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I didn't say or imply humans were rational about money, I was pointing out a case where one was being irrational, and noting that the scenario they brought up d

I didn't say or imply humans were rational about money, I was pointing out a case where one was being irrational, and noting that the scenario they brought up didn't actually map to the issue at hand anyways. And the reason it didn't map? Because it tried to introduce an external motivator to coerce hackers to engage in a particular activity that they weren't otherwise intrinsically motivated to perform. And when did we start giving social "scientists" the final say on these things? Setting up contrived scenarios with children and college students hardly strikes me as definitive. Real scenarios where people are given free reign to do just as they like for pay or meaningful reward are few and far between. "Getting paid to do what you love" usually isn't - it's much more commonly getting paid to do something that requires the same skillset as the thing you love, and it's obvious why that would kill motivation.

zck 17y ago
I listen to psychologists on this because they're the people who have done rigorous studies on the issue. Seems like a good reason to listen to them. Why are you railing against this? The data are against you.
- calambrac 17y ago
  Do you think your links constitute a fair representation of that data that's against me? Go read them again. The foundational study was with 5 year olds who got a ribbon. Follow on studies were college students in creative writing courses and other fully contrived scenarios. You really want to base your beliefs about a fundamental trait of humanity on that? Just look around you. People work for money, for sex, for food, for all kinds of external motivators, far more than to fulfill their inner personal happy centers. The fact that some people are miserable because they think they've found their dream job when really it's just another way to pay the bills has other explanations than this weak sauce.
  - zck 17y ago
    My links constitute some of the research done about this issue. Do you have any research that disagrees with the data I've provided? Of course people work for money, for sex, for food, etc. I wasn't saying they don't. What I am saying is that people's intrinsic motivation to do a task is lessened when they're paid to do so. There's a story -- I don't remember where I read it, unfortunately -- that when a group of coders were paid for each bug found, the number of bugs found went up. However, when the bugs-for-pay program ended, the number of bugs found went down. Their intrinsic motivation was lessened when they have extrinsic rewards for doing so -- they no longer looked as hard, or as long for bugs as when their motivation was internal. I don't know why you're calling it "weak sauce"; it's been studied and found to be true. Is there anything beyond "you don't like the idea" that you can cite as reason you think it's false?
    - calambrac 17y ago
      There are disagreeing studies cited in the Wikipedia article you linked, did you even read it? I'm also confused why you think your bug story supports your point. Are there lots of developers who derive great personal satisfaction from churning out bug reports? Leaving aside the fact that #bug reports is a shitty metric, they did go up when the reward was introduced. The fact that they went down again after the reward was taken away means absolutely nothing in the context of this conversation, because they weren't internally motivated before.
      - zck 17y ago
        As I see it, there's a single disagreeing study: Cameron, J. (2001), and that study found that people increased intrinsic motivation when they were rewarded for either beating others, or when intrinsic motivation was low to begin with. Neither of these were what we were talking about. We were discussing people's motivations for things that they initially had high intrinsic motivation, and we were discussing people getting paid hourly to play WoW (not for beating others) and people winning a contest (and beating others). I think developers do derive personal satisfaction for doing their jobs well, yes. I think that doing your job is an intrinsic motivation.

zck 17y ago

I listen to psychologists on this because they're the people who have done rigorous studies on the issue. Seems like a good reason to listen to them. Why are you railing against this? The data are against you.

calambrac 17y ago
Do you think your links constitute a fair representation of that data that's against me? Go read them again. The foundational study was with 5 year olds who got a ribbon. Follow on studies were college students in creative writing courses and other fully contrived scenarios. You really want to base your beliefs about a fundamental trait of humanity on that? Just look around you. People work for money, for sex, for food, for all kinds of external motivators, far more than to fulfill their inner personal happy centers. The fact that some people are miserable because they think they've found their dream job when really it's just another way to pay the bills has other explanations than this weak sauce.
- zck 17y ago
  My links constitute some of the research done about this issue. Do you have any research that disagrees with the data I've provided? Of course people work for money, for sex, for food, etc. I wasn't saying they don't. What I am saying is that people's intrinsic motivation to do a task is lessened when they're paid to do so. There's a story -- I don't remember where I read it, unfortunately -- that when a group of coders were paid for each bug found, the number of bugs found went up. However, when the bugs-for-pay program ended, the number of bugs found went down. Their intrinsic motivation was lessened when they have extrinsic rewards for doing so -- they no longer looked as hard, or as long for bugs as when their motivation was internal. I don't know why you're calling it "weak sauce"; it's been studied and found to be true. Is there anything beyond "you don't like the idea" that you can cite as reason you think it's false?
  - calambrac 17y ago
    There are disagreeing studies cited in the Wikipedia article you linked, did you even read it? I'm also confused why you think your bug story supports your point. Are there lots of developers who derive great personal satisfaction from churning out bug reports? Leaving aside the fact that #bug reports is a shitty metric, they did go up when the reward was introduced. The fact that they went down again after the reward was taken away means absolutely nothing in the context of this conversation, because they weren't internally motivated before.
    - zck 17y ago
      As I see it, there's a single disagreeing study: Cameron, J. (2001), and that study found that people increased intrinsic motivation when they were rewarded for either beating others, or when intrinsic motivation was low to begin with. Neither of these were what we were talking about. We were discussing people's motivations for things that they initially had high intrinsic motivation, and we were discussing people getting paid hourly to play WoW (not for beating others) and people winning a contest (and beating others). I think developers do derive personal satisfaction for doing their jobs well, yes. I think that doing your job is an intrinsic motivation.