Motivational Incongruence and Well-Being at the Workplace
journal.frontiersin.org
journal.frontiersin.org
My answer to these situations is to humble yourself. Now of course I am not saying the other option is "wrong" especially if it is just as easy for you to find an accommodating workplace but at the end of the day you are paid to do a job, not have all your feelings babysitted. If you find your workplace is stressing you out, go talk to a therapist (or close friend who understands you, spouse, etc) and see if you can identify ways to overcome it. If not, then maybe consider the switch.
I know this will get downvoted here because it sounds very "conservative pull up your bootstraps"-esque
Gamers, broadly speaking, are a specific subset of the population, with very specific interests, and this self-reinforces to create a culture of making games about killing, sports, driving, etc. It's hard to sell a game without killing, so such games get less funding, which alienates the part of the market who is turned off by killing, and they stop playing games, which makes it harder to fund games that aren't about killing. The history of killing games also means that any game designers who are following in the tradition of games will more likely make a game about killing.
Your claim that this situation is the result of genetic programming is a very old claim. "We are doing barbaric thing X because our ancestors were barbarians" is a very common argument which has never been substantiated by solid research, and probably never will be. Not because it's false, but because it's unfalsifiable.
There is lots of very good, repeatable science showing cultural expectations reinforcing short-sighted thinking.
Put another way: everyone is free to set up their own planet if they don't like this one, and it's undoubtedly possible with infinite knowledge and ability to set up your own planet. But it's not good advice to give someone today for obvious reasons.
But you could also argue that the modern world is creating unfulfilling work. Not only the "bullshit jobs" (see [1]), but also highly repetitive work.
In ancient/prehistoric times, work was more diverse (and perhaps hence more inspiring) for a lot of people, I suppose.
work which is important but not urgent is inspiring. The more complex the society, the more opportunity for such work. Read history: it wasn't that long ago that most of Europe envied those who could afford mud huts.
Is the crank well-maintained, or is it continually catching, grinding, or breaking down?
Are you rewarded for turning the crank more and provided with high-quality feedback about that reward, or is there merely an unceasing open-loop demand that you turn the crank "as fast as possible"?
Do you know the function of the crank and see value in it, or is it an opaque component of an inscrutable black box?
I'll bet one set of answers leads to a lot more burnout than the other.
and keep your speed constant at all times. http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2305
When you have to sit in your car for 15 minutes every morning just to summon the resolve to get out and go into the office, something's wrong with your work environment.
Once upon a time, I thought programming was an introvert-friendly career. That seems to be changing fast.
Having a stable of people who are contractually obligated to put up with their outgoing personalities.
I would like more segregation! Enjoy your riotous atmosphere over there (far away) please!
The reality is, it will make the team produce fewer bugs. It will also help in knowledge sharing, and in some cases result in tidier designs.
But you'll basically have half the manpower. So unless you actually have serious problems with bugs, knowledge sharing, or code design, it's not going to be worth it. There are other ways to achieve quality, and most senior people can do that very well without someone pairing with them.
Edit: 99%? So you spend less than five minutes collaborating per 8-hour workday?
It sounds reasonable: 0 minute on a day, 10 mn on the next one. You can double it because the "99%" figure was dropped randomly, but that seems fair.
I wouldn't worry too much about this. Most companies see pair programming as paying 2X for the same amount of programming output.
I'm somewhat rare in the sense that I just quit vs lining up a new job first as we had a decent financial buffer, although if I'm being honest I suspect it was a case of jumping before being pushed as the stress was starting to impact my workplace relationships as well (especially with the CEO who was a chronic time-waster that loved pointless meetings).
I've said this elsewhere, but I think it's healthy to mix things up every few years - leaving this company ultimately worked out well for me as I quickly found a new opportunity that opened up doors I had never considered before. I don't know your exact circumstances, but if you have a significant other I think it's worth having a candid conversation with them and work out what the two of you need to live a balanced and fulfilled life. If the workplace stress is leaking into the rest of your life and you find work consuming an unreasonbale amount of your time, it's probably a good sign that it might be worth exploring other opportunities (in my experience, it's much harder to change an organization than it is to just move on). I realize this is different to the "roll-up-your-sleeves" advice elsewhere in this thread, but I view my career as a 40+ year marathon so I embrace the odd twist in the road every now and again.
And, don't forget to talk with HR at work if you don't think you'll get fired to see whether there is a way to reduce distractions. Many are more-than-willing to help- whether it's with buying some noise-cancelling earbuds, relocating you, letting you work from home, or another option. If it's a team member or more that is noisy or distracts you, mention that to your manager or HR.
You can go a long way helping yourself.
It's down to the level of reading out loud everything that happens on their computer screen. "Oh, I thought if you clicked there, something else would happen". "Oh, what's that?". blah blah blah. Total verbal diarrhea.
To top it off, they have a very, very loud voice.
If I make any comments to try and stop the incessant nattering, it's met with a snarky comment and only very minimal and temporary change.
My productivity has gone way down, it's almost impossible to get useful work done lots of the time, so I hardly try.
Constant interruption and complaining, perfectly fine. Antisocial headphones, verboten!
Like you, when I face my monitor, the barrier is low enough that I can actually see eye to eye with my co-workers who are sitting opposite me. Oh, and apparently the space behind me is somehow a 'walkway' because it's narrow enough to cut through the other side of the office. Someone can just walk behind me while I'm working and nudge my chair while they're coming through and thus interrupting my focus.
I've talked to my manager multiple times about this and I understand that there's nothing he could have done for me due to the limited office space that we have.
My only option is to switch jobs at this point as I have enough connections that getting a new job probably won't be that hard. But it sucks because my current manager is actually good to work with and I'm kind of on the fence since I might get a shit manager. Is it worth the risk?
(Sorry if this sounds like a rant)
One size doesn't fit all.
For that kind of team, and that kind of play. But if you're like me, you can deal with workmates, it is just that a small amount of interaction with a small number of people is enough to be productive and yet not waste people's time.
Smoke a bit with your partner, go for a walk, maybe apologize or retract some things if necessary. Maybe stop being such a perfectionist and just merge what does work now.
It is just that a good part of them don't even notice what they do and why they do it.
It occurs to me that many people, perhaps even a majority, perceive a need for coffee in order to have the energy and focus they need.
My assertion is that cannabis sometimes has a similarly useful effect, and that one distinct example is in how it affects teamwork.
And I actually like pair-programming, some of my best code was written with somebody sitting besides me and we have solved some really tricky bugs like this.
But we tend to do this only rarely. Most of my day is spent organizing stuff and reading emails anyway :-)
Some of my best code has been written with pair programming but I can see the flip-side. There's no day-dreaming, there's no zoning out, complete engagement all day long.
It's the same mental overhead as with taking care of toddlers; you have to be constantly aware otherwise suffer the consequences.. :)
Our normal thing is to form joint teams of Pivotal and client developers, and in that situation, pairing is also a really good way to teach the clients our way of doing things.
Of course, a team like that needs to only hire people who are up for that lifestyle.
You probably still wouldn't like it much, sadly!
One of the parts of my job that I dislike is watching people mouse around on the screen and try to type.
There's something so frustrating about tracking someone else's mouse movements and typing and the impotent watching when you know where they're meant to click or what they're trying to type, but seeing them flail around, that I find very unpleasant.
Also deflecting people's ideas I would find very tiring, having to explain why you don't want to do something you know is a bad idea, or explain why something you want to do is a good idea. Much more efficient to just do it in the best way you can think of, then have a code review later.
Seems like a waste of resources to limit two people to doing the one job.
That's especially true on those occasions that you do something nobody believes is possible.
My bad experience was with a large international consulting company. The consultant members colluded to extend their contract and push their own design, architecture, and tools. The time spent pair programming with them was simply a method of advancing their agenda. It was a horrible experience and I felt burnout just like you described. It was a waste of time and money for the client.
My last consulting project was the exact opposite, it was absolutely wonderful. I spent the day pair programming and it involved creative problem solving and an intellectual exchange. It was a great experience, I grew professionally, wrote better code, and can see legitimate a case that it was worth the client's money.
I haven't had to work in an environment that requires it, and just looking at the wiki page makes it seem miserable.
Do you really just sit at one workstation, with another person watching over your shoulder haggling over each line of code?
I think I'm just not a quick enough thinker for this approach to work.
A related technique that's quite interesting is mob programming, where an entire team is huddled around a workstation. There's less pressure on each team member as individuals, and the person typing the code is mostly following directions from the others.
Really, the approach to development needs to be appropriate for the dynamics of the team. It might be a good idea to at least try out pair or mob programming to see how effective it is. But you can't just be doing it just because it's the 'hip' thing these days. Also, pair and mob programming can be quite draining, so you may not want to be doing it all day. You could do it for part(s) of the day, and work on your own at your own pace at other times.
Also, one guy came in during the lunch break, and got more done than the mob did in the other eight hours...
This looks more functional. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVqUcNKVbYg
I am not against the idea... but yeh I can see it has issues!
In a lot of places in tech, there seems to be a culture where companies are more concerned about maximizing units of work at the expense of more intangible factors.
You see this in Agile, Kanban etc methods of work where personal development is completely subjugated to the needs of the project.
Insofar as a guiding principle behind the work does exist, that too tends to be subsumed under 'The Project': 'We're excited about building the future of work!'
In more than one company I've worked with, even drawing attention to an article like this would be seen as raising your head above the parapet. It's completely the wrong attitude.
Until we start measuring employee performance in new ways and asking different questions of managers, we'll continue to see burnout being viewed as an 'acceptable cost'.
It's a false premise (and unfortunately all too common, both self-inflicted by developers themselves and by managers) to think that tracking and managing work pipeline == maximizing output at the expense of the worker.
I agree, there is allot of focus on all sort of tooling to cram points etc out of the work force and the simple answer to that is that is the easy part, really easy part, everything is already there.
The really hard part of building a company is making sure that everyone feel part of it and not just some assembly line drone.
Sadly, I think it's just age-old politics. You're hired for the political effects it has on your boss -- including looking like a l33t h4x0r in your violently-collaborative open plan office doing Agile. Kills productivity and morale, but managers & executives aren't compensated for actually producing anything, so it doesn't matter. And HR'll always spin some other story about turnover because the one thing they have to avoid at all costs is actually providing a healthy workplace.
[0] < http://suitdummy.blogspot.com/2015/05/why-hire-underemployme... >
They also did not test or control for anything. No tests of stress, social support or anything else that could mediate these effects.
Their measure of implicit motivation is also a little rough: they had raters count the number of, for example, affiliation sentences used to describe a picture of a trapeze artist. More sentences equals an unconscious need for affiliation.
In the end, they found that if either of two motivational orientations (power and affiliation) are not being met, we are a little more likely to report symptoms of burnout. Interesting, but very preliminary. And it could be totally subsumed by other personality or stress variables.
Now, humans have a number of inborn reward systems, such as connection (belonging, community, empathy), physical well being (food, sleep), play, autonomy, meaning (competence, efficiency), creativity. So the human reward is the sum of the individual "reward channels".
When focused on solving a single problem, there is a tendency to optimize only for part of this multi-part reward function, to the detriment of others. This is the cause of burnout. It's basically suboptimal reward, when considering rewards in all their complexity.
Here is a more complete inventory of basic needs (reward channels):
My partial interpretation attempt:
Employees who did not feel like they fit into the culture of the workplace (affiliation motive) led to high job burnout. And people who didn't satisfy their need to have an impact on others, and gain respect and reputation (power motive), predicted increased physical symptoms.
Culture between companies and between geographic regions can be really different. For example, if you performed this study in Mumbai in a company where all of those involved in the study were die-hard workers that didn't believe in burnout, that would have seriously skewed the results and they still might have looked good statistically.
2. While it's evident to many that have been working several years or more that people tend to get promoted even when they'd be happier in lower non-managerial positions, and that promotion can end in unhappiness or burnout, what wasn't mentioned in the study is whether you really want power-hungry people in management positions just because it would be a better fit for their motivations.
I had some piss-poor managers that loved power and for them it was a good personality fit.
It might be better in many situations to have someone that doesn't want the power, is knowledgeable of the job of those they are managing, is well-respected, and is a great leader to lead for some years and burnout or leave than it would be to have a power-hungry imbecile with no respect from their team leading for many years because they are a good personality fit.
That said, I think that if you can find someone that is both a good personality fit and a great fit as a leader of the team, then that's better than promoting someone that will burnout, but only as long as it is just information used for decision between candidates and not a determining factor.
Is 97 respondents to an online survey enough to be statistically significant?
Like:
Oh boo hoo, I suffered burnout
this one time because I was so
incompetant. Good on my boss for
firing me when I deserved it!
But this article points to an interesting symmetry of blame: the workers beats themselves up, and the employers express absurd, overbearing demands, or some combination of the two. Worst case scenarios being the blind leading the blind.
You rarely see articles that provide a cold look at employer/employee relationships, and explore scenarios where emotional investment is optional on both sides of the table.