The four motivators (2016) | Hacker News Reader

The four motivators (2016)

apenwarr.ca

78 pointsapenwarr14 comments

Interesting to compare with the Bartle types [1]. Richard Bartle categorizes players of online games into categories based on what their primary motivation is. (Players are usually some weighted combination of the four.)

The types are achievers (people who want the highest score), explorers (people who want to understand the game world), socializers (people who are there to hang out with other people), and killers (competitive types who aren't satisfied with winning unless someone else loses).

"Loyalty to a social group" sounds like socializers. "Loyalty to a person" could also be characteristic of socializers. "Loyalty to a vision" is absent from Bartle's types, presumably because people generally view games as entertainment and don't look for meaning in them the same way they look for meaning from work. "Money and perks" seems kind of similar to achievers, or to killers if their primary motivation is not just to obtain wealth for their own necessity or enjoyment but rather to gain more wealth than their peers.

Bartle's explorer type doesn't seem to have a clear equivalent, unless one considers the pursuit of knowledge to be one form of loyalty to a vision.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartle_taxonomy_of_player_type...

As an 87% Explorer myself, I think "loyalty to an environment" might be a closer fit than "loyalty to a vision". I want to get invested in a game world -- its lore, its inhabitants, and the many different places that it comprises. I like finding hidden places that most people would never see. There's no particular vision here; in fact, I spent quite a lot of time in World of Warcraft hunting for ways into the geography _between_ zones, which had all kinds of messed up terrain that was clearly not envisioned in any sense. And when the prospect arose of flying mounts allowing anyone to explore the interstitial spaces of Azeroth, that meant the developers would have to cover over all those special places I enjoyed. The devs certainly had a vision, but I felt no particular loyalty to it.

A fun discussion on characterizing the motivations of gamers is "Engines of Play: How Player Motivation Changes over Time" [1]. I'm not hugely in love with the sorts of models, he builds, but any sort of structure is useful for kickstarting your thought.

The big win in that talk, though, was that he introduced me to Self-Determination Theory[2]. A very convincing theory on motivation. It's introduced in the talk at 38:05.

[1]: https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1023329/Engines-of-Play-How-Pl... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-determination_theory

There's a great book on motivation that splits this differently:

1) realizing/seeing the impact of your work on real human beings

2) having objective metrics that you are influencing

3) being part of a team that treats you like a human and cares about you

The book is called "The Truth about Employee Engagement" by Patrick Lencioni

Your motivators feel much more accurate to me

That sounds suspiciously like autonomy, competence and relatedness from self-determination theory.

None of these really applied to me when I was happiest while working (Freshbooks, 2008).

Back then I was able to both learn and perform at astonishing rates. I had a manager back then that really understood my strengths (self-directed, inventive, intelligent, learns quickly) and my weaknesses (bored by routine work, sometimes silly) and just set up an environment around me to where I was constantly over performing.

I think I made FreshBooks close to a million dollars in value that year. I didn't care about invoicing. I wasn't loyal to my manager. I was motivated by my growth and performance.

Sounds like you were motivated by your vision of what good software looks like.

I think OP's article is missing Loyalty to the Challenge.

This list feels incomplete. I wish I could find a link to the referenced HBR article to evaluate whether their study is worth anything.

For example, I'm surprised to find no mention of quality of life or more specifically work-life balance. Surely that's a dimension that motivates at least as many people as "loyalty to a social group," and it's rare to have a meaningful discussion of compensation without considering the trade-off with work-life balance.

What's more, there's no mention of the enjoyability of the work itself. I think many software engineers can attest that it's hard to beat a tight feedback loop combined with a problem that's just on the edge of your circle of competency. Or, to put it bluntly, would you be more motivated in your job as a {insert money-is-no-issue-dream-job here} or working the "returns" counter at Macy's?

The list seems incomplete since it might have been written from a management perspective: what buttons to press to motivate someone to work?

Still I think work-life balance and iterative problem solving are part vision, part perks, in the sense that I have a larger vision of how I want to work, and this job has the perk of letting me do that.

> the four things that might motivate any given worker in their job

These are certainly interesting forms of loyalty but they fall a long way short of capturing what motivates a person in their job.

I can't recall the source but at some point I found the following list and feel it's a better set of overall motivators:

- automony: the ability to work how and when you want to work in order to deliver an outcome

- mastery: excelling at a craft you enjoy and is respected by your peers

- purpose: feeling connected to your work and that it helps others in a meaningful way (I'd fit the 4 forms of loyalty here)

- fairness in compensation: the sense that you're compensated fairly with respect to colleagues, industry peers and beyond.

'Autonomy, mastery and purpose' is from Dan Pink [0].

I think both lists, and most if not all of the comments here, are missing a notion of status or prestige.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drive:_The_Surprising_Truth_Ab...

Think about extreme points of the tradeoff curve between these variables, and you've got yourself an insight!

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