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Really? Because I keep seeing articles on HN about how employees can't be motivated by pay increases, they have to be motivated by things like appreciating thei

Really? Because I keep seeing articles on HN about how employees can't be motivated by pay increases, they have to be motivated by things like appreciating their work, sense of accomplishment, etc. etc. Both of these things can't be true!

pavel_lishin 16y ago
Well, it's an obvious fact that we IT professionals... err, programmers... err, software engineers... err, code monkeys... anyway, we're all the same and are all motivated by the same thing.
ajdecon 16y ago
The thing is, both things can be true. They're just true for different people. Those high salaries won't generally motivate an "in it for the tech", startup-friendly developer of the type that commonly frequents HN... but a bank with a legacy mainframe system probably doesn't want to hire that person, and they don't need to. The technology isn't the core of their business. On the other hand, there are many highly competent developers out there who view their job as a means to an end, a way to support their family/life/hobbies/etc. To these people, learning a highly specialized legacy skill and making lots of money is exactly the right motivator. As an example, I present my father. He has been writing data management software for hospitals for decades, and does all his work on midrange IBM AS/400 ("System i") systems. He writes all his code in IBM RPG--"report program generator" code. In recent years he's learned Java, C and Unix systems to keep himself fresh, but he's never found the need to actually use any of those skills, or a job using these that would treat him as well as his legacy work.
- stuff4ben 16y ago
  Could not have said it any better myself. Every time someone mentions that money isn't a motivating factor to get more productivity, I want to scream! For YOU maybe not, but for ME? Yes please with a bonus on top! I wonder how long it will take before Java becomes the next COBOL (unless it already has...)
  - ajdecon 16y ago
    I think it's better to say Java is another COBOL: a default choice for business, stable, and likely to hang on through several generations of programmers. I won't call Java the "next" COBOL until COBOL goes away. Which I predict will happen sometime between 2050 and the death of the sun...
JanezStupar 16y ago
Well there is a certain "wall" that employers need to climb. For .NET the "wall" is 30-50k $. For COBOL the "wall" seems to be 50k$ + (I'm conservative about this estimate on purpose). So beyond this "fair" compensation for ones troubles, the pay doesn't scale anymore. So It's not that people wouldn't want to work with COBOL or perceive It as sexy - It's just that the "sexiness" point is a couple of 10's of thousands of dollars higher then for other tech.
sorbus 16y ago
One of them is true when money is limited, and it's actually possible to know everyone else in the company. Another is true when you can throw millions of dollars at a problem to make it go away and barely even notice that the money is missing. The rules a company follows at small sizes and large sizes are not necessarily entirely the same, especially once bureaucracy sets in.
neild 16y ago
There's a difference between motivating people to do their job better, and convincing people to do the job in the first place. You would need to pay me a lot of money to convince me to work with COBOL full-time. Once you've convinced me to do the job, paying me more won't make me any better at it.

pavel_lishin 16y ago

Well, it's an obvious fact that we IT professionals... err, programmers... err, software engineers... err, code monkeys... anyway, we're all the same and are all motivated by the same thing.

ajdecon 16y ago

The thing is, both things can be true. They're just true for different people. Those high salaries won't generally motivate an "in it for the tech", startup-friendly developer of the type that commonly frequents HN... but a bank with a legacy mainframe system probably doesn't want to hire that person, and they don't need to. The technology isn't the core of their business. On the other hand, there are many highly competent developers out there who view their job as a means to an end, a way to support their family/life/hobbies/etc. To these people, learning a highly specialized legacy skill and making lots of money is exactly the right motivator. As an example, I present my father. He has been writing data management software for hospitals for decades, and does all his work on midrange IBM AS/400 ("System i") systems. He writes all his code in IBM RPG--"report program generator" code. In recent years he's learned Java, C and Unix systems to keep himself fresh, but he's never found the need to actually use any of those skills, or a job using these that would treat him as well as his legacy work.

stuff4ben 16y ago
Could not have said it any better myself. Every time someone mentions that money isn't a motivating factor to get more productivity, I want to scream! For YOU maybe not, but for ME? Yes please with a bonus on top! I wonder how long it will take before Java becomes the next COBOL (unless it already has...)
- ajdecon 16y ago
  I think it's better to say Java is another COBOL: a default choice for business, stable, and likely to hang on through several generations of programmers. I won't call Java the "next" COBOL until COBOL goes away. Which I predict will happen sometime between 2050 and the death of the sun...

JanezStupar 16y ago

Well there is a certain "wall" that employers need to climb. For .NET the "wall" is 30-50k $. For COBOL the "wall" seems to be 50k$ + (I'm conservative about this estimate on purpose). So beyond this "fair" compensation for ones troubles, the pay doesn't scale anymore. So It's not that people wouldn't want to work with COBOL or perceive It as sexy - It's just that the "sexiness" point is a couple of 10's of thousands of dollars higher then for other tech.

sorbus 16y ago

One of them is true when money is limited, and it's actually possible to know everyone else in the company. Another is true when you can throw millions of dollars at a problem to make it go away and barely even notice that the money is missing. The rules a company follows at small sizes and large sizes are not necessarily entirely the same, especially once bureaucracy sets in.

neild 16y ago

There's a difference between motivating people to do their job better, and convincing people to do the job in the first place. You would need to pay me a lot of money to convince me to work with COBOL full-time. Once you've convinced me to do the job, paying me more won't make me any better at it.