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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 ori

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

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.