Do happier people work harder? | Hacker News Reader

Do happier people work harder?

nytimes.com

95 pointstylerneylon25 comments

Maybe they do, maybe they don't.

But I'll tell you one thing unhappy people do: they leave, taking all your institutional knowledge with them. And now you're on the hook for some serious employee acquisition costs, not to mention the downed productivity and training.

I recently left my job for another one, and it looks like my former colleagues are leaving one by one also. This is one of the major household-name software companies, one with a particularly infamous attrition rate. Every single person who's leaving started down that path because they were unhappy, not because someone made them an offer they couldn't refuse.

In this market, if your employees are not happy they will get poached.

If employees are leaving, at least it becomes obvious there is a problem. It is when people don't leave that the company is in serious danger. When unhappy employees do just enough not to get fired, they end up impeding their co-workers, who burn out and also become unhappy. I've seen departments where people spent more time explaining why they couldn't work than working.

The attrition rate isn't the worst part. The worst part is what's known as the "Dead Sea effect" - all of the people who can leave, do. They're usually the better ones, at which point you're left with all the clueless or unskilled people who couldn't find better jobs.

    In this market, if your employees are not happy they will get poached.

...and they'll poach themselves even if you offer them a little salary bump, or a $50 gift certificate for that time they came in and worked through the weekend taking 2-hour naps in their office.

I've known several people over the years that took fairly large pay cuts just to get to an environment where they were allowed to do a good job, unobstructed, at something they enjoyed and did well.

I think this is all lost on many companies, though. It seems to happen most often when the organization has large groups of people that are completely removed from the customer and any negative impact of bad decisions on the production.

Another report on the same study, from Jan. 2001 in the Harvard Business Review: http://hbr.org/2010/01/the-hbr-list-breakthrough-ideas-for-2...

Here, the authors identify "making progress" as the single best predictor (of a number that they looked for) for job satisfaction, beginning a circle that is closed with the NYT article.

My job requires solving problems. The happier I am, the easier it is, because being worried about anything is quite a distraction. I'm not sure if I work harder when I'm happy, but it's certainly easier to get things done.

In my experience, there are some personality traits that cause some to people to strive far harder than others.

I think a strong desire to rectify deep rooted feelings of discontent and dissatisfaction can lead some people to work far harder than others - but in these cases actually achieving, eventually leads to a feeling of happiness.

EDIT: Down-voted for this? Seriously?

Most people describe call what you're describing 'ambition.' Some people want to do more than other people and set loftier goals for themselves. However, I think it's a huge mistake to say that "in these cases actually achieving, eventually leads to a feeling of happiness." You're implying that ambition is the only road to happiness, when there is a preponderance of evidence to the contrary.

I think it's far more likely that highly ambitious people have a far more difficult time being as happy as other, "normal" people. If you spend a lot of mental energy focusing on the points where the world rubs you the wrong way you're not going to feel happy regardless of whether you try to fix those points.

I'm not saying that ambition is the only road to happiness.

I think you're correct - more highly ambitious people probably do have a far more difficult time being 'happy'.

I am trying to imply that the pursuit of happiness can make people work harder. For the ambitious - it's often used as a metaphorical carrot on a stick.

Is this a new realization? Herzberg's motivation-hygiene theory explains that 'hygiene' factors keep a person from being unhappy, but aren't themselves motivators. So having a good salary keeps someone from becoming unhappy, but isn't itself a motivator (except possibly a very short time).

And as Gladwell writes in Outliers: "Those three things—autonomy, complexity, and a connection between effort and reward—are, most people agree, the three qualities that work has to have if it is to be satisfying."

Very similar to Autonomy, mastery, and purpose.. from a TED talk. http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html

Interesting stuff, thanks for posting. Ordered the book and looking forward to reading it.

As a software developer this talk about the importance of making small steps of progress, makes me associate this with Test-Driven Development, where I, or even better me and my pair-programming partner, continually get a sense of progress.

> Fully 95 percent of these managers failed to recognize that progress in meaningful work is the primary motivator, well ahead of traditional incentives like raises and bonuses.

I find this especially striking, considering how taking part in producing excellent products employees can be proud of and take ownership in is one of the key aspects in the quality management philosophy coming from Japan / W.E. Deming - and these philosophies should be sufficiently popular and known in the western world by now since they are very typical management training material.

Let me try and think back to the last manager I had that actually had more than a 2-day leadership course in management training... (and the last guy was confident enough to say that it was a waste of his time going to the leadership course, 1.5 months before his best employee moved to a different job working for his rival).

I, also, if I'm really honest with myself, just want to build cool shit with my time.

> I, also, if I'm really honest with myself, just want to build cool shit with my time.

And that is _EXACTLY_ what your manager should actually enable and encourage and support you to do and that's pretty much what good management training should come down to IMHO.

yes.

Are all generalizations always wrong?

No.

Work that fulfills people is done hard until finish and gets the love of polish

Happier people don't bother to work. Because they are happy where they are. They don't need more. Greedy people work harder.

I think you're mistaken in the assumption that greed and happiness are mutually exclusive.

More importantly (in my opinion), the bigger mistake is the idea that people only work hard for greed. I know plenty of people who work hard in a job they enjoy, chosing to do so rather than move somewhere else that would pay them far higher wages but that they think they would enjoy less.

No. Happier people work smarter. ^_^

Already down voted by cool hackers, so perhaps I need to put some first-grader-level explanations. ^_^

The classical saying declares that 'the only hell on Earth is ignorance'. The description of stupidity is, in general, 'restricted, repetitive behavior'. Several studies says that what we call a luck is a matter of attention and awareness (Catch the moment! - you know). Stress reduces awareness, make people too narrow, too repetitive (defense mechanism). Now, try to recall an illustration from famous (among hackers) Alan Kay's lectures, where people digging for a treasure and they're doubling the effort instead of shifting to other place. And at last, but not least, especially related to silent down-voting - one can't see what one don't know - recognizing has this 're' in front of it. ^_^

So, happier people, which means less restricted, less repetitive, less self-limited, more open, more aware, more awake, with broader vision and greater attention, calmer and balanced yes, in consequence, work smarter rather than harder.

True. Confident people are less likely to do unnecessary things out of self-doubt: testing themselves or trying to win external validation. Confident people are more likely to focus on the work that matters and more likely to be happy. Ergo happy people are more likely to be efficient.

I think this ^_^ thing is likely to attract downvoters, if nothing else.

yeah, they are so serious and proud, these hackers. =)

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