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>Give them interesting, meaningful work and they will be productive. How much meaningful and interesting work do you think exists in this world? Every time th

>Give them interesting, meaningful work and they will be productive. How much meaningful and interesting work do you think exists in this world? Every time this topic gets brought up, someone will say "Just give people interesting work, pay them well, don't micromanage them!" as if these jobs grow on trees. And even if these jobs do exist, they're usually reserved for workers who are extremely motivated and capable - in other words, they earned those rights. (except the zero interest covid era).

rkuodys 3y ago
I think any given job is neither interesting nor boring- it the attitude that makes it so. For example I am the person who don't like doing the stuff if I know how to do it - it boring for me, while my colleague is happily dingo stuff that is clean while skipping obscured tasks. Following this you cannot give someone interesting task, you can only guide person to choose the right perspective
moooo99 3y ago
> How much meaningful and interesting work do you think exists in this world? I think meaningful work often leads to very interesting discussions because people always imagine stuff like humanitarian aid, etc as meaningful. While certainly true, it’s not limited to jobs like those. In my experience work can be meaningful for something as simple as being a positive change in someone’s job, customer experience or whatever. I personally spent quite a while in a job where a lot of project have been cancelled midway through or were objectively useless to begin with (busywork). This feeling of spending substantial time in my life to work on something that nobody will ever see or perceive as something positive burned me out terribly. And no amount of work life balance and good pay could make that up. I now have a different job (Fullstack Developer) at the same company. I work more focused and it is more challenging, my salary hasn’t changed substantially beyond inflation. But customers use our product and are satisfied with it, plus it brings revenue to the company. This job is so much more meaningful in a practical sense than the one before. And there is quite a lot of jobs like my first one. And if you actually believe in a market working as intended, this begs the question: why?
- wiether 3y ago
  Agree. As a developer, there's a huge difference between those two : - working on something where, outside of your peers, you can only interact with a project manager who doesn't have a clue about what they are doing and are asking for features that are clearly dark patterns in the hope of making more money - working on something where you interact directly with the end users, knowing their issues/needs, and trying to find ways to help them while keeping management happy Sure, the _why_ can be important (I would not work on something designed to harm directly anyone) but the _who_ is what matter the most IMHO. Knowing that you are working to help people is where the meaningfulness relies. Don't care if those people are people with special need, doctors and greedy lawyers.
- s1artibartfast 3y ago
  Sometimes the optimal solution involves failure and cancelation. Im not saying the cancelations you experienced were correct, but unless you have a crystal ball, some strategy change and failure is expected. Of course that isn't an excuse for frivolous strategy, but the line is finer than most ICs understand.
novok 3y ago
There is a lot of boring and low "meaning" work that needs to be done. To give a trite example, washing your dishes and keeping your house clean. Or brushing your teeth and flossing. Or making revenue dashboards tracking income and making sure that data reporting is accurate.
- alephxyz 3y ago
  Doing the dishes is boring but it's offset by the satisfaction you feel from having a clean kitchen. Some tasks are both boring and make you feel useless after because all you're left with is a report that will rot in a middle management storage cabinet. I think a few 19th century German philosophers wrote about that extensively :)
drakonka 3y ago
I am not sure, but I have always pursued this kind of work by default and aggressively. Of course there will always be ups and downs, but when it stops feeling interesting, meaningful, and challenging for a prolonged period of time, I generally move on (or switch teams/projects!). But while it remains overall interesting and meaningful, I stay and hold on to it for as long as I possibly can. This has meant that I haven't job-hopped very much to climb the salary ladder, but have been very engaged and interested in every position. It's been a worthwhile tradeoff.
helboi4 3y ago
I would also raise the point that actually having relationships with your colleagues and team can make work a lot more meaningful and make you more motivated. It is impossible to do that if you don't meet them. The idea that corporate work can be motivating at all when you exist in a vaccuum in your bedroom is idiotic. Almost no work is ineherently interesting.
williamcotton 3y ago
> How much meaningful and interesting work do you think exists in this world? If you're willing to take a salary cut, lots.
- PeterStuer 3y ago
  Unpaid 'work' is usually referred to as a 'hobby'.
  - gambiting 3y ago
    Who said unpaid?
- petesergeant 3y ago
  I think there are lots of jobs that are meaningful in a macro sense, but tedious in a micro sense. Most teachers I know like having the identity of a teacher, feel like they are meaningfully contributing to society, but really don't enjoy 90% of the actual work they do.
- irrational 3y ago
  Depends on your definition of meaningful and interesting. I have no doubt that public school teaching, working in a nursing home, working as a social worker is meaningful, but I wouldn’t find any of those to be interesting.
  - echelon 3y ago
    Working on a startup pursuing your topic / field of interest might do the trick. There are also lots of technical fields that vastly underpay due to the number of people that want to do it (eg. video games industry) and/or the lack of demand or immediate utility (eg. academia and research). There's also art, film, stage, music, and all of the liberal arts. Imagine what you want to do, then find a job that hits close to that. It might not pay well, but it might satisfy you.
    - the_only_law 3y ago
technick 3y ago
The only thing I've ever had issues with doing it remote is writing compliance policy, operational guidelines, and organizational standards. My boss wanted them re-written once every year into a different format and it destroyed my soul. What we had worked fine and didn't need to be re-written in my opinion.

rkuodys 3y ago

I think any given job is neither interesting nor boring- it the attitude that makes it so. For example I am the person who don't like doing the stuff if I know how to do it - it boring for me, while my colleague is happily dingo stuff that is clean while skipping obscured tasks. Following this you cannot give someone interesting task, you can only guide person to choose the right perspective

moooo99 3y ago

> How much meaningful and interesting work do you think exists in this world? I think meaningful work often leads to very interesting discussions because people always imagine stuff like humanitarian aid, etc as meaningful. While certainly true, it’s not limited to jobs like those. In my experience work can be meaningful for something as simple as being a positive change in someone’s job, customer experience or whatever. I personally spent quite a while in a job where a lot of project have been cancelled midway through or were objectively useless to begin with (busywork). This feeling of spending substantial time in my life to work on something that nobody will ever see or perceive as something positive burned me out terribly. And no amount of work life balance and good pay could make that up. I now have a different job (Fullstack Developer) at the same company. I work more focused and it is more challenging, my salary hasn’t changed substantially beyond inflation. But customers use our product and are satisfied with it, plus it brings revenue to the company. This job is so much more meaningful in a practical sense than the one before. And there is quite a lot of jobs like my first one. And if you actually believe in a market working as intended, this begs the question: why?

wiether 3y ago
Agree. As a developer, there's a huge difference between those two : - working on something where, outside of your peers, you can only interact with a project manager who doesn't have a clue about what they are doing and are asking for features that are clearly dark patterns in the hope of making more money - working on something where you interact directly with the end users, knowing their issues/needs, and trying to find ways to help them while keeping management happy Sure, the _why_ can be important (I would not work on something designed to harm directly anyone) but the _who_ is what matter the most IMHO. Knowing that you are working to help people is where the meaningfulness relies. Don't care if those people are people with special need, doctors and greedy lawyers.
s1artibartfast 3y ago
Sometimes the optimal solution involves failure and cancelation. Im not saying the cancelations you experienced were correct, but unless you have a crystal ball, some strategy change and failure is expected. Of course that isn't an excuse for frivolous strategy, but the line is finer than most ICs understand.

novok 3y ago

There is a lot of boring and low "meaning" work that needs to be done. To give a trite example, washing your dishes and keeping your house clean. Or brushing your teeth and flossing. Or making revenue dashboards tracking income and making sure that data reporting is accurate.

alephxyz 3y ago
Doing the dishes is boring but it's offset by the satisfaction you feel from having a clean kitchen. Some tasks are both boring and make you feel useless after because all you're left with is a report that will rot in a middle management storage cabinet. I think a few 19th century German philosophers wrote about that extensively :)

drakonka 3y ago

I am not sure, but I have always pursued this kind of work by default and aggressively. Of course there will always be ups and downs, but when it stops feeling interesting, meaningful, and challenging for a prolonged period of time, I generally move on (or switch teams/projects!). But while it remains overall interesting and meaningful, I stay and hold on to it for as long as I possibly can. This has meant that I haven't job-hopped very much to climb the salary ladder, but have been very engaged and interested in every position. It's been a worthwhile tradeoff.

helboi4 3y ago

I would also raise the point that actually having relationships with your colleagues and team can make work a lot more meaningful and make you more motivated. It is impossible to do that if you don't meet them. The idea that corporate work can be motivating at all when you exist in a vaccuum in your bedroom is idiotic. Almost no work is ineherently interesting.

williamcotton 3y ago

> How much meaningful and interesting work do you think exists in this world? If you're willing to take a salary cut, lots.

PeterStuer 3y ago
Unpaid 'work' is usually referred to as a 'hobby'.
- gambiting 3y ago
  Who said unpaid?
petesergeant 3y ago
I think there are lots of jobs that are meaningful in a macro sense, but tedious in a micro sense. Most teachers I know like having the identity of a teacher, feel like they are meaningfully contributing to society, but really don't enjoy 90% of the actual work they do.
irrational 3y ago
Depends on your definition of meaningful and interesting. I have no doubt that public school teaching, working in a nursing home, working as a social worker is meaningful, but I wouldn’t find any of those to be interesting.
- echelon 3y ago
  Working on a startup pursuing your topic / field of interest might do the trick. There are also lots of technical fields that vastly underpay due to the number of people that want to do it (eg. video games industry) and/or the lack of demand or immediate utility (eg. academia and research). There's also art, film, stage, music, and all of the liberal arts. Imagine what you want to do, then find a job that hits close to that. It might not pay well, but it might satisfy you.
  - the_only_law 3y ago

technick 3y ago

The only thing I've ever had issues with doing it remote is writing compliance policy, operational guidelines, and organizational standards. My boss wanted them re-written once every year into a different format and it destroyed my soul. What we had worked fine and didn't need to be re-written in my opinion.