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Comment by kqr | Hacker News Reader

I think I spot several mistakes of reasoning in your comment, but they essentially boil down to this: it sounds like you're too confident in your personal experiences to generalise to humans as a species.

I think -- like you describe -- that many people will go through life only ever motivating their work with money. I think this can happen for any number of reasons, some of which are just personality traits, and that's fine.

In other words, I won't contest your experiences because I fully believe you share them with many other people. However, I also don't think they invalidate the general results that a lot of people could be paid enough in a good enough environment to remove money as a motivator, that would be cheaper for companies, and society would be better off for it.

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Maybe you are right, but to be fair, I worked all over Europe in various countries and cultures. Pretty much everyone I worked with in engineering circles would prefer more money over an 'employee of the month' award.

The thing is, when people/self help gurus/whatnot talk about money not bringing happiness and job satisfaction and whatnot, they are using that against you (general you). What is paid enough anyway? If I have 5 kids, and you have none, it will probably be different. Or if your hobby is race cars and for me walking in the park? And the most important is, more money = safer future. If you exclude the FAANGs, most people are underpaid (in the sense of being enough to be happy and safe for the future) and the 75K and money doesn't equal happiness is used against them. It is nothing but owners/managers trying to get the most of the person for the least they can pay (why is taboo to talk about salaries? or you are asked sometimes to not speak of the bonus you got, etc?)

Just assume if a company is trying to 'convince' you for less money (even if you are asking for 500k and they want to offer you 450k 'only) by saying they are good company, teamwork, etc etc, just be sure, 99% of the time the owner/manager wants those 50k for his own bank account/benefit. If money didn't matter, the owners would be super happy to give their profits in forms of higher wages to the employees.

You might be surprised, but I agree with almost all of that.

I want to emphasise that when I talk about motivation higher than money, it is definitely not an employee of the month award. If that is your idea of intrinsic motivation, I can absolutely understand your confusion.

The threshold for how much money is enough money to not be a concern depends on both personal opinions as well as the community around the person, just as you say.

If a company tries to convince me it's worth a pay cut to work there, that's a strong signal they are running an awful environment.

The best places I've worked are the ones where managers say, "If you ever feel economically undervalued, please just ask for a higher salary. It would be so silly to lose you over something we can so easily fix."

When I talk about "money should not be a concern" I really mean that. If they are trying to get you for less money, then clearly money is a concern around there, invalidating everything else about intrinsic motivation.

The reason why so many people are talking past you is almost no one has had a boss that says "just ask for a higher salary" and most bosses act like the king of shit mountain for giving you 1% more than you got last year.

One of the most common pretenses used? Family. We're a family, we work like a family, everyone here is a family. Wouldn't you work overtime for the family? You should sacrifice for the family. You should die for the family.

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