I definitely notice a huge difference in desire to get up in the morning depending on the importance of what I'm working on. If it's menial or ultimately unimportant work, I can feel burned out working 30-40 hour weeks. If it's world changing stuff that's never been done before and will save thousands or millions of lives, I feel engaged working 60-80 hours a week.
When an employer is trying to recruit me, they don't need to offer more money than everyone else. They need to sell me on the importance of what I will be working on. For example, autonomous vehicles present continuous research and engineering challenges for which you often must provide the first solution anyone has ever devised. This addresses the problem of menial work. Accelerating the overall global development, production, and adoption of autonomous vehicles by a single day could save over a thousand lives. This addresses the problem of importance of work.
At the end of the day, money is secondary. I need enough that I don't need to worry about struggling financially; but, the primary reason I will accept an offer has nothing to do with money. We spend a large portion of our lives working. So, we better enjoy whatever it is that we do.
More money is always better. More money means more savings, which means sooner retirement.
An American investment banker was at the pier of a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat were several large yellowfin tuna. The American complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them.
The Mexican replied, “only a little while.”
The American then asked why didn’t he stay out longer and catch more fish?
The Mexican said he had enough to support his family’s immediate needs.
The American then asked, “but what do you do with the rest of your time?”
The Mexican fisherman said, “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siestas with my wife, Maria, and stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine, and play guitar with my amigos. I have a full and busy life.”
The American scoffed. “I have an MBA from Harvard, and can help you,” he said. “You should spend more time fishing, and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat. With the proceeds from the bigger boat, you could buy several boats, and eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middle-man, you could sell directly to the processor, eventually opening up your own cannery. You could control the product, processing, and distribution,” he said. “Of course, you would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then Los Angeles, and eventually to New York City, where you will run your expanding enterprise.”
The Mexican fisherman asked, “But, how long will this all take?”
To which the American replied, “Oh, 15 to 20 years or so.”
“But what then?” asked the Mexican.
The American laughed and said, “That’s the best part. When the time was right, you would announce an IPO, and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich. You would make millions!”
“Millions – then what?”
The American said, “Then you could retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you could sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siestas with your wife, and stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play guitar with your amigos.”
First, let's talk about your assertion - we're basically all just in this for the money. If you want to make that claim, you have to be able to answer why. Why is money important? Why would we do anything just for money? Money itself is irrelevant, we only want it because of what we can get with it. So, let's go a step further and figure out what we'll buy with that money. Sure, you're going to buy things for yourself - most people likely will. But are they going to spend it all on themselves? Most likely not. Many people will spend that on gifts for their spouse, a vacation for their family, school for their children, a new house or car to improve the lifestyle of their loved ones. All of these things are honest reasons we justify spending our lives working - to improve not just our own life, but the lives of those we love (and for many great people in the world - the lives of people they've never met).
Second, let's go towards your statement that people just can't have a deep passion for things. You're saying that people can't do something because they're particularly interested in or dedicated to a particular issue? Ok, explain Doctors Without Borders, the Boys & Girls Club of America, St. Jude Children's Hospital, or literally any other charitable organization in the world. Are its founders, low-paid employees (relative to market potential), and unpaid volunteers just in this for the money also?
I'm keeping my cool here on this, because ultimately this is a comment and we're all free to express our minds - but I'm offended by the assertion that we can't care about anything other than money. And that's after you get past the fact that the statement on its face doesn't actually make sense, because none of us care about money - we only care about what we can get with it.
Edit: perhaps a bit of an overreaction to otherwise benign comments on behalf of the OP. I still feel strongly about my comments here, but may have misunderstood the intent of OP's statements.
That said, I do know engineers that work at startups and actually are pumped by the vision - they're excited about what they're building and what it could mean for the future.
I'm not sure how I'm misquoting you here - you very clearly and plainly said you assume 90%+ of people who say anything other than money is their motivation are lying to you and themselves.
As for your comment that you need money to live - of course you do. That's a far cry from your statement, which is that people are solely motivated by money. The typical HN reader likely makes above the average salary, so they're already past the point of working for enough of a salary to live, and they're in the disposable income territory.
Money is just a proxy for useful things you can request.
How can we all be working solely for money when none of us actually care about the money - we care about all the other things that the money gets us that the original comment explicitly stated we don't care about.
Edit: I think we're on the same page here, but perhaps I could have clarified what I meant in my comment. Money itself is meaningless, as you mentioned, it's a proxy for other things we can get. Which is why it makes no sense to say we're motivated by money. We're motivated by the things we want that money to buy for us.
"I can see what is going on in my head, that I tend to materialise some image of my future self, create value for the family and the environment I live in, position myself good for the future-needed skills, have joy in what I do, have more freedom to decide of my future direction ... there are many different triggers of motivation for my actions, but from time to time they seem random and misaligned."
In that context, he's clearly referring to (at least to me it seems) deeper motivations that simply financial. So, to have the top comment on this page say 90%+ of us are motivated financially and lying if we say otherwise, in the context of this topic, I think is just wrong.
That said, I've edited my original comment to clarify I may have misunderstood the one I replied to.
why do you think articles on salary and negotiation are so popular here?
Yeah, it's called a personal life. Work is basically that thing I do to make the stuff I do in my personal life possible or more comfortable. Or simply not starve. Would I rather have some sort of enjoyment in the work I do? Yeah, but the truth is I can be happy enough doing janitorial work or working retail so long as the work environment and pay is good enough. It is just a job, after all, even when the pay is good or it takes studying. While a few folks might hit the work/job lottery and get something they actually enjoy, I think work is just a job for most folks. It isn't cynical or jaded. It simply is.
Would I work if I won a lottery or if I didn't need money? Nope. Definitely not. I might have a few projects that look kinda like work if lottery-rich, but the truth is I'd just hire folks to do most of it for me. I'd mostly want to travel and make artwork and try out different sorts of hobbies. I'd work on getting weird and eccentric.
I enjoy programming, but I definitely wouldn't be doing it if I didn't need the work.
I think people ream me up about that because they find great anger in someone who is good at programming but didn't want to grow up to be a programmer. Because that conflicts everything they've ever thought in their lives.