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I stumbled on this paper very early on in my career and it significantly shifted my attitudes toward work, politics, and society. In short: people follow incent

by _dwt 6y ago

I stumbled on this paper very early on in my career and it significantly shifted my attitudes toward work, politics, and society. In short: people follow incentives. Of course, the suggestion of "altering the reward system" breaks down a bit in the presence of Goodhart's law, but it's still very common to see (especially in large or unusually bureaucratic organizations) policies which create incentives completely at odds with the stated goal or metric. One of my favorite examples is the "budget game" many companies play, where each department/division/etc. puts forward a proposed set of projects and budget; the corporate planners then allocate the overall corporate budget. Departments obviously "sand-bag" and ask for more than they think they need (knowing they won't get everything they ask for); there's often a "use it or lose it" policy too, which leads to what I can only describe as an orgy of spending at the end of the fiscal year. This can be great fun for vendors, consultants, and so on!

HappyDreamer 6y ago
> people follow incentives Maybe the less they care about the company's overall goals and vision, the more they follow KPI:s and bonus incentives. When there seems to be no overall purpose and meaning anyway (except for making rich people richer?), then why not game the system? But there can also be intrinsic motivation, just "unselfishlessly" doing what seems like good for the organization, if one likes its goal and reasons for existing. Edit: You wrote: "significantly shifted my attitudes toward work, politics" I wonder, how did this change how you thereafter did things at the workplace? (And politics somehow?)
- _dwt 6y ago
  It just made me more cognizant that people respond to incentives rather than intentions. It's not enough to propose new "corporate values" or state that a policy proposal must be passed because it "addresses" some problem - show me how the proposed change incentivizes the desired behavior. Are there perverse incentives? Principal-agent problems? And so on. Make no mistake, I think people are "intrinsically motivated" too, at least to a point. I'd like to believe I am. But it's hard to deny that people (myself included) do things for some reason, some gain - even if that gain is something intangible like "a feeling that I'm doing good" or "perceived status in my organization".
  - HappyDreamer 6y ago
    > people respond to incentives rather than intentions I like that way of phrasing it. I suppose it's good to keep in mind in ... all? parts of life. E.g. also if raising children? > Are there perverse incentives? Principal-agent problems? If I setup incentives some day in the future -- I'd talk with the people involved, and describe the overall goals and intentions. And then all of us together can try to figure out problems with the incentives (Of course in some rare? case some people might not want to do that in an honest way.) This was interesting to read, "Principal-agent problems" was a new phrase to me: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_proble... > I think people are "intrinsically motivated" too [...] do things for some reason [...] intangible like "a feeling that I'm doing good" Yes, totally agree

by _dwt 6y ago

HappyDreamer 6y ago

> people follow incentives Maybe the less they care about the company's overall goals and vision, the more they follow KPI:s and bonus incentives. When there seems to be no overall purpose and meaning anyway (except for making rich people richer?), then why not game the system? But there can also be intrinsic motivation, just "unselfishlessly" doing what seems like good for the organization, if one likes its goal and reasons for existing. Edit: You wrote: "significantly shifted my attitudes toward work, politics" I wonder, how did this change how you thereafter did things at the workplace? (And politics somehow?)

_dwt 6y ago
It just made me more cognizant that people respond to incentives rather than intentions. It's not enough to propose new "corporate values" or state that a policy proposal must be passed because it "addresses" some problem - show me how the proposed change incentivizes the desired behavior. Are there perverse incentives? Principal-agent problems? And so on. Make no mistake, I think people are "intrinsically motivated" too, at least to a point. I'd like to believe I am. But it's hard to deny that people (myself included) do things for some reason, some gain - even if that gain is something intangible like "a feeling that I'm doing good" or "perceived status in my organization".
- HappyDreamer 6y ago
  > people respond to incentives rather than intentions I like that way of phrasing it. I suppose it's good to keep in mind in ... all? parts of life. E.g. also if raising children? > Are there perverse incentives? Principal-agent problems? If I setup incentives some day in the future -- I'd talk with the people involved, and describe the overall goals and intentions. And then all of us together can try to figure out problems with the incentives (Of course in some rare? case some people might not want to do that in an honest way.) This was interesting to read, "Principal-agent problems" was a new phrase to me: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_proble... > I think people are "intrinsically motivated" too [...] do things for some reason [...] intangible like "a feeling that I'm doing good" Yes, totally agree