3 ms·

I think the truth lies somewhere in the middle. You don't want "money-driven people" in the sense that all they care about is doing the least amount of work req

by oddevan 12y ago

I think the truth lies somewhere in the middle. You don't want "money-driven people" in the sense that all they care about is doing the least amount of work required to get paid. You want people that are "games-driven" in the sense that they care about putting out a quality product and making a fun game; because of that, they will work harder and should be paid accordingly. You are absolutely correct in that using the "passion" excuse to force 80-hour weeks and/or underpay workers is BS. An employee being passionate makes them more valuable, not less.

jiggy2011 12y ago
How do you find the passionate employees and separate them from those driven by money? If you advertise a high salary and a 40 hour week you will get applications from both types of people and they will both say at the interview that they are "passionate" because they know that will get them the job. So perhaps the paradox is that you get better employees by offering a lower salary?
- pm90 12y ago
  Its a hard problem, to be sure. You will never know what their motivations are unless you work with them. The best that once can do seems to be looking at their work experience, at the kind of stuff and places they've worked on before and then... taking a leap of faith in thinking that the person will do well. Passion is highly overrated, I think, and a lot of people define it differently. For some, it means staying at the office for 12 hours everyday including saturday. For others, it means keeping regular hours and contributing good quality work everyday, yet recognizing that one might need to work more (without overtime) when the job demands it. And the manager should know not to make these kind of situations a regular thing and reward the employees accordingly. As to the question of attracting the right kind of people, although it can be faked, the curios ones are usually the best. If the person you're looking at is always asking questions, or making suggestions, not to impress you but to get a genuine understanding of what you do and what you want her to do, that is the best sign of a passionate employee.
  - jiggy2011 12y ago
    How do you tell if the person was motivated by passion or by money in their previous jobs? You could look for people who previously worked for low pay and offer them higher pay, but if they worked for low pay in the past then they are probably willing to work for low pay again. In the games industry is that if you work a 40 hour week then your game will be delayed or have less content or more bugs than your competitors game who's programmers worked for 60 hours and when your programmers burn out they are easily replaced because so many people want to work in games.
- tomp 12y ago
  You could also ask the reverse - how can I find an employer who will pay me a good salary, without expecting me to be productive all the time. It sounds kind-of ridiculous, doesn't it. In the end, people work for money, sure, you can motivate them better or worse (e.g. I'm motivated by hard, challenging problems - not necessarily some big, scary, new machine learning research, but could be as simple as finding obscure bugs or optimizing a piece of code - and by always having a bit more on my plate than I can reasonably do), but you should pay them a fair salary either way.
  - jiggy2011 12y ago
    But if you can get developers who are cheaper and of higher quality (because your low pay automatically filters out those with a lack of passion) by offering low salaries then this might explain why game studios with low pay produce better games (assuming this is true in the first place).

by oddevan 12y ago

jiggy2011 12y ago

How do you find the passionate employees and separate them from those driven by money? If you advertise a high salary and a 40 hour week you will get applications from both types of people and they will both say at the interview that they are "passionate" because they know that will get them the job. So perhaps the paradox is that you get better employees by offering a lower salary?

pm90 12y ago
Its a hard problem, to be sure. You will never know what their motivations are unless you work with them. The best that once can do seems to be looking at their work experience, at the kind of stuff and places they've worked on before and then... taking a leap of faith in thinking that the person will do well. Passion is highly overrated, I think, and a lot of people define it differently. For some, it means staying at the office for 12 hours everyday including saturday. For others, it means keeping regular hours and contributing good quality work everyday, yet recognizing that one might need to work more (without overtime) when the job demands it. And the manager should know not to make these kind of situations a regular thing and reward the employees accordingly. As to the question of attracting the right kind of people, although it can be faked, the curios ones are usually the best. If the person you're looking at is always asking questions, or making suggestions, not to impress you but to get a genuine understanding of what you do and what you want her to do, that is the best sign of a passionate employee.
- jiggy2011 12y ago
  How do you tell if the person was motivated by passion or by money in their previous jobs? You could look for people who previously worked for low pay and offer them higher pay, but if they worked for low pay in the past then they are probably willing to work for low pay again. In the games industry is that if you work a 40 hour week then your game will be delayed or have less content or more bugs than your competitors game who's programmers worked for 60 hours and when your programmers burn out they are easily replaced because so many people want to work in games.
tomp 12y ago
You could also ask the reverse - how can I find an employer who will pay me a good salary, without expecting me to be productive all the time. It sounds kind-of ridiculous, doesn't it. In the end, people work for money, sure, you can motivate them better or worse (e.g. I'm motivated by hard, challenging problems - not necessarily some big, scary, new machine learning research, but could be as simple as finding obscure bugs or optimizing a piece of code - and by always having a bit more on my plate than I can reasonably do), but you should pay them a fair salary either way.
- jiggy2011 12y ago
  But if you can get developers who are cheaper and of higher quality (because your low pay automatically filters out those with a lack of passion) by offering low salaries then this might explain why game studios with low pay produce better games (assuming this is true in the first place).