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My friend and I were world-competitive at Daytona USA, a SEGA racing game. We were a team whenever anyone else would race against us. Otherwise, we were extreme

My friend and I were world-competitive at Daytona USA, a SEGA racing game. We were a team whenever anyone else would race against us. Otherwise, we were extremely competitive against each other. However, when we would be done with a racing session, we would deconstruct and disclose our racing with each other. If one of us discovered a new technique for, say, dealing with a particular corner, we shared it with the other. (We also occasionally shared with a broader group, who repaid the favor.) It's not competition that is the problem. It's score-keeping and secrets. Our competition against each other allowed us to have fun and push ourselves to the point where we took our skills as far as was possible. A key component of this is that we gave credit where credit was due. My friend didn't get credit for beating me, but for sharing with me the secret of my defeat; and vice versa. Once again on equal footing, we credited each other not with knowledge, but with the skill to apply the knowledge. That experience has guided me in my life. Sure, in an unhealthy organization people can take advantage and not get back. But healthy competition has paid off more than it's cost me, and I've always thought life was too short to be in any unhealthy relationship, even with employers or coworkers.

ElViajero 5y ago
> If one of us discovered a new technique for, say, dealing with a particular corner, we shared it with the other. What is your incentive to do that? I see that as the key. In a company, employees needs an incentive to work together and be constructive. They are not friends. If you do not get that incentives, if your department success means less budged for mine, if my colleague success puts my job at risk, if your project success creates a problem for mine, I will not be motivated to collaborate. If you create that incentive of collaboration then the "challenge" factor will be there. I have worked in great teams where we were evaluated as a company, where bonuses were for everybody or no-one. And it was a very competitive environment, I wanted to be as good as any colleague, know as much as they did. And, I wanted them to succeed because it was awesome to see such great projects but also because it was good for myself. I have not found any healthy company were competition was enforced top-down. Only when collaboration is designed and encouraged top-down then healthy sportsmanship arise from great engineers and teams.
- koonsolo 5y ago
  > What is your incentive to do that? You have to define who the external "enemy" is. If your enemy is the person closest to you, you will not share. But as said, they raced as a duo against other teams, so then the external enemy becomes the other team. I'm sure when they shared with other teams, where was even another party that was the enemy (other state? other countries?). I think in a company it's always healthy to define an outside "enemy" that you are competing against, now within the company.
- hypertele-Xii 5y ago
  > In a company, employees needs an incentive to work together and be constructive. Isn't the incentive getting paid?
  - kqr 5y ago
    No. If it is, management has failed. You should be paid enough just for showing up to take money off the table as a concern. If you worry about money, you will not perform at your capacity. You need to be motivated by better things, like sense of accomplishment, the joy of figuring stuff out and solving problems, teamwork, etc. As a motivator, money is a notch above the whip, of course, but not very good in the grand scheme of things. The book Drive is very good and discusses the latest evidence around motivation at depth. Obligatory reading for anyone in a leadership like role, in my opinion.
    - echelon 5y ago
      I rarely want to do something someone else tells me to do. I have my own dreams and ambitions. The only reason I work for others is money. Money is a path to freedom. It doesn't help that half of the forces in our industry are concerned with accruing power at the expense of individuals. I want nothing to do with that sort of thing.
      - kqr 5y ago
        I'm not sure what your comment means. Yes, there's a whole philosophical debate of what is value and does it make sense to sell your labour at all. That's not what I meant. All I said is that if you instruct people to do a job and tell them "Every time your work is of excellent quality, you will get a temporary increase in payment, and every time it is of bad quality, you will get a temporary decrease in payment", on average, one of three things will happen: 1. The quality of their work stays the same. (For example because the environment is not set up such that it's in their power to do a better job, or you're measuring quality on a different dimension than is relevant to this person.) 2. The quality of their work declines. (For example because they don't agree with the exchange rate you're offering on money-for-quality.) 3. They find a way to cheat the system to make it look like the quality of their work improves even though it does not. (Because you have made money rather than quality the goal to chase after.) You'll note that the desired outcome just isn't there. This is for many diverse reasons in different circumstances and the book I mentioned goes into each. If instead you instruct people to do a job and create an environment in which they can feel proud over good work, in which they can fulfill themselves, and be a valued and active part of something bigger, you'll on average see one outcome: 1. The quality of their work improves. (Because that's the only way for them to trigger their internal reward circuits.) Well, not quite. It takes one more thing: in order for the quality of their work to improve, they must feel secure, both physically, and fiscally. If you threaten them with the whip, or there's not enough money to make their ends comfortably meet, the quality of their work won't improve.
vishnugupta 5y ago
> It's not competition that is the problem. It's score-keeping and secrets. IMO the healthy interpersonal dynamic between you and your friend will not scale beyond say 10 people. That is the problem. No matter how well managed an organisation is internal competitions turn vicious in no time and drain the company of its precious resources. Co-operation must be constantly fostered from the top management and the first sign of competition must be dealt with. In today's age of promotion-driven-development it isn't easy. Everyone wants to build the new and shiny service.
- wildmanx 5y ago
  I think you are self-contradicting yourself here. "No matter how well managed an organisation is" versus "Co-operation must be constantly fostered from the top management". You're basically saying "this can't be fixed by management" and then saying "it must be fixed by management". I'm probably just misunderstanding you. Could you clarify? FWIW, in the organization I'm working at, I don't have that problem. There are literally hundreds of other sw engineers that could do exactly my job, and we all have the same title, and collaboration works really well between everybody. There are some personal differences here and there, but the overall environment is excellent and we don't compete internally. We try to learn from each other and push each other forward.
  - vishnugupta 5y ago
    You are right, I expressed that poorly. I wanted to disagree with the GP's following assertion. > in an unhealthy organization people can take advantage and not get back. I interpreted it as "unhealthy competition is a result of unhealthy organisation". My take is internal competition is a big reason that results in unhealthy organisation. The point I wanted to make was if the management is not careful to snuff out competition at early stages it'll get bad and that the upper management must constantly foster co-operation, not just by talking about it but by showing it in action. For instance if leaf level workers see that there are two VPs with overlapping charters who are sort of having a rift then they will copy their behaviour. And in your org it's clear that co-operation is being fostered, a great example is everyone having the same title. It's a terrific way to show to everyone that the management means what they say.
_pmf_ 5y ago
A racing game has clear criteria for who is better. Software development does not even have clear criteria for when a project is done (for us, it's typically when the customer stops threatening legal action on a weekly basis). Internal "competition" absolutely makes no sense for the 90% of SW shops that do not have infinite SV money.
rypskar 5y ago
>> However, when we would be done with a racing session, we would deconstruct and disclose our racing with each other. That is one of the things I miss most about racing, during the race the horns did come out and the competition was tough, before and after we did help each other and enjoyed spending time with others having the same hobby. Nothing like having a laugh while helping someone you crashed into fix their car to get it ready for the next heat
Jommi 5y ago
Thats why iterative internal competitiveness is key. Iterate with short term internal competitions, share learnings, and continue.

ElViajero 5y ago

> If one of us discovered a new technique for, say, dealing with a particular corner, we shared it with the other. What is your incentive to do that? I see that as the key. In a company, employees needs an incentive to work together and be constructive. They are not friends. If you do not get that incentives, if your department success means less budged for mine, if my colleague success puts my job at risk, if your project success creates a problem for mine, I will not be motivated to collaborate. If you create that incentive of collaboration then the "challenge" factor will be there. I have worked in great teams where we were evaluated as a company, where bonuses were for everybody or no-one. And it was a very competitive environment, I wanted to be as good as any colleague, know as much as they did. And, I wanted them to succeed because it was awesome to see such great projects but also because it was good for myself. I have not found any healthy company were competition was enforced top-down. Only when collaboration is designed and encouraged top-down then healthy sportsmanship arise from great engineers and teams.

koonsolo 5y ago
> What is your incentive to do that? You have to define who the external "enemy" is. If your enemy is the person closest to you, you will not share. But as said, they raced as a duo against other teams, so then the external enemy becomes the other team. I'm sure when they shared with other teams, where was even another party that was the enemy (other state? other countries?). I think in a company it's always healthy to define an outside "enemy" that you are competing against, now within the company.
hypertele-Xii 5y ago
> In a company, employees needs an incentive to work together and be constructive. Isn't the incentive getting paid?
- kqr 5y ago
  No. If it is, management has failed. You should be paid enough just for showing up to take money off the table as a concern. If you worry about money, you will not perform at your capacity. You need to be motivated by better things, like sense of accomplishment, the joy of figuring stuff out and solving problems, teamwork, etc. As a motivator, money is a notch above the whip, of course, but not very good in the grand scheme of things. The book Drive is very good and discusses the latest evidence around motivation at depth. Obligatory reading for anyone in a leadership like role, in my opinion.
  - echelon 5y ago
    I rarely want to do something someone else tells me to do. I have my own dreams and ambitions. The only reason I work for others is money. Money is a path to freedom. It doesn't help that half of the forces in our industry are concerned with accruing power at the expense of individuals. I want nothing to do with that sort of thing.
    - kqr 5y ago
      I'm not sure what your comment means. Yes, there's a whole philosophical debate of what is value and does it make sense to sell your labour at all. That's not what I meant. All I said is that if you instruct people to do a job and tell them "Every time your work is of excellent quality, you will get a temporary increase in payment, and every time it is of bad quality, you will get a temporary decrease in payment", on average, one of three things will happen: 1. The quality of their work stays the same. (For example because the environment is not set up such that it's in their power to do a better job, or you're measuring quality on a different dimension than is relevant to this person.) 2. The quality of their work declines. (For example because they don't agree with the exchange rate you're offering on money-for-quality.) 3. They find a way to cheat the system to make it look like the quality of their work improves even though it does not. (Because you have made money rather than quality the goal to chase after.) You'll note that the desired outcome just isn't there. This is for many diverse reasons in different circumstances and the book I mentioned goes into each. If instead you instruct people to do a job and create an environment in which they can feel proud over good work, in which they can fulfill themselves, and be a valued and active part of something bigger, you'll on average see one outcome: 1. The quality of their work improves. (Because that's the only way for them to trigger their internal reward circuits.) Well, not quite. It takes one more thing: in order for the quality of their work to improve, they must feel secure, both physically, and fiscally. If you threaten them with the whip, or there's not enough money to make their ends comfortably meet, the quality of their work won't improve.

vishnugupta 5y ago

> It's not competition that is the problem. It's score-keeping and secrets. IMO the healthy interpersonal dynamic between you and your friend will not scale beyond say 10 people. That is the problem. No matter how well managed an organisation is internal competitions turn vicious in no time and drain the company of its precious resources. Co-operation must be constantly fostered from the top management and the first sign of competition must be dealt with. In today's age of promotion-driven-development it isn't easy. Everyone wants to build the new and shiny service.

wildmanx 5y ago
I think you are self-contradicting yourself here. "No matter how well managed an organisation is" versus "Co-operation must be constantly fostered from the top management". You're basically saying "this can't be fixed by management" and then saying "it must be fixed by management". I'm probably just misunderstanding you. Could you clarify? FWIW, in the organization I'm working at, I don't have that problem. There are literally hundreds of other sw engineers that could do exactly my job, and we all have the same title, and collaboration works really well between everybody. There are some personal differences here and there, but the overall environment is excellent and we don't compete internally. We try to learn from each other and push each other forward.
- vishnugupta 5y ago
  You are right, I expressed that poorly. I wanted to disagree with the GP's following assertion. > in an unhealthy organization people can take advantage and not get back. I interpreted it as "unhealthy competition is a result of unhealthy organisation". My take is internal competition is a big reason that results in unhealthy organisation. The point I wanted to make was if the management is not careful to snuff out competition at early stages it'll get bad and that the upper management must constantly foster co-operation, not just by talking about it but by showing it in action. For instance if leaf level workers see that there are two VPs with overlapping charters who are sort of having a rift then they will copy their behaviour. And in your org it's clear that co-operation is being fostered, a great example is everyone having the same title. It's a terrific way to show to everyone that the management means what they say.

_pmf_ 5y ago

A racing game has clear criteria for who is better. Software development does not even have clear criteria for when a project is done (for us, it's typically when the customer stops threatening legal action on a weekly basis). Internal "competition" absolutely makes no sense for the 90% of SW shops that do not have infinite SV money.

rypskar 5y ago

>> However, when we would be done with a racing session, we would deconstruct and disclose our racing with each other. That is one of the things I miss most about racing, during the race the horns did come out and the competition was tough, before and after we did help each other and enjoyed spending time with others having the same hobby. Nothing like having a laugh while helping someone you crashed into fix their car to get it ready for the next heat

Jommi 5y ago

Thats why iterative internal competitiveness is key. Iterate with short term internal competitions, share learnings, and continue.