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Comment by znpy | Hacker News Reader

The advice is even worse:

> The way you motivate someone who doesn’t need the money is the same way you should motivate people who do need the money: by giving them meaningful roles with real responsibility where they can see how their efforts contribute to a larger whole

Completely misses the point: the manager needs Jean, not the way around.

Not to mention, Jean could just plain refuse to take on the "meaningful" role, if she likes what she does now and how things are going currently.

Whatcha gonna do if the "meaningful role" isn't so meaningful to her?

Some people just don't understand: Jean is probably in a better position than both the manager asking the question and the person giving the "advice".

The manager just can't have leverage over her.

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So what?

It's a very useful skill to know how to entice, encourage, and work with people who have more power than you. Among other benefits, it opens up positions in the very top echelons of society, where (by definition) you are going to meet lots of people you have zero leverage over. It also means you get to work on high-performing teams (high-performing employees tend to get their pick of where they work), and it's just a lot nicer work environment when everybody is there because they choose to be rather than because they have to be.

I feel like there's some fairly large subset of humanity that assumes that nothing ever gets done without some overseer cracking the whip, and just lacks the conceptual framework to understand people coming together to accomplish things because they mutually agree that it's work worth doing. It's worth breaking out of that frame.

Whatcha gonna do if the "meaningful role" isn't so meaningful to her?

Then it's not a meaningful role -- clearly the role needs to be meaningful to Jean or it's no incentive to work there.

My wife has a "Jean" at the nonprofit she works for -- she and her husband both come from wealthy family. Jean continues to work there purely because she believes in the mission of the organization and feels that she's making a valuable contribution. She draws a token salary but donates that back to the organization at the end of the year.

It's certainly possible to find meaningful roles that people will enjoy working at even if they don't care about the salary.

I haven’t read the article, but you might be the one missing the point: a meaningful role can be meaningful for both parties.

You need to get to a product/market fit in some sense.

> Completely misses the point: the manager needs Jean, not the way around.

I think you miss the point: Something meaningful in this case is (probably) meant as "something Jean thinks of as good and important", with the intention that Jean herself is happy and simply doesn't want to leave.

Exactly. Maybe she enjoys the work enough that she wants to do it when it’s convenient for her, but would set it aside if something more interesting to her came up — which could be family! or a holiday! Or retirement! Or a different job! There doesn’t have to be grand purpose to employment and there can be a mis-alignment of goals: maybe the employer values reliability over skill, maybe she isn’t the perfect employee because of her likelihood to leave… that’s the assessment the employer has to make, there’s no magic solution.

The idea that the employer just needs to incentivise the employee the right way is absurd.

I have a friend that has been in “funemployment” for the last 20 months.

He always says he wishes he could take “working vacations” to exercise his productive self.

It’s a bit like contacting, if the contractor didn’t need the money but was looking for an interesting challenge.

I have a feeling this will be the future of employment. Basically salary positions with 9-11 months of unpaid vacation. We just need a really good project/schedule management solution.

The idea that the employer just needs to incentivise the employee the right way is absurd.

Why is that absurd? Who would work at a job if they aren't incentivized the right way? My employer incentivizes me with a salary and interesting work. Take either of those away and I'll look for a new job. For "Jean", then interesting (or otherwise rewarding) work is the only way to incentivize her.

Sounds like you either missed the point, or didn’t read the whole article.

Relying on a magical single person, where it would be a disaster if they suddenly left, is a bad spot to be in. “Bus factor” seems to be the main point of this advice.

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