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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 poi

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

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.