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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 g

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.
    - calambrac 17y ago
      Doing your job well != churning out bug reports, which was what you said was being incentivized and measured. That also seems like a pretty bad fit for the original scenario we were discussing, but that didn't stop you from trotting it out anyways. Bottom line: people do respond to external motivation, all the freaking time, as long as its appropriate to what they're being asked to do. Refusing to be paid to do what you'd be doing anyways, no strings attached, is, plain and simple, irrational. But, in reality, very few people ever get the opportunity to exercise that irrationality, because when someone pays you, there are pretty much always strings attached, and the strings are what are demotivating.
      - zck 17y ago
        Ok, I see that we're not really having a conversation anymore, so I think I'm just about done. Two quick points: one -- if your job is to find bugs, finding lots of bugs is doing your job well. Two -- I'm not saying this behavior is rational; in my first comment in this thread started out "Humans are not rational when it comes to money". However, this behavior is studied and shown to be true. I'm sorry you don't like it.
        calambrac 17y ago
        If your job is to find bugs, you're not a developer. You're a tester. I personally don't know a lot of people who have a deep and driving internal fire to be a tester, but, okay, fine, they may exist. They weren't the people you described, though: your example was people who weren't motivated, were given an incentive and became motivated, and then went back to being unmotivated after the incentive was taken away. How does that prove your point? And again, I never argued that people are rational about money, I'm just pointing out that the particular behavior the op talked about was irrational. If you're getting defensive because I'm pointing that out, and you agree that it's irrational, then I don't know what the argument's about. The fact that studies exist doesn't make their conclusions (or your interpretation of their conclusions) true. The specific studies you brought up in your articles all sounded like they had pretty big flaws, given they were applied to 5 year olds and college kids in contrived situations. If I got a stupid ribbon just for drawing a picture, I'd feel embarrassed and patronized, and of course I wouldn't want to do it again for the same person. That doesn't prove that humans have a weird quirk that responds poorly to external motivators, it just proves they have understandable emotional responses to weird situations. Real life, otoh, provides ample evidence that people respond productively to external motivators all the time. As for not having a conversation anymore, were we ever? You keep throwing Teh Studies at me, ignoring the reasons I gave for why I don't think they're valid and dinging me for pointing to one that wasn't perfectly applicable to the original situation (even though I was only using it as an example of disagreement with the studies you had brought up, some of which themselves weren't perfectly applicable, either). If you want to pretend like you're the dignified salon member adhering to the rules of civilized discourse, that's fine, but I don't think it's accurate.

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.
  - calambrac 17y ago
    Doing your job well != churning out bug reports, which was what you said was being incentivized and measured. That also seems like a pretty bad fit for the original scenario we were discussing, but that didn't stop you from trotting it out anyways. Bottom line: people do respond to external motivation, all the freaking time, as long as its appropriate to what they're being asked to do. Refusing to be paid to do what you'd be doing anyways, no strings attached, is, plain and simple, irrational. But, in reality, very few people ever get the opportunity to exercise that irrationality, because when someone pays you, there are pretty much always strings attached, and the strings are what are demotivating.
    - zck 17y ago
      Ok, I see that we're not really having a conversation anymore, so I think I'm just about done. Two quick points: one -- if your job is to find bugs, finding lots of bugs is doing your job well. Two -- I'm not saying this behavior is rational; in my first comment in this thread started out "Humans are not rational when it comes to money". However, this behavior is studied and shown to be true. I'm sorry you don't like it.
      - calambrac 17y ago
        If your job is to find bugs, you're not a developer. You're a tester. I personally don't know a lot of people who have a deep and driving internal fire to be a tester, but, okay, fine, they may exist. They weren't the people you described, though: your example was people who weren't motivated, were given an incentive and became motivated, and then went back to being unmotivated after the incentive was taken away. How does that prove your point? And again, I never argued that people are rational about money, I'm just pointing out that the particular behavior the op talked about was irrational. If you're getting defensive because I'm pointing that out, and you agree that it's irrational, then I don't know what the argument's about. The fact that studies exist doesn't make their conclusions (or your interpretation of their conclusions) true. The specific studies you brought up in your articles all sounded like they had pretty big flaws, given they were applied to 5 year olds and college kids in contrived situations. If I got a stupid ribbon just for drawing a picture, I'd feel embarrassed and patronized, and of course I wouldn't want to do it again for the same person. That doesn't prove that humans have a weird quirk that responds poorly to external motivators, it just proves they have understandable emotional responses to weird situations. Real life, otoh, provides ample evidence that people respond productively to external motivators all the time. As for not having a conversation anymore, were we ever? You keep throwing Teh Studies at me, ignoring the reasons I gave for why I don't think they're valid and dinging me for pointing to one that wasn't perfectly applicable to the original situation (even though I was only using it as an example of disagreement with the studies you had brought up, some of which themselves weren't perfectly applicable, either). If you want to pretend like you're the dignified salon member adhering to the rules of civilized discourse, that's fine, but I don't think it's accurate.