Hacker News Reader

Comment by j_baker | Hacker News Reader

No you don't. Money is a terrible motivator. If the only thing that is keeping you from working hard is the prospect of making more money, might I suggest that you've chosen the wrong career?

I'm not saying that Equalland is desirable. I'm just saying that I think you're overestimating the effect money has on how productive people are.

View on HN

When that money is used to fund something you love to do outside of work, it can be an extremely good motivator. Not everyone requires that their job be the most fulfilling aspect of their life. Plenty of people live for a hobby, a local sports team, travel, raising their children, etc.

Can I hire you? Money doesn't motivate you right? Minimum wage, no benefits and 80hr weeks are required.

If the job was something he absolutely loved doing, that might be an attractive offer.

What if the job was laying in a park, testing out the effectiveness of new marijuana strains?

It's not my point that there are no other motivations, merely that money is a primary one.

I think we can all agree that your point was not well supported. By the way, how much do you get paid for participating in HN? Your average karma is 4.4; by the community's judgement, you put some good work into commenting.

Oh, so we're playing the reductio ad absurdum game now? Ok, I'll bite. I'll pay you $1 million to jump off the Golden Gate Bridge. Wait, what was that? Money can't motivate you to do that?

Gladly. New meaning to the term golden parachute. Additionally I bet you'd find that there are people who would take that offer even if it meant their certain death.

Fyi, reductio ad absurdum is a valid method of argument.

I imagine I'd get a lot more applicants applying to my job post if I paid $1million vs. minimum wage. You may say money is a terrible motivator, but people will go through all sorts of horrible things for very small amounts of it.

Reductio ad absurdum is only valid if the proposition is a binary true or false proposition. This question involves a matter of degree, not a binary true or false.

Also, it's important to note that if you posted the job for $1 million you'd get a lot of applicants, but they wouldn't be happy or last very long. It turns out that there is such thing as paying someone too much. The reason being that money is a form of external motivation. Too much external motivation decreases intrinsic motivation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivation#Intrinsic_and_extrin...

Yes! If it is for two years and I get a master's degree at the end of it.

(Okay, it wasn't quite 80hr-weeks, and I earned slightly more than minimum wage, but...)

You wouldn't get me to work 80hr weeks even if you offered me a lot of money. Money wouldn't be enough of a motivation to do that.But I did 80hr weeks for minimum wage already because of other benefits (keeping rights on the source-code which I wrote in that time).

"Can I hire you? Money doesn't motivate you right?"

You failed to provide any alternate motivation. Some people actually take conditions similar to ones you described but they work in the greatest labs on the most interesting problems of contemporary science. They also usually get a phd after a few years.

There is also no implication from "Money is a poor motivator for me" to "80 hr week is not a demotivator for me".

Money is a terrible motivator? lol. What's this nonsense? Give me your name and address, I'll write you a check for $1500 free and clear to take back what you just said.

And we could threaten someone's family to show the counterpoint to that point.

Money's a great motivator until you're near your threshold earnings, and then other things start slipping in, like, for instance, the ability to make a point. Then, of course, is the discussion about why anyone wants money...and the fact that there's more direct ways to affect the value in someone's life. Hate to sound the sociopath, but money doesn't stack up against a family.

After reading your post, I'm tempted to tell my boss to compensate me instead with hugs, rainbows, high fives and other family-like perks. Since family should motivate me more than money can. </s>

So that no-one will seriously misread it as such, I'll explain that I meant threatening a family, rather than...family like perks.

>And we could threaten someone's family to show the counterpoint to that point.

That's why a hell of a lot of people are working - if they don't work, their family would get to go live in a box on the sidewalk. That's another way of saying that workers are motivated by money, for a sizable fraction of workers.

Did I say that money provided no motivation at all? People perform better when they're doing what they love. At a very minimum, money is a terrible motivator when it's the only form of motivation a person has as the person I was responding to seemed to suggest.

And for the record, nobody paid me to write that comment in the first place.

That depends on how much money you have. If you are well taken care of then yeah money is a poor motivator. If you are in real need then money becomes quite the motivator(If only as a proxy for those other needs.) Most of the crime around the world is solely driven by the need to acquire wealth by means easier, quicker than legally possible. Crime seems to be doing quite well for itself even with the serious consequences for breaking the law.

Watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrkrvAUbU9Y and then get back to me on how good a motivator money is.

When I saw your link, I was fully expecting this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc -- also quite entertaining and informative.

potential counter arguments can be found in daniel pink's interview at econtalk.org

http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2010/08/daniel_pink_on.html

Clearly you're more motivated to win an argument on the internet than to keep $1500. That would seem to belie your argument.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com