cog on a team doing maintenance on an existing product. Or they can go to a startup for $60k a year doing cutting edge development of an innovative new product. Clearly the second opportunity likely has the best career benefits, and probably the highest career earnings.
- st3v3r 10y ago
  Does it? That person is going to have the anchor of that 60k follow them around. When they move on from the startup, most likely their new company is going to base the offer around that 60k. Whereas the other one is going to have their raises and offers based around the 100k. Plus, there's something to be said for actually being able to afford a decent place to live, and to be able to put some money away for savings and investment. $60k in SF isn't going to let you do that. $100k might.
  - sdflkd 10y ago
    > Does it? That person is going to have the anchor of that 60k follow them around. When they move on from the startup, most likely their new company is going to base the offer around that 60k. Whereas the other one is going to have their raises and offers based around the 100k. Never say what you're already earning and try to not give a number first.
    - st3v3r 10y ago
      People say that, but it doesn't always work that way. I've had potential employers say they won't proceed without that number, and that they would verify it. I, fortunately, was in a position to tell them to go pound sand, but I recognize that many may not be.
      - 10y ago
austincheney 10y ago
I have asked the wife on several occasions if I could get out of software and take a job doing something else for less money. I am tired of software... at least in the corporate space. Don't get me wrong I love writing software.... but the general incompetence of corporate software development has killed my spirit. I am a web guy whose primary job is at a major dot com and here are the problems as I see software generally. Good web developers are hard to hire. They tend to be equally in demand compared to their Java counter-parts in the corporate space, but there are something like 11x more Java positions. The reason is because Java developers are easier to find. This creates several problems. Since good web developers are hard to hire your choices are to retask a Java developer without training or hire a web developer that isn't good. The results are similar: cutting corners until you are drowning in tech debt and then blaming someone/something else. Higher salaries won't solve this problem because it takes time and practice to get good at anything, but demand for skills in the workplace are immediate. Contrarily, higher salaries without solving for the missing skills (the primary cause of the problem) just encourage under-qualified talent to more vigorously defend or fight to attain positions they are not entitled to hold. The phenomenon is so incredibly common it has the name imposter syndrome. The primary difference between a good developer and a bench warmer is confidence. A good developer is going to care far less for playing politics and defensiveness. If it doesn't work out for a good developer they can go get an equally sucky job somewhere else and probably make more money, so the motivation for politics is largely lost. Less good developers do not have such confidence that they can quickly acquire another position elsewhere or are holding their current positions for reasons not directly related to their craft, such as seniority entitlements. As the previous paragraph eludes to the real difference between good developers and everybody else is motivation. When you are primarily motivated to merely retain your employment you will perceive your place in that environment far differently. These guys will do everything possible to not rock the boat if job stability is everything. It also means that technical competencies at the job should normalize into some happy medium so that you aren't exposed for being an imposter. The reason why the incompetence is so pervasive is because demand is crazy high and without regulation of any kind. In almost every other professional career there is regulation, typically licensing. You cannot be a doctor, lawyer, real estate agent, engineer, pilot, and so forth without a license. You can be a politician though. After doing this for several years in the corporate world I am really tired of the stupid games people play. Since I have two simultaneous careers in separate unrelated industries I can really see the dysfunction that many people happily tolerate every day. I am ready to do something else like become a teacher or make my secondary career my primary even though this means less pay.
st3v3r 10y ago
Maybe, but how many of those high-performance employees are already making buttloads of money? How many of them are just scraping by around the poverty line? It's pretty easy to say money isn't important when you already have it.
psyc 10y ago
Trade mastery really does feel wonderful. But its important to remember that in the context of employment, it doesn't matter at all unless you're allowed to practice it. Every team I've been on for the past 15 years has systematically put figurative ball-and-chains on every developer, regardless of seniority. It's spun as 'engineering discipline' but that's typically a joke, and really the management is just nervous about commits in general. Without autonomy, mastery is just a private thing you have, to use on personal time.
maverick_iceman 10y ago
Who would want to come across as a greedy monster instead of someone who loves their work?
Mitchhhs 10y ago
In a similar vein, this post on worker satisfaction found that these 8 metrics can predict 70% of the variance in overall satisfaction at work. Quality of coworkers was by far the highest predictor. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13997858 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13997858
bougiefever 10y ago
The question on the survey was an either/or question. Do people pick mastery over money when faced with this question because they don't want to admit that money matters more? I picked mastery because I've already been in what I considered a high-paying dead-end job. I was miserable, but making money still matters a lot to me. I would (already have) picked a lower-paying job that was more rewarding in other ways. Never regretted it.
kelvin0 10y ago
Maybe it's because most high-performers are mostly well paid (and sought after). Assuming this, they are no longer chasing the 'money' since they already get it as a side-effect of they add to the projects they are part of.
sauronlord 10y ago
Look at what people do, not what they are saying. They are motivated by all the great things money provides (nice family life, nice house, travel, health care) That 78% of respondents are brained washed to repeat "do it for the passion/masterery/unicorns". Show me one of these 78%-ers who will not work like crazy for a million dollars in a single year or two
robertlagrant 10y ago
All my other comments have been said, apart from: what the heck did the bit about karma have to do with anything? If it'd said "Jesus is the reason you're born to your parents" rather than karma, I'm pretty sure that would've rightly attracted some anti-proselytizing comments. Karma or "the universe" aren't any less religious ideas - are we just trained to be offended by some things and not others?

132 points by wbelk 10y ago

Could it be because they're already at the highest earning brackets?

In a simplistic sense, the "esteem" and "self-actualization" levels of Maslow's hierarchy of needs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs

bhaak 10y ago
Or in the even more simplistic Herzberg's dual-factor theory: Money is just a hygiene factor. If you have not enough, it will negatively impact job satisfaction and motivation. OTOH if you have enough, it doesn't raise job satisfaction or motivation.

blahman2 10y ago

Meanwhile their bosses retire in their thirties and do whatever they want. Funny people

rdm 10y ago

That survey feels like the sort of thing I've filled out to get a temporary free trade publication subscription. But what's interesting to me is that my current situation has enough twists to it that I literally could validly answer with several different conflicting choices on a number of those questions. So... I'm not going to fill that out - doing so would induce too much stress against my internal need to be accurate in my answers.

zelos 10y ago

OK, try paying below market rate and see how long your best engineers hang around then.

robodale 10y ago
Company I used to work for did this. They held raises/bonuses down to the point we all knew we were underpaid. Entire software engineering team turned over in 18 months. They hired 1-2 year experienced developers replacing all of us who had 8-12 years experience at the company. Take a guess at how that department is doing now.
HarryHirsch 10y ago
At Berkeley they are doing exactly that. If you've ever seen the movie "At Berkeley" there's a scene where the university president discusses that very issue, the University of California system cannot hope to match the salaries offered by the private universities. It would be instructive to go over the list of who stays and who decamps to Stanford.
- jhpankow 10y ago
  Wow if people go to Stanford for more money I can't imagine how low Berkeley pays.

simonsarris 10y ago

What a weird setup for a false dichotomy. > My latest data shows that 76% of HPEs are not primarily motivated by money. But why? When you come across a peculiar result, "But why?" shouldn't be the first question you ask. Maybe more like "What have I missed? What am I not accounting for? What am I conflating or grouping together? What assumptions did I make, and did I allow my respondents to make any implicit assumptions?" Did the author ask what the cutoff is for money? Is it non-zero? Is he suggesting that his data shows that 76% of HPEs would rather be starving artists with great recognition? Or is there an implied "gobs of money" that's already on the table? I'm guessing the latter. There is no acknowledgement that "not motivated by money" and "not motivated by more money" are two very different things. The way he phrased the question, there's no way to parse out what's implied. He simply asked: > Are you motivated more by mastery of skill/craft, or motivated more by earning money? Lots of people may answer one or the other for very disparate reasons. > The mysteries are hard to explain. Or maybe the author crafted the same poor questions that usually fill these surveys. The data he gathered is probably useless. There are no profound mysteries here. Just the average tea leaves reading. > an HPE’s connection to their trade resembles more a mysterious spiritual illumination and growing devotion than it does an evolution of practical decisions aimed in a concise direction. Tea leaves.

kough 10y ago
> There is no acknowledgement that "not motivated by money" and "not motivated by more money" are two very different things. Exactly what I came here to comment. Once you're guaranteed to make no less than $X00,000/year, of course you'd start thinking about the work itself.
walshemj 10y ago
And when you ask this sort of question people will lie about how important the say money is.
- beefield 10y ago
  My understanding is there is actual behavioral research on some of these kind of claims. An entertaining video (which does note that money is not completely irrelevant. After certain point it is just not that important motivating factor) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc

googletazer 10y ago

Don't kid yourself, - its because monetary reward is already implied.

fred_is_fred 10y ago

Once you already have all the money you need it turns out not to matter as much anymore. Not surprising at all.

gbrown_ 10y ago

It's not explicitly stated but reading this I get the feeling the idea of "trade mastery" is centered around the individual when reading this post. Personally the most significant developments in my career and skills have been when working with others who are better than me. For me that means finding a workplace with skilled individuals who are capable problem solvers in their own regard (their own specialty and methods - with overlap of course). Second to that, and only by a very slim margin is that in such a workplace I would want be working on an interesting product/ service. So prefacing this with the fact I am currently on a good salary. Would I take a pay cut to work in somewhere where I am more closely surrounded by superlative talent? Fuck yes I would.

madengr 10y ago

Money isn't everything, but it sucks being poor. The older I get, I'm finding money is more important. Between the costs of college savings, retirement savings, medical savings, you'd better be paying your high performance employees well. They may like their work (like me), but money still talks. Regarding the medical savings it's a race to the bottom for employer provided benefits. I no longer have dental insurance at a Fortune 50 company. Medical insurance has increased 3x and now it's essentially a catastrophic plan with $10k max OOP. Far cry from 10 years ago. I put $600/month into HSA for a family of 4. Been doing this for several years and still can't save up the $10k. The damn OOP is now higher than the max HSA contribution. Whenever I do get a raise, it just goes into another expense for some other benefit that has been cut. $17k/yr 401k max * 2 people = $34k $12k/yr edu savings * 2 kids = $24k $7.2k/yr HSA contribution (that's a fucking car payment). $26k/yr mortgage It all adds up.

BatFastard 10y ago
I can appreciate what you are saying, esp with health care. However as I grow older I find money matters less to me (and not because I have a lot of it), I would just much rather ENJOY my craft. Crazy deadlines, horrible tech debt, bad management, are all things I have been thru and do not wish to repeat. "Life's too short to be in a hurry" - batFastard
- a3n 10y ago
  I'm sort of experiencing that now, and not in a good way. I'm out of work ATM, and so when I work on something technical, I work on it because I want to and when I want to. I have found surprising pleasure in having the luxury of stopping progress at an interesting point, and exploring what's around what I'm working on, because I have the time and I'm not required to produce a certain thing by a certain date. For example, yesterday I followed my nose on control characters, the history of which are absolutely not important for or relevant to what I'm working on. Even though I'm old enough to know, I didn't know that the null character was used as a spinning no-op to give electro-mechanical teletypes time to return to the home side. Right there in 'man ascii', the very first character has a history, that goes back to the 1870s (Baudot), or even the 1600s if you like Bacon. You'll have to follow your own nose to get past this link to Bacon. It's not that far. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Null_character https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Null_character That isn't directly craft-building, but it does contribute to an appreciation for my craft. Disclosure: I am not an HPE.

deleted 10y ago

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alphonsegaston 10y ago

The thing that's so weird about a Late Capitalist society like the U.S. is the amount of time spent ritualizing inequality into a quasi-religious phenomena. The lower classes have no desire for wealth, but instead an ascetic mastery of whatever lot the divine order of the market has handed them. Meanwhile, our gilded class of saints must be free and untroubled by worldly concerns(mostly taxes), so they can harness their benevolent energies towards curing the ills of we small mortals. I guess it makes sense given our history of religious nuttery, but I never expected to live in such a "mythical" world.

Roboprog 10y ago
Watching TED Talks is like this. Sometimes they are interesting, but sometimes, sickeningly self congratulatory.
dmix 10y ago
Why would high performing employees with office jobs be "lower class"? As others mentioned once you hit a certain income threshold and job security, then you can start prioritizing the parts of the job you enjoy. This is who the article is talking about. This means keeping a $60k job instead of sacrificing your happiness for $90-100k. That's hardly quasi-religious phenomena. It's a luxury of skilled people living in a western society. If anything it's the result of the push back against capitalism, such as the type of comment you just made. We're all told since we're kids to do what we love. And to since the late 1980s this anti-consumerism Fight Club-style mantra has been pushed hard to the point it's basically mainstream now, which is why marketing is so hard these days, even kids see through ads and demand authenticity. The primary issue of inequality is largely the result of the fact that ~90% of recent job growth since the 2008 recession has been temporary/contract jobs, with little job security. These aren't the type of people who are valuing 'mastery' over money'. Middle class job growth is largely dead. And big incumbents dominate markets and global economic systems push wealth to a few. Entrepreneurship has also declined recently. There's plenty of reasons. I don't suspect it's some cultural, original sin, type of thing that we should all feel guilty about.
- alphonsegaston 10y ago

ng12 10y ago

People have written books about this stuff (the field is called Organizational Behavior) but in classic Sillicon Valley fashion we have to reinvent the wheel. Higher pay will rarely attract employees, but it will prevent them from leaving. Low pay will increase the odds that other reasons (lack of motivation, work, environment) will cause an employee to leave.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

mikeash 10y ago

"My latest survey data shows that 76% of high-performance employees say trade mastery is more important than money when considering career decisions." "My latest data shows that 76% of HPEs are not primarily motivated by money." It seems unwise to just assume, without even saying so, that what people say motivates them is what really motivates them. People are not actually very good at understanding their own thinking, and there are countless examples of people (sincerely!) stating that their motivations are X while their actions reveal it's really Y.

QuantumGravy 10y ago

Trade mastery also equates to future money on a scale which may render quibbling over an extra ten grand of current compensation meaningless. Failing that, it at least helps secure future employment, which still translates to money.

inputcoffee 10y ago

Okay, now ask the highest-paid employees what is most important to them. Compare.

badosu 10y ago

The headline can be true, if you have financial guarantees to maintain a healthy lifestyle and also connections that ensure your trade mastery is actually employed. If not, your psychological condition may deteriorate for the first case and your trade mastery may not have the perceived value in the second. As always, it's a little bit more complicated.

elastic_church 10y ago

ha yeah none of them are to do the same job in Poland for 1/5th the wages. its like the question itself means something else to most people, in order for them to say "no" to it, but every onlooker could see a clear relationship to money.

archeantus 10y ago

This is what matters to my job satisfaction: 1. Fully remote 2. Great pay 3. Developing for a platform I am passionate about (iOS) I am fortunate enough to have all three of these things right now, but anytime I've considered making a job change, being fully remote is the requirement that continues to surface as the most important thing to me (and my wife :).

Stasis5001 10y ago

This study is suspect. First, using self-identification as high-performance is already troublesome. Second, the author never defines what an HPE is, and the most concrete specification is from this article they backlink to: >For example, in a software or tech company they would be: > Software Engineers > Data Scientists > Visual Designers > Structural & 3-D Prototype Designers > Narrative Developers This certainly doesn't agree with what almost anybody else uses to define high-performance employees. Third, the question they use to resolve this is from their survey: >Are you motivated more by mastery of skill/craft, or motivated more by earning money? > Mastery of skill or craft > Money > Other I don't think we can draw any conclusion from the fact that 76% of the people who answered this public google form chose 'mastery'.

pjungwir 10y ago

> 76% of HPEs are not primarily motivated by money. "Primarily" is a pretty slippery word here. So they are motivated by money, but motivated more by mastery? In that case, how much more? Is it close? Also, money has diminishing marginal utility. The first $50k of your salary is worth more than the next $50k, and so on. So how much are these people already compensated? If they are the top performers, chances are they are already the top earners too. How much do you have to earn before marginal mastery is worth more than marginal money? Finally, how do you make this actionable when hiring? If you offer me more salary, I fully trust I will receive it. If you promise me greater mastery (or autonomy, challenge, better peers, making-the-world-a-better-place, etc), I will tell myself that everyone says that. Anyway, I've learned that good work is correlated with good salary, so seeking high compensation is a trustworthy proxy for seeking better mastery. As an employer, how would you answer that? Of course there is also the question, To make his comparison, how is motivation even quantified and measured? The truth is his whole survey is suspect, but it's interesting nonetheless to see what a willing suspension of disbelief leads to.

test6554 10y ago

The marginal benefit of money decreases the more money you earn. Each extra dollar earned is less valuable to you than the previous dollar earned. Eventually the costs of earning that dollar in time, stress, etc. overpower the benefits of the dollar itself.

ianbicking 10y ago

I thought the latter part of the article did a good job of getting out of standard incentive-thinking. Why is someone good at doing something? Maybe they've responded to incentives to develop themselves to satisfy market desires. But it seems more likely that the person has themselves been part of some positive feedback cycle of self-development. You can call that feedback cycle "passion" or "a love of the craft" or "flow" or "talent" or a bunch of things – and there probably are many distinct reasons to enter into that cycle, they aren't just words for the same thing – but in the end there was self-motivation and a personal desire for improvement. Why would that stop? If you got to be good through that motivation, wouldn't you want to keep satisfying it?

qntmfred 10y ago

Reminds me of the video/book from Daniel Pink on Drive https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc

valuearb 10y ago

Another angle to this beyond the data being useless because of how it was collected. High performance workers likely recognize that skills get them paid, so the opportunity to get better skills should always come before money, if you want to earn the most money. Example: A young engineer is offered a job at MSFT at $100k per year being a cog on a team doing maintenance on an existing product. Or they can go to a startup for $60k a year doing cutting edge development of an innovative new product. Clearly the second opportunity likely has the best career benefits, and probably the highest career earnings.

st3v3r 10y ago
Does it? That person is going to have the anchor of that 60k follow them around. When they move on from the startup, most likely their new company is going to base the offer around that 60k. Whereas the other one is going to have their raises and offers based around the 100k. Plus, there's something to be said for actually being able to afford a decent place to live, and to be able to put some money away for savings and investment. $60k in SF isn't going to let you do that. $100k might.
- sdflkd 10y ago
  > Does it? That person is going to have the anchor of that 60k follow them around. When they move on from the startup, most likely their new company is going to base the offer around that 60k. Whereas the other one is going to have their raises and offers based around the 100k. Never say what you're already earning and try to not give a number first.
  - st3v3r 10y ago
    People say that, but it doesn't always work that way. I've had potential employers say they won't proceed without that number, and that they would verify it. I, fortunately, was in a position to tell them to go pound sand, but I recognize that many may not be.
    - 10y ago

austincheney 10y ago

I have asked the wife on several occasions if I could get out of software and take a job doing something else for less money. I am tired of software... at least in the corporate space. Don't get me wrong I love writing software.... but the general incompetence of corporate software development has killed my spirit. I am a web guy whose primary job is at a major dot com and here are the problems as I see software generally. Good web developers are hard to hire. They tend to be equally in demand compared to their Java counter-parts in the corporate space, but there are something like 11x more Java positions. The reason is because Java developers are easier to find. This creates several problems. Since good web developers are hard to hire your choices are to retask a Java developer without training or hire a web developer that isn't good. The results are similar: cutting corners until you are drowning in tech debt and then blaming someone/something else. Higher salaries won't solve this problem because it takes time and practice to get good at anything, but demand for skills in the workplace are immediate. Contrarily, higher salaries without solving for the missing skills (the primary cause of the problem) just encourage under-qualified talent to more vigorously defend or fight to attain positions they are not entitled to hold. The phenomenon is so incredibly common it has the name imposter syndrome. The primary difference between a good developer and a bench warmer is confidence. A good developer is going to care far less for playing politics and defensiveness. If it doesn't work out for a good developer they can go get an equally sucky job somewhere else and probably make more money, so the motivation for politics is largely lost. Less good developers do not have such confidence that they can quickly acquire another position elsewhere or are holding their current positions for reasons not directly related to their craft, such as seniority entitlements. As the previous paragraph eludes to the real difference between good developers and everybody else is motivation. When you are primarily motivated to merely retain your employment you will perceive your place in that environment far differently. These guys will do everything possible to not rock the boat if job stability is everything. It also means that technical competencies at the job should normalize into some happy medium so that you aren't exposed for being an imposter. The reason why the incompetence is so pervasive is because demand is crazy high and without regulation of any kind. In almost every other professional career there is regulation, typically licensing. You cannot be a doctor, lawyer, real estate agent, engineer, pilot, and so forth without a license. You can be a politician though. After doing this for several years in the corporate world I am really tired of the stupid games people play. Since I have two simultaneous careers in separate unrelated industries I can really see the dysfunction that many people happily tolerate every day. I am ready to do something else like become a teacher or make my secondary career my primary even though this means less pay.

st3v3r 10y ago

Maybe, but how many of those high-performance employees are already making buttloads of money? How many of them are just scraping by around the poverty line? It's pretty easy to say money isn't important when you already have it.

psyc 10y ago

Trade mastery really does feel wonderful. But its important to remember that in the context of employment, it doesn't matter at all unless you're allowed to practice it. Every team I've been on for the past 15 years has systematically put figurative ball-and-chains on every developer, regardless of seniority. It's spun as 'engineering discipline' but that's typically a joke, and really the management is just nervous about commits in general. Without autonomy, mastery is just a private thing you have, to use on personal time.

maverick_iceman 10y ago

Who would want to come across as a greedy monster instead of someone who loves their work?

Mitchhhs 10y ago

In a similar vein, this post on worker satisfaction found that these 8 metrics can predict 70% of the variance in overall satisfaction at work. Quality of coworkers was by far the highest predictor. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13997858 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13997858

bougiefever 10y ago

The question on the survey was an either/or question. Do people pick mastery over money when faced with this question because they don't want to admit that money matters more? I picked mastery because I've already been in what I considered a high-paying dead-end job. I was miserable, but making money still matters a lot to me. I would (already have) picked a lower-paying job that was more rewarding in other ways. Never regretted it.

kelvin0 10y ago

Maybe it's because most high-performers are mostly well paid (and sought after). Assuming this, they are no longer chasing the 'money' since they already get it as a side-effect of they add to the projects they are part of.

sauronlord 10y ago

Look at what people do, not what they are saying. They are motivated by all the great things money provides (nice family life, nice house, travel, health care) That 78% of respondents are brained washed to repeat "do it for the passion/masterery/unicorns". Show me one of these 78%-ers who will not work like crazy for a million dollars in a single year or two

robertlagrant 10y ago

All my other comments have been said, apart from: what the heck did the bit about karma have to do with anything? If it'd said "Jesus is the reason you're born to your parents" rather than karma, I'm pretty sure that would've rightly attracted some anti-proselytizing comments. Karma or "the universe" aren't any less religious ideas - are we just trained to be offended by some things and not others?