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This is probably the worst point of view I've ever seen on the topic of burnout. Let's get one thing out there: Money doesn't make people motivated or happy. It

by slau 10y ago

This is probably the worst point of view I've ever seen on the topic of burnout. Let's get one thing out there: Money doesn't make people motivated or happy. It's a condition of employment. Either employees gets enough money, or they don't. It is very, very binary. Throwing money at an employee acts as a temporary cushion, a bandaid. A bonus will be forgotten within days or weeks, a raise within a month or two. This is not to say that employees never deserve raises. Employees who take on more responsibilities, or have acquired more experience definitely deserve a higher pay. Motivation is the only true variable that managers can influence on, and the only one that truly matters. Motivation is like a sea/ocean upon which the employee sails, not unlike a boat. The obstacles, and blockers that employees face are like rocks under the water level (to keep with the metaphor, because the keel would strike the rocks). As a manager, you have two options. Take a pickaxe and try to move those boulders/rocks out of the employee's way, or add more water. In this metaphor, the boulders are typically personal blockers ("I'm a C++ dev, I don't want to work on that Node piece of shit", "I start at 7, so I don't see why I would have to join a meeting at 4PM", "I worked until 3AM yesterday, which is why I wasn't there at the team meeting at 11AM", etc). You can try to remove the boulders, but that's closer to psychotherapy that takes 15 years, which is usually out of the realm of possibilities for a manager and a company. What a manager can do, however, is help the employee feel more motivated. This is where extra holidays in lieu, making people feel part of a team, and feel ownership/responsibility for the team, and other "soft" things plays its part. Yes, you can try to tell an employee that you'll give him an extra $200 if they stay late and fix a bug, but that just shows that motivation is coming from the wrong place. Monitoring how much motivation an employee has is the #1 job of a good manager. People who burn out are usually badly managed, or operate in a toxic environment. A good manager can't (always) fix a bad environment. He can improve certain aspects of it, though.

slau 10y ago
To expand on this: You can underline exceptional performance from an employee (or preferably, a whole team/group of employees) by giving them a bonus, or buying them a nice dinner or whatever. But this has to be a bonus: if the employees ask for it, or if it was a promise (carrot) before the work was done, the point is moot, and the psychological effect of the reward will be, too. If your team pulls through a very difficult challenge, by sacrificing their own time (working a whole weekend, for example), without anyone in the hierarchy asking so, and it was done to address a business blocker, then that definitely demands compensation. The most obvious compensation would be to give them the time they gave to the company with a bonus 50 or 100%. Add money if you feel it is deserved and think the employees would enjoy it. Just remember that the company can never use this in negotiations ("You're getting a 3% raise instead of 5% because you got 10k in bonuses last year"). It is proper compensation for work done. Nothing more. Now, back to the matter of motivation: your team decided to do the work. They are motivated. But having to do this will drain that motivation. It is your job as a company to make sure these situations don't occur again. One way to re-motivate people is to show them the steps you are taking to make sure they never have to sacrifice another weekend. Make sure they understand and agree with the steps. They made efforts, now it's the company's turn to do so as well. Startups often burn people out because they assume that employees are motivated. But being a paper millionaire only buys so much motivation. Engineers (and others, but I don't manage profiles other than engineers) are under tremendous pressure to deliver. Their motivation disappears because they aren't privy to the founders' vision, or don't understand how their work affects the bottom line. The biggest indicator of people lacking motivation is asking for more means/resources. When people say "we need to hire more," or "we need more hardware," or "we need a better office;" those should be red flags that there is a problem with motivation. That's not to say your office doesn't really stink, or that their laptops are melting during compiles, though. Asking for resources as a bandaid to productivity, I guess, would be a better indicator of low performance ("I'm slow at writing this feature because I only have 4 cores on my computer").
sauronlord 10y ago
Those studies of money being binary and motivation are bullshit. Ask how many people earning 1 million dollars a year (doctors, etc) feel about working 80 hour weeks.
sauronlord 10y ago
You cannot make people feel ownership. It's like me saying I can motivate someone to feel the "ownership" of my house (even though they are not on title). Ownership is you know, actually OWNING something.(Shares, body/health, vision) If your team does not feel ownership then is it because they do not actualy even own $1 worth of shares in the company project.

by slau 10y ago

slau 10y ago

To expand on this: You can underline exceptional performance from an employee (or preferably, a whole team/group of employees) by giving them a bonus, or buying them a nice dinner or whatever. But this has to be a bonus: if the employees ask for it, or if it was a promise (carrot) before the work was done, the point is moot, and the psychological effect of the reward will be, too. If your team pulls through a very difficult challenge, by sacrificing their own time (working a whole weekend, for example), without anyone in the hierarchy asking so, and it was done to address a business blocker, then that definitely demands compensation. The most obvious compensation would be to give them the time they gave to the company with a bonus 50 or 100%. Add money if you feel it is deserved and think the employees would enjoy it. Just remember that the company can never use this in negotiations ("You're getting a 3% raise instead of 5% because you got 10k in bonuses last year"). It is proper compensation for work done. Nothing more. Now, back to the matter of motivation: your team decided to do the work. They are motivated. But having to do this will drain that motivation. It is your job as a company to make sure these situations don't occur again. One way to re-motivate people is to show them the steps you are taking to make sure they never have to sacrifice another weekend. Make sure they understand and agree with the steps. They made efforts, now it's the company's turn to do so as well. Startups often burn people out because they assume that employees are motivated. But being a paper millionaire only buys so much motivation. Engineers (and others, but I don't manage profiles other than engineers) are under tremendous pressure to deliver. Their motivation disappears because they aren't privy to the founders' vision, or don't understand how their work affects the bottom line. The biggest indicator of people lacking motivation is asking for more means/resources. When people say "we need to hire more," or "we need more hardware," or "we need a better office;" those should be red flags that there is a problem with motivation. That's not to say your office doesn't really stink, or that their laptops are melting during compiles, though. Asking for resources as a bandaid to productivity, I guess, would be a better indicator of low performance ("I'm slow at writing this feature because I only have 4 cores on my computer").

sauronlord 10y ago

Those studies of money being binary and motivation are bullshit. Ask how many people earning 1 million dollars a year (doctors, etc) feel about working 80 hour weeks.

sauronlord 10y ago

You cannot make people feel ownership. It's like me saying I can motivate someone to feel the "ownership" of my house (even though they are not on title). Ownership is you know, actually OWNING something.(Shares, body/health, vision) If your team does not feel ownership then is it because they do not actualy even own $1 worth of shares in the company project.