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I'm extremely interested to see how this plays out. Giving large cash bonuses seems like it could wreck morale just as easily as it could boost it. And now when

I'm extremely interested to see how this plays out. Giving large cash bonuses seems like it could wreck morale just as easily as it could boost it. And now when they're hiring in the future, they have to wonder whether the candidate is more motivated by the money or the love. And will the employees expect a similar bonus next year? I'm not saying he shouldn't've done it. I am, however, extremely curious. This is the sort of thing that I have wondered why more companies don't do.

jlarocco 15y ago
When people are applying for a job you can be 99% sure they're motivated by the money. I love developing software, and I even spend some of my free time doing it. But if I didn't need the money, I'd spend most of my days skiing.
- dustingetz 15y ago
  if i didn't need the money, i'd still be building things.
  - nknight 15y ago
    Building things for someone else according to their desires?
    - jfoutz 15y ago
      Not necessarily. It's easy to imagine mojang as a producer for indy game developers. Make the game you want, we'll support you with a paycheck, art, music, marketing, all the stuff around the game. In exchange, you get something like royalties for big games. Honestly i'm surprised you don't recognize this model from movies and music and books and every other kind of media ever. It's possible to have endless debates about compromising artistic vision, but the fundamental idea is the same. We'll support you so you can create the art you love, in exchange we're keeping some of the profits.
      - electromagnetic 15y ago
        There's currently no reliable way to predict what movie will hit the billion dollar mark and what won't. So I don't grasp why movie studios don't take "risks". You can't dump $200 mil on a 15 minute silent short and expect to recoup your expense; unless you actually resurrected Charlie Chaplin. However, I don't understand why Artist A needs $25,000 to make a multi-platinum record and why Artist B needs $2.5 mil. Personally I think you'd be better off spending $25,000 on 100 artists and see what shit sticks to the wall. The irony is, if someone actually said "Hey we're willing to pay for you to write, but we're going to keep 80% of the profits" I'd say "fuck yes!" Because 1) I'm going to get paid less conventionally anyway, and 2) I might actually be able to produce something if I could quit my day job or even work 4 days a week. When you only have time to write 1000 words or so in a week, how are you supposed to keep focus for 80 weeks to actually finish something. How are you supposed to focus on the same project, keep the same ideas/feelings/themes running consistent? In high school and college I usually got around 120,000 words written in the british summer holiday (like 6 weeks, if that). I wrote a novel and a half whilst doing a reviewing job after graduating. I can still do it, it's just finding the free time.
        batista 15y ago
        You can't dump $200 mil on a 15 minute silent short and expect to recoup your expense; unless you actually resurrected Charlie Chaplin. Well, if you could make a $200 15 minute B&W silent short XXX movie with Angelina Jolie, Scarlet Johansson, Jessica Alba, Megan Fox, Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Will Smith, and Jude Law, I think you wouldn't need mr. Chaplin.
      - nknight 15y ago
        Your comment appears to be a complete non-sequitur. You have no reason to think I wouldn't recognize such a model. Such a model has nothing to do with applying for a job at a game studio when you don't need money. And Mojang isn't following such a model at this time, nor is there any serious reason to believe it will in the future just because it might be compatible with Notch's personality.
  - rmc 15y ago
    If I didn't need the money, I'd be building my own things, not their things.
- archgoon 15y ago
  That makes no sense. Plenty of people I know have applied to jobs that were more interesting to them than their current work, even taking paycuts in some cases.
  - paulhauggis 15y ago
    "even taking paycuts in some cases." Then they are fools and or don't have a family. As a developer with around 10 years of professional experience, I've been conned so many times by this when I was young and foolish. "Work here because we have fooseball table, free beer on Fridays, and cool projects." (But please ignore the fact that you are being paid $20,000 below market value.)
    - k-mcgrady 15y ago
      There is a lot more to life than money. For a lot of people, as long as they make enough money to life a comfortable life, they are happy to make less to work on exciting projects. If I was offered $100,000 to do boring work vs. $50,000 to do exciting work I would choose the latter (provided the $50,000 covered my living expenses). That does not make me a fool. I may not have a family but those rules would still apply. As long as I could provide for my family I would take the more exciting job.
      - kamaal 15y ago
        That's exactly the point. There is a lot more to life than money. And that lot more can be done, more fun can be had if there is more money. Imagine a situation where you have steady source of Income for life. There are better, interesting, challenging and more fun things to do than sitting in a cubicle for 16 hours and slogging till your bones hurt. What are you are saying is a typical of 'Enjoy the journey, forget the destination' kind of message. However you can be happy with you misery. That makes you happy, but still that does mean you live in misery.Earning little, making sacrifices and then being happy about it doesn't quite actually mean you are happy, rich and comfortable. It just means you have come to negotiation with your self that you are ok with that.
- sliverstorm 15y ago
  The question is not "is money a part of their motivation", but rather "how much of their motivation to do this job is the money". If your employee despises everyone and everything about the job but likes the money... that's not an employee you want to have.
- mrleinad 15y ago
  Well, if I was a billionaire, most certainly my priorities would be pretty different. However, if we're talking about people applying for a job in a field where a bit of grey matter is required, that's nonsense. Of course some of them are going to sign up to the highest bidder (like you, probably), but there are lots of us who prefer to be in a good environment, where we can grow and also have a good time while doing it. Two years ago, I quit my job and joined a startup, taking a 15% cut in my salary. Today I make almost twice that in that same company, I've learned a lot, and haven't had a regret ever. I didn't do it for the money. I did it for the work environment and the chance to enjoy my work more.
- larsberg 15y ago
  Totally untrue. I used to manage a team within the Visual Studio team, and we regularly had people come in looking at a 2x-4x pay cut (because they were going from "CTO" or "Chief Architect" titles to "Software Development Engineer" positions). I never had any experienced developers fail to accept a position based on the lower salaries I could offer at MSFT vs. what they were making in other fields or higher organizational positions. Further, I made it clear at the time they were applying that we couldn't come close to their current salaries, and while it's been a long time, I can't remember anyone turned off by that. Many people, particularly those at the top of their field, seem to be motivated by the opportunity to work on hard problems with people smarter than they are, so long as the pay is sufficient to maintain their family's lifestyle.
  - sosuke 15y ago
    They were just trading money for something else they valued greatly.
    - kamaal 15y ago
      Sometimes it happens that you have made all the money in the world after a hectic period of years. And by his definition "CTO" and "Chief Architect" perfectly fill in those roles .Anything more than that becomes delta. So you now decide to keep yourself busy in a less stressful job, for little money. And then do whatever you want to do, as you have all the money in the world to back you up. You can fail, get fired or go on long vacations without worrying much about your employment.
    - jordan0day 15y ago
      That's a bit of a platitude, though, isn't it? You could say the same about anyone -- nearly all of us could be making more money, if only we'd give up family time, relationships, hobbies, whatever. But we don't judge those things in pure dollar terms, they're intangibles. That's what makes stories like larsberg's interesting -- if we really were "just trading money for something else they valued greatly." then we'd see these types of stories more often -- but we don't.
- javascriptlol 15y ago
  Being motivated by a living wage isn't the same as being motivated by the lure of millions.
- arethuza 15y ago
  I was about to argue with you, then I remembered that my #1 personal goal is to get good enough off-piste to give La Grave a serious go: http://vimeo.com/15315278 http://vimeo.com/15315278 I actually said to my wife yesterday evening that I'd rather ski Polar Star Couloir than found a billion dollar business (a terrible thing to admit on HN) - she was not amused.... http://vimeo.com/33516816 http://vimeo.com/33516816 [Of course, the right attitude to take is to found the billion dollar business then ski insane couloirs in the Artic ;-) - not that any of these are exactly on the cards at the moment]. [Edit - Apologies for the ski fanaticism, it's the time of year, I start foaming at the mouth when anyone mentions skiing].
  - yukoncornelius 15y ago
    FKNA rock on with the ski fanaticism. More importantly, there is a lot of room for disruption in the ski industry, and some interesting startups are pushing the edge of ski design. For example DPS Skis has developed the Spoon--"the first ski built with reverse camber forward, back and torsionally." Also, I would be interested in another alpine touring binding to compete Dynafit and its clones.
- reduxredacted 15y ago
  When people are applying for a job you can be 99% sure they're motivated by the money I would challenge the 99% rule (I know it wasn't derived scientifically so I'm not poking fun). Speaking purely from my own experience and my knowledge of two of my coworkers, money is always a factor, but once you get past enough to live comfortably, other factors start to come into play. I don't want a larger house (I'd like to pay it off, instead), I know I probably have a raise coming soon and I don't care how much it is for. About 5 years ago I cut my salary off at $60,000 before taxes. I get paid much more than that, but that's all I see in my main checking account and I'll probably drop that to $40,000 soon (a story for another post, perhaps). My closest coworkers (the ones who are the top performers IMO) feel the same way. The environment is good, the work is fun, the money is enough even though we could all do better elsewhere. I've been given other offers, some that were very attractive and paid more. I've not accepted them because they tended to be too narrow in what I'd be doing. My job as a corporate drone writing software is fun and rewarding well beyond my salary, I have a great boss and great coworkers and I'd quit and head someplace else for $50,000 if that changed. Maybe I'm not a typical HN reader in that I have no desire to create a start-up (the business side of it is no fun) or work for one (there's no such thing as job security, but it's admittedly worse and while I'm no stranger to "crunch time", my desk will never have a sleeping bag under it). I'd spend most of my days skiing Are you sure about that? My dad's life plan was to retire at 35, and he did. His thing was golf, not skiing, and he did a lot of it for half a year before he took his family's retirement savings and purchased a quarter of a small business where he also took a job as the only salesperson. "You can only play so much golf" is the excuse he gave. I don't know his net worth, but he has two homes and one is on a lake that is exceptionally prime real estate. He's past his 60s and still working and I give him another 5 years before he tries to retire again.
- davedx 15y ago
  What the hell kind of blinkered world view is this? I applied for my current job (a game developer at a small company) because I love the work. I took a 1k/month pay cut from what wasn't a spectacular salary in the first place.
- sophacles 15y ago
  This may or may not be true, but before you can even start to make claims like that you have to consider (by which I mean place a monetary value on): + Perks of the job (not benefits package), for instance I regularly turn down very well paying jobs offered to me because my underpaying job as a university researcher gives me opportunities It would cost a significant amount of money to buy, if that is even possible. + There are plenty of people in the world who get paid to do the things they would otherwise call a hobby. This means at least doubling the salary to get them to switch, because they would have to figure out what to give up in their lives, and be compensated for that, because a job doing the hobby gives more time for more extra hobbies. Spending 8+ hrs a day on something else means less time. + Similar to the perks section: a good working environment is a good motivator to apply for a job, even for the same salary and work, over a bad working environment. + Family considerations, e.g. closer to spouse/kids, less commute, etc. all contribute in non-monetary ways. All that being said, I still am not sure I agree with the PP, just stating that a one-dimensional characterization of job application is perhaps too simple.
- KeyBoardG 15y ago
  I think that is completely opposite of the employees at Mojang. They promote a fun, take money off the table and make great games atmosphere. If people would rather ski than make games, then they wouldn't work there.
bodegajed 15y ago
For sure, It will get him a lot of job applicants next time he hires.
- ido 15y ago
  As far as I know they are always hiring & never have a lack of applicants.
petercooper 15y ago
And now when they're hiring in the future, they have to wonder whether the candidate is more motivated by the money or the love. I'd be surprised if Mojang didn't hire in the same way as most small companies with huge industry respect (like 37signals or GitHub). That is, head hunting specific people they want rather than the usual free for all job application process. (Update: I need to clarify that 37signals and GitHub don't always hire through headhunting. They're just the type of company I was referring to.)
dustingetz 15y ago
a more typical way would be to give people equity based on impact with vesting - which, i think, avoids a lot of the morale downsides. i'm curious why he didn't do this instead.
- jarek 15y ago
  Because then you're the kind of person who concerns themselves with equity and vesting schedules, which Notch doesn't seem to be.
- mattiask 15y ago
  Because giving out equity leads you down a path to going public? Not everyone wants to go public if you rather enjoy running your company as you see fit and just having fun doing it.
georgieporgie 15y ago
they have to wonder whether the candidate is more motivated by the money or the love Personally, seeing this makes me want to work for him solely because in addition to seeing him as extremely competent and clever, I now see him as someone who is generous and clearly values those 'under' him. I would take a below-average salary to work in an environment like that, regardless of whether there is ever another big payout.
- ido 15y ago
  I've met notch in person 3 times, and my experience was the same both before and after he made it big with Minecraft. He comes across as a really nice guy who doesn't really care that much about money or status.
InclinedPlane 15y ago
I'm curious why you think it could destroy morale. Or is that solely due to the hiring issue you mentioned? If money destroys morale then why wouldn't the owner earning such massive amounts of money also destroy his morale?
- netcan 15y ago
  A few ways. One way is that once employees receive a bonus, they will probably eventually register it as compensation. Then they will expect it. Then you there will be future employees that might expect it or feel bad that they missed it. etc etc
  - InclinedPlane 15y ago
    I don't think that's the case, I think that a big bonus such as this would generally tend to amplify whatever one's pre-existing sentiment toward their work place was. If they grudgingly go to work and do so only for financial reasons then a big bonus could lower morale. It could lead to a temporary emotional high which comes crashing back down once it's passed into a new low as folks re-evaluate their enjoyment of their work, calibrated to a new scale. More so, being more financially secure could lead to more pent up hostility coming to the fore, as people stop being polite or stop cooperating at work (the "fuck you, I'm fully vested" mentality). However, if the work place is a good one and the people there honestly love working there then I don't think big, irregular bonuses are at all a problem. They will still go back to work, and they will still enjoy it, and perhaps they will be a little bit more comfortable in the feeling that they can choose their work based on how much they enjoy it instead of out of a perceived financial need to try to climb the management chain or such-like. Also, the problem of trying to figure out whether candidates are just there for the money applies even when the company is merely offering industry standard wages.
krig 15y ago
You mean unlike most other companies, who can be certain that their candidates are motivated by money and not love? Seems like a strange argument to me.
mjwalshe 15y ago
John Lewis and BAXI both gave the company to the employees when the founders retired. And most coops will if they can pay divi to their shareholders.
rmc 15y ago
That has overtones of the usual scam to get programmers to work for less money. "What you want more money?! Are you not happy here? Aren't you here for the fun? You're not just here for the money are you?"
batista 15y ago
And now when they're hiring in the future, they have to wonder whether the candidate is more motivated by the money or the love. This is not a romance. If your employees are not motivated by money, you're doing it wrong. You want them to work on the NON INTERESTING problems too.
GigabyteCoin 15y ago
Perhaps he wasn't thinking about the business implications whatsoever and just thought "they deserve it".
astrodust 15y ago
It's a sweetheart move indeed, but I wonder if productivity will drop as his employees start shopping for yachts.

jlarocco 15y ago

When people are applying for a job you can be 99% sure they're motivated by the money. I love developing software, and I even spend some of my free time doing it. But if I didn't need the money, I'd spend most of my days skiing.

dustingetz 15y ago
if i didn't need the money, i'd still be building things.
- nknight 15y ago
  Building things for someone else according to their desires?
  - jfoutz 15y ago
    Not necessarily. It's easy to imagine mojang as a producer for indy game developers. Make the game you want, we'll support you with a paycheck, art, music, marketing, all the stuff around the game. In exchange, you get something like royalties for big games. Honestly i'm surprised you don't recognize this model from movies and music and books and every other kind of media ever. It's possible to have endless debates about compromising artistic vision, but the fundamental idea is the same. We'll support you so you can create the art you love, in exchange we're keeping some of the profits.
    - electromagnetic 15y ago
      There's currently no reliable way to predict what movie will hit the billion dollar mark and what won't. So I don't grasp why movie studios don't take "risks". You can't dump $200 mil on a 15 minute silent short and expect to recoup your expense; unless you actually resurrected Charlie Chaplin. However, I don't understand why Artist A needs $25,000 to make a multi-platinum record and why Artist B needs $2.5 mil. Personally I think you'd be better off spending $25,000 on 100 artists and see what shit sticks to the wall. The irony is, if someone actually said "Hey we're willing to pay for you to write, but we're going to keep 80% of the profits" I'd say "fuck yes!" Because 1) I'm going to get paid less conventionally anyway, and 2) I might actually be able to produce something if I could quit my day job or even work 4 days a week. When you only have time to write 1000 words or so in a week, how are you supposed to keep focus for 80 weeks to actually finish something. How are you supposed to focus on the same project, keep the same ideas/feelings/themes running consistent? In high school and college I usually got around 120,000 words written in the british summer holiday (like 6 weeks, if that). I wrote a novel and a half whilst doing a reviewing job after graduating. I can still do it, it's just finding the free time.
      - batista 15y ago
        You can't dump $200 mil on a 15 minute silent short and expect to recoup your expense; unless you actually resurrected Charlie Chaplin. Well, if you could make a $200 15 minute B&W silent short XXX movie with Angelina Jolie, Scarlet Johansson, Jessica Alba, Megan Fox, Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Will Smith, and Jude Law, I think you wouldn't need mr. Chaplin.
    - nknight 15y ago
      Your comment appears to be a complete non-sequitur. You have no reason to think I wouldn't recognize such a model. Such a model has nothing to do with applying for a job at a game studio when you don't need money. And Mojang isn't following such a model at this time, nor is there any serious reason to believe it will in the future just because it might be compatible with Notch's personality.
- rmc 15y ago
  If I didn't need the money, I'd be building my own things, not their things.
archgoon 15y ago
That makes no sense. Plenty of people I know have applied to jobs that were more interesting to them than their current work, even taking paycuts in some cases.
- paulhauggis 15y ago
  "even taking paycuts in some cases." Then they are fools and or don't have a family. As a developer with around 10 years of professional experience, I've been conned so many times by this when I was young and foolish. "Work here because we have fooseball table, free beer on Fridays, and cool projects." (But please ignore the fact that you are being paid $20,000 below market value.)
  - k-mcgrady 15y ago
    There is a lot more to life than money. For a lot of people, as long as they make enough money to life a comfortable life, they are happy to make less to work on exciting projects. If I was offered $100,000 to do boring work vs. $50,000 to do exciting work I would choose the latter (provided the $50,000 covered my living expenses). That does not make me a fool. I may not have a family but those rules would still apply. As long as I could provide for my family I would take the more exciting job.
    - kamaal 15y ago
      That's exactly the point. There is a lot more to life than money. And that lot more can be done, more fun can be had if there is more money. Imagine a situation where you have steady source of Income for life. There are better, interesting, challenging and more fun things to do than sitting in a cubicle for 16 hours and slogging till your bones hurt. What are you are saying is a typical of 'Enjoy the journey, forget the destination' kind of message. However you can be happy with you misery. That makes you happy, but still that does mean you live in misery.Earning little, making sacrifices and then being happy about it doesn't quite actually mean you are happy, rich and comfortable. It just means you have come to negotiation with your self that you are ok with that.
sliverstorm 15y ago
The question is not "is money a part of their motivation", but rather "how much of their motivation to do this job is the money". If your employee despises everyone and everything about the job but likes the money... that's not an employee you want to have.
mrleinad 15y ago
Well, if I was a billionaire, most certainly my priorities would be pretty different. However, if we're talking about people applying for a job in a field where a bit of grey matter is required, that's nonsense. Of course some of them are going to sign up to the highest bidder (like you, probably), but there are lots of us who prefer to be in a good environment, where we can grow and also have a good time while doing it. Two years ago, I quit my job and joined a startup, taking a 15% cut in my salary. Today I make almost twice that in that same company, I've learned a lot, and haven't had a regret ever. I didn't do it for the money. I did it for the work environment and the chance to enjoy my work more.
larsberg 15y ago
Totally untrue. I used to manage a team within the Visual Studio team, and we regularly had people come in looking at a 2x-4x pay cut (because they were going from "CTO" or "Chief Architect" titles to "Software Development Engineer" positions). I never had any experienced developers fail to accept a position based on the lower salaries I could offer at MSFT vs. what they were making in other fields or higher organizational positions. Further, I made it clear at the time they were applying that we couldn't come close to their current salaries, and while it's been a long time, I can't remember anyone turned off by that. Many people, particularly those at the top of their field, seem to be motivated by the opportunity to work on hard problems with people smarter than they are, so long as the pay is sufficient to maintain their family's lifestyle.
- sosuke 15y ago
  They were just trading money for something else they valued greatly.
  - kamaal 15y ago
    Sometimes it happens that you have made all the money in the world after a hectic period of years. And by his definition "CTO" and "Chief Architect" perfectly fill in those roles .Anything more than that becomes delta. So you now decide to keep yourself busy in a less stressful job, for little money. And then do whatever you want to do, as you have all the money in the world to back you up. You can fail, get fired or go on long vacations without worrying much about your employment.
  - jordan0day 15y ago
    That's a bit of a platitude, though, isn't it? You could say the same about anyone -- nearly all of us could be making more money, if only we'd give up family time, relationships, hobbies, whatever. But we don't judge those things in pure dollar terms, they're intangibles. That's what makes stories like larsberg's interesting -- if we really were "just trading money for something else they valued greatly." then we'd see these types of stories more often -- but we don't.
javascriptlol 15y ago
Being motivated by a living wage isn't the same as being motivated by the lure of millions.
arethuza 15y ago
I was about to argue with you, then I remembered that my #1 personal goal is to get good enough off-piste to give La Grave a serious go: http://vimeo.com/15315278 http://vimeo.com/15315278 I actually said to my wife yesterday evening that I'd rather ski Polar Star Couloir than found a billion dollar business (a terrible thing to admit on HN) - she was not amused.... http://vimeo.com/33516816 http://vimeo.com/33516816 [Of course, the right attitude to take is to found the billion dollar business then ski insane couloirs in the Artic ;-) - not that any of these are exactly on the cards at the moment]. [Edit - Apologies for the ski fanaticism, it's the time of year, I start foaming at the mouth when anyone mentions skiing].
- yukoncornelius 15y ago
  FKNA rock on with the ski fanaticism. More importantly, there is a lot of room for disruption in the ski industry, and some interesting startups are pushing the edge of ski design. For example DPS Skis has developed the Spoon--"the first ski built with reverse camber forward, back and torsionally." Also, I would be interested in another alpine touring binding to compete Dynafit and its clones.
reduxredacted 15y ago
When people are applying for a job you can be 99% sure they're motivated by the money I would challenge the 99% rule (I know it wasn't derived scientifically so I'm not poking fun). Speaking purely from my own experience and my knowledge of two of my coworkers, money is always a factor, but once you get past enough to live comfortably, other factors start to come into play. I don't want a larger house (I'd like to pay it off, instead), I know I probably have a raise coming soon and I don't care how much it is for. About 5 years ago I cut my salary off at $60,000 before taxes. I get paid much more than that, but that's all I see in my main checking account and I'll probably drop that to $40,000 soon (a story for another post, perhaps). My closest coworkers (the ones who are the top performers IMO) feel the same way. The environment is good, the work is fun, the money is enough even though we could all do better elsewhere. I've been given other offers, some that were very attractive and paid more. I've not accepted them because they tended to be too narrow in what I'd be doing. My job as a corporate drone writing software is fun and rewarding well beyond my salary, I have a great boss and great coworkers and I'd quit and head someplace else for $50,000 if that changed. Maybe I'm not a typical HN reader in that I have no desire to create a start-up (the business side of it is no fun) or work for one (there's no such thing as job security, but it's admittedly worse and while I'm no stranger to "crunch time", my desk will never have a sleeping bag under it). I'd spend most of my days skiing Are you sure about that? My dad's life plan was to retire at 35, and he did. His thing was golf, not skiing, and he did a lot of it for half a year before he took his family's retirement savings and purchased a quarter of a small business where he also took a job as the only salesperson. "You can only play so much golf" is the excuse he gave. I don't know his net worth, but he has two homes and one is on a lake that is exceptionally prime real estate. He's past his 60s and still working and I give him another 5 years before he tries to retire again.
davedx 15y ago
What the hell kind of blinkered world view is this? I applied for my current job (a game developer at a small company) because I love the work. I took a 1k/month pay cut from what wasn't a spectacular salary in the first place.
sophacles 15y ago
This may or may not be true, but before you can even start to make claims like that you have to consider (by which I mean place a monetary value on): + Perks of the job (not benefits package), for instance I regularly turn down very well paying jobs offered to me because my underpaying job as a university researcher gives me opportunities It would cost a significant amount of money to buy, if that is even possible. + There are plenty of people in the world who get paid to do the things they would otherwise call a hobby. This means at least doubling the salary to get them to switch, because they would have to figure out what to give up in their lives, and be compensated for that, because a job doing the hobby gives more time for more extra hobbies. Spending 8+ hrs a day on something else means less time. + Similar to the perks section: a good working environment is a good motivator to apply for a job, even for the same salary and work, over a bad working environment. + Family considerations, e.g. closer to spouse/kids, less commute, etc. all contribute in non-monetary ways. All that being said, I still am not sure I agree with the PP, just stating that a one-dimensional characterization of job application is perhaps too simple.
KeyBoardG 15y ago
I think that is completely opposite of the employees at Mojang. They promote a fun, take money off the table and make great games atmosphere. If people would rather ski than make games, then they wouldn't work there.

bodegajed 15y ago

For sure, It will get him a lot of job applicants next time he hires.

ido 15y ago
As far as I know they are always hiring & never have a lack of applicants.

petercooper 15y ago

And now when they're hiring in the future, they have to wonder whether the candidate is more motivated by the money or the love. I'd be surprised if Mojang didn't hire in the same way as most small companies with huge industry respect (like 37signals or GitHub). That is, head hunting specific people they want rather than the usual free for all job application process. (Update: I need to clarify that 37signals and GitHub don't always hire through headhunting. They're just the type of company I was referring to.)

dustingetz 15y ago

a more typical way would be to give people equity based on impact with vesting - which, i think, avoids a lot of the morale downsides. i'm curious why he didn't do this instead.

jarek 15y ago
Because then you're the kind of person who concerns themselves with equity and vesting schedules, which Notch doesn't seem to be.
mattiask 15y ago
Because giving out equity leads you down a path to going public? Not everyone wants to go public if you rather enjoy running your company as you see fit and just having fun doing it.

georgieporgie 15y ago

they have to wonder whether the candidate is more motivated by the money or the love Personally, seeing this makes me want to work for him solely because in addition to seeing him as extremely competent and clever, I now see him as someone who is generous and clearly values those 'under' him. I would take a below-average salary to work in an environment like that, regardless of whether there is ever another big payout.

ido 15y ago
I've met notch in person 3 times, and my experience was the same both before and after he made it big with Minecraft. He comes across as a really nice guy who doesn't really care that much about money or status.

InclinedPlane 15y ago

I'm curious why you think it could destroy morale. Or is that solely due to the hiring issue you mentioned? If money destroys morale then why wouldn't the owner earning such massive amounts of money also destroy his morale?

netcan 15y ago
A few ways. One way is that once employees receive a bonus, they will probably eventually register it as compensation. Then they will expect it. Then you there will be future employees that might expect it or feel bad that they missed it. etc etc
- InclinedPlane 15y ago
  I don't think that's the case, I think that a big bonus such as this would generally tend to amplify whatever one's pre-existing sentiment toward their work place was. If they grudgingly go to work and do so only for financial reasons then a big bonus could lower morale. It could lead to a temporary emotional high which comes crashing back down once it's passed into a new low as folks re-evaluate their enjoyment of their work, calibrated to a new scale. More so, being more financially secure could lead to more pent up hostility coming to the fore, as people stop being polite or stop cooperating at work (the "fuck you, I'm fully vested" mentality). However, if the work place is a good one and the people there honestly love working there then I don't think big, irregular bonuses are at all a problem. They will still go back to work, and they will still enjoy it, and perhaps they will be a little bit more comfortable in the feeling that they can choose their work based on how much they enjoy it instead of out of a perceived financial need to try to climb the management chain or such-like. Also, the problem of trying to figure out whether candidates are just there for the money applies even when the company is merely offering industry standard wages.

krig 15y ago

You mean unlike most other companies, who can be certain that their candidates are motivated by money and not love? Seems like a strange argument to me.

mjwalshe 15y ago

John Lewis and BAXI both gave the company to the employees when the founders retired. And most coops will if they can pay divi to their shareholders.

rmc 15y ago

That has overtones of the usual scam to get programmers to work for less money. "What you want more money?! Are you not happy here? Aren't you here for the fun? You're not just here for the money are you?"

batista 15y ago

And now when they're hiring in the future, they have to wonder whether the candidate is more motivated by the money or the love. This is not a romance. If your employees are not motivated by money, you're doing it wrong. You want them to work on the NON INTERESTING problems too.

GigabyteCoin 15y ago

Perhaps he wasn't thinking about the business implications whatsoever and just thought "they deserve it".

astrodust 15y ago

It's a sweetheart move indeed, but I wonder if productivity will drop as his employees start shopping for yachts.