We need motivation (good managers) | Hacker News Reader

We need motivation (good managers)

ethanalter.com

39 pointsethlala69 comments

Most programmers program for fun in th their free time. If you want to motivate us, then don't do things that demotivate us and you'll find us motivated.

What demotivates me are meetings with outcomes I don't care about. I don't care about story points, and meetings focused on story points demotivate me. I'm demotivated by sprints followed by another sprint followed by another sprint; the problem is right there in the name. I'm demotivated by deadlines I cannot comfortably meet and other dictates passed down from above.

The problem is that once upon a time, someone wrote a management book that said that setting deadlines can push people to work harder — and to an extent that's true — but if you take that idea to the extreme and every week is an important deadline, eventually the magic runs out and you end up just burning everyone out. Good managers know this of course, and work hard to find some kind of a balance between their team, higher management, external parties etc. Bad managers operate on auto and do whatever is currently en vogue.

Problem with sprints is some people treat those as deadlines- while end of sprint is just a checkpoint.

What was delivered what was not delivered- then we can ask why something wasn’t delivered. We can ask is what we build still relevant? Maybe we need to cut some.

Very important to identify if some issues will take more than one sprint and still break it down as much as possible and figure out what needs to be stubbed out that first sprint. I am not huge on the process, but too many people dont take full advantage of what seem like obvious ways to keep yourself out of trouble, and if for some awful reason you miss the deadline regardless, document everything that has been finished, and create new follow up tasks for the next sprint. No need to freak out and continue a task over unless it was one of the last tasks assigned.

I prefer to just try and simplify the process and ensure people dont feel more stress than is healthy. Deadlines are always ideal, they are never truly sensible because you cannot foresee a problem down the road with the design until enough ground has been broken. I have seen managers ask near the end who approved an approach and yet they are the only ones in the room who do that, but nobody wants to tell the guy who can fire you that they in fact made the bad call.

In my experience a miniscule proportion of programmers code for fun.

Maybe the parent post is exaggerating a bit, but I think that at least it is fair to say that most good programmers began programming just for fun. And when managed well and presented with interesting problems, they will become highly productive and self-driven.

Again, inaccurate. There is a self-selection process at work here in certain roles and domains, maybe, but to boldly claim that your bubble is a representative sample of the entire industry is naive.

What the OP said is backed by large studies. For example, the HackerRank 2020 study (n=116,000) found that developers who code for fun tend to score higher on skill assessments.

The statement in my previous post, where I claimed most good programmers began coding for fun is also reasonable.

Having studied CS in a large state school, I did not find any student that did not begin programming for fun prior to enrolling at university.

I understand that this may not hold for every possible case, e.g. programmers without a CS degree that discovered programming later on, but it is still pretty reasonable.

I don’t think most programmers code for fun in their free time. I do and know quite some who also do code for fun but still….

Story points and sprints are there to save you from people who would otherwise come to you and ask for changes or shift priorities on daily basis.

You don’t care about story points but with them you can say “I am busy with this 8 pt story will pick next when I am done” instead of having some pointy haired boss insisting to do something else each day and after a month yelling at you “why nothing is finished”.

> I don’t think most programmers code for fun in their free time.

Maybe not, I haven't done a study. But literally every dev that I personally know (well enough to know what they do in their free time) does this.

> save you from people who would otherwise come to you and ask for changes or shift priorities on daily basis.

The problem is that one of the jobs of a manager is to shield devs from this. A manager who is bad enough that they aren't able to do that is probably also a manager who won't stop (or may even take part in) the abuse of Agile mechanisms as leverage over the devs.

I think this problem is one of the main reasons why agile is largely a failure.

> But literally every dev that I personally know

Your bubble is absurdly tiny. I assure you this is not the norm across software engineering as a whole.

You have no clue how large or small my professional circle is.

Since you claim to have knowledge about what is the norm across the entire field of software engineering rather than just the people in your own bubble, I assume that you have a study that informs your belief?

Maybe it is fair to say, probably 50% people develop for fun outside work, and another 50% don't?

That's an OK prior if you have literally no other information, but still isn't reasonable once you know anything about people.

In the absence of data, saying this is just as speculative as saying any other ratio. There's no reason to think any particular ratio is the correct one.

That's why I was very careful to point out that I was talking about my personal experience, and wasn't generalizing it to the field as a whole. I have no data to support any speculation about the field as a whole.

There are an estimated 28 million software developers in the world. How many millions do you know personally?

Your circle is incredibly small.

Everyone's circle is incredibly small by that definition, and those neither opinions hold any weight.

Literally zero of the devs I know spend a nontrivial amount of time coding for fun outside of work. Maybe a few small things once a year or so but hardly what I’d consider regular. We do often do ‘fun stuff’ at work though so it kind of scratches that itch

I think it is valuable to step back and see why meetings exist and then try to fix them if they are not addressing their purpose.

Meeting are valuable because they are solving a coordination problem. Without meetings people would be misaligned.

I want to have fun programming but I also want to make sure I am working on things that are important to the business and to the customers. Meetings help in navigating that vague space.

While the essay offers an interesting perspective on motivation and corporate culture, I disagree with some of its conclusions. The emphasis on middle managers as the key to resolving the current motivational crisis in the workplace seems overly simplistic. Middle managers indeed play a crucial role in team dynamics and motivation, but the issues at hand are systemic and require a broader approach than simply relying on individual managers.

The disillusionment in corporate culture and the evolving nature of work – especially in the context of remote work – are not problems that can be solely addressed at the managerial level. These issues are deeply rooted in the very structure and philosophy of modern corporations. Factors like job security, work-life balance, and meaningful work are increasingly important to employees. These are not needs that middle managers alone can satisfy; they require fundamental changes in corporate strategies and policies.

Furthermore, the essay seems to downplay the importance of company culture in favor of individual management styles. However, culture and management are not mutually exclusive. A strong, positive corporate culture can significantly enhance the effectiveness of good managers and can help align individual and organizational goals.

I actually think this is more of an aspirational view. Most power has been stripped from middle managers. They aren't making RTO decisions, they're enforcing them. They often aren't making autonomous promotion, pay increase, bonus determinations, they're delivering them. I could go on and one. Middle managers most often are not middle managers, they're hard conversation havers for weak executives pulling strings.

This is a bit tangential, but, have middle managers ever actually had those powers? I mean this in a genuine way. My post college career began in 2011, and all I've known is hopeful managers who aren't empowered to do much of anything like just decide to hire a person, give somebody a raise, or make major changes to company strategy or anything. Is that one of those things that really did exists like offices with closing doors and other things?

It's a fair question. To be fair, I entered my field post pharmacy school in 2013 and was immediately place in a middle manager position. The "old dogs" spoke a lot about the days of old in which they did have a lot of power and flexibility. I've since moved up in another company into a national VP level position and I hear the same from older VPs, they used to have more power and flexibility. So anecdotally, I think there has been a lot of consolidation and power hoarding in high level executive positions.

> have middle managers ever actually had those powers?

Oh, yes, I've had many managers who were empowered over the last 35+ years. I have one right now. But how true this is depends on the company culture.

I doubt that I'd stick around long at a company that wasn't like this. I'd leave on the basis of the company having poor management.

I was a [pretty damn good] manager, for over 25 years. I kept employees for decades, under conditions of significantly less pay and perks, than many other companies.

But I also managed a small, high-performing group of mature, experienced C++ programmers, for a corporation that actually believed in retaining talent for years. It was also one of the top imaging companies in the world, and they demanded a lot from us.

When they finally rolled up my team, after 27 years, the employee with the least tenure had a decade. The employees with the most (Yours Truly, and one other), had just shy of 27 years.

I'm pretty sure that my management style would get me fired, at most tech companies, these days.

> I kept employees for decades, under conditions of significantly less pay and perks, than many other companies.

I guess you were a good manager for the company, but were you one for your employees?

Yes.

There's a lot more to life than money; an unpopular stance for this crowd.

It’s not clear to me whether this is a “I kept wages down” story or “people stayed with the company because they liked me even though they had offers with larger numbers on them”.

Whatevs. I won't get into it. I've been called all sorts of evil names, here, because of my experience. I won't bother giving it much bandwidth.

[Edit]

> If you think there's more to life than money, then why are you so proud of underpaying your team members?

HN has a rather ... predictable ... zeitgeist.

I mean this is like when people recount working with Steve Jobs: “he yelled at us a bunch but he also had a real eye for perfection that was really important in making sure we were doing the right thing”. Was he a good manager? Obviously the part where he knew what was good and what wasn’t could be part of that argument. But was the yelling necessary? Could things have been done without it? Should a good manager make the most of what they have or should they advocate for changes to that? I think that’s a relevant question. If you want to feel good about the way you went about something I’m not going to stop you but it seems like a relevant question to ask since a lot of people who do say this end up being absolutely awful managers. You could approach this with, say, “I focused on my employees’ job satisfaction” or “I made sure they felt their voices were heard” or whatever but just going “my employees were paid less” and expecting a different response is kind of naive on your part.

I mentioned it as a challenge, not as a good thing.

I think I'm done, here.

Have a great day!

I read it as such too. Not sure why everyone got so upset.

If you think there's more to life than money, then why are you so proud of underpaying your team members?

As a manger myself, I don't think OP is proud of underpaying his team.

We fight management for more salary for sure. At the end we are employee ourselves as well. But even at a medium size company, there are multiple layers even at an executive level you won't be able to talk to, for example, the board or VC.

What I believe OP trying to say here is that, despite all these, he did the best he can to maintain his relationship with his team, and motivate the best he can, and succeeded.

PM is not CFO.

26 years at Nikon! Did you work on NIS Elements? Have come across that a few times, we have a buttload of Nikon scopes.

We were software imaging pipeline (and device control/SDKs, early on). We worked on Photo stuff. The scopes were done by Instruments, who worked near us.

> I kept employees for decades, under conditions of significantly less pay and perks, than many other companies.

You sound like the sort of manager I look for when I'm evaluating a company to work for. As a dev, I value good management more highly than great pay or perks.

So tell us more about your management style!

We do need motivation from good managers, which can only be effective after the C-suite stops kneecapping the "safety" hierarchy near the bottom.

You can't talk about Maslows Heirarchy and how "[middle managers] are the ones best positioned to both understand the needs of individuals and motivate those individuals based on that understanding" without spending a LOT more time acknowledging that middle managers can't do shit in the face of corporate leadership across the entire industry behaving like erratic parents that are traumatizing the masses. We have witnessed nearly all the companies we all work for go on huge hiring and then firing sprees. It's like giving someone a house and then burning down 1/4 of it to save money. Sure there's less upkeep, but did you folks really think no one might find that a little... traumatic?

I am a little sad that there was no homage to autonomy, mastery, and purpose. I've found that to be the most accurate and simple framework for intrinsic motivation. I think purpose is the clear problem. How does working make you feel?

Pick your company and I think what might have started out as a venerable goal, expressed in a mission statement has long been forgotten:

  Google: Organize the world's information and make it universally accessible
  Facebook: Give people the capacity to form communities and bring the globe closer together
  Amazon: Amazon's mission is to be Earth's most customer-centric company
  Microsoft: Our mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more

When faced with the choice between mission and money, which companies are choosing their mission?

None of them. Because all of corporate America has one mission statement that decisions are made in regards to: Increase shareholder value by optimizing for next quarters profits.

That is the problem. Mission statements are a punchline for cynical employees.

Mission statements have been little more than marketing tools for at least my entire career.

I think enshittification is literally the moment when a company goes from their mission statement to the standard American MBA enforced, short term oriented "next quarters profits" mission.

I think you might find early googlers or other early employees at other companies actually felt like they were enacting those missions, and now it is obvious at almost any of those companies that nobody, especially the leadership, cares about those missions.

I think it is middle managements core purpose to push back in defense of the mission, and articles like the one here are examples of cynical middle management who have given up on their core responsibility.

I think employee disillusionment can be measured by the difference between actual empirical priorities and the stated mission. I think this disillusionment is also a direct measure of short term thinking vs long term thinking. I think employee disillusionment is directly proportional to short term thinking.

I think the most valid criticism of almost every company is how much they are sacrificing their stated mission for profits.

I think pondering the difference between mission statement and actual action shows that mission statements really do matter.

After 30+ years as an engineer without reports I now spend more time motivating my managers to make them do what I want them to do vs. the other way around. I'll need to invert the advice in this post (if I can figure out what it's trying to say).

Whetever the message is, it's too weak a call. It sounds almost like they are saying mid managers should be paid more.

Largely agree that middle or rather direct managers are often the linchpin to motivation and happiness.

What can be terrible as a middle manager is the inability to address the who gets promoted dynamic. Many the immediate tools are unsatisfying or medium term detrimental.

What can be terrible for everyone else is seeing a manager force through a promotion of a bad or weak employee, who now makes even bigger messes that everyone else gets to deal with.

This appears at times to be a perverse status game - “I have so much pull I even got Joe promoted.”

I agree with most of the commenters that only the executives and companies can provide the needs at the bottom of the pyramid and in the current climate they are not doing so. If you keep using MHON to make the case that middle managers have to fill in the gap Maslow would say you have to at least partially fulfill the needs at the bottom of the pyramid first before the higher needs have any effect and a middle manager simply does not have the power to do so.

I love that you equated company culture to motivation at scale. That hit the nail on the head.

Nobody can make someone else motivated.

You can put someone in a situation where they can motivate themselves, but you personally can’t make anyone motivated to do anything.

If you disagree, think about this:

Would you bet your life that if you offered me $1,000,000 to work at Burger King for a year that I’d be motivated to take the offer? What about paying me $1,000,000,000 to sit on a beach for a year? Or maybe just a weekend?

> Nobody can make someone else motivated.

This is certainly true. But people can easily demotivate others.

Also false.

Would you bet your life that you could demotivate me and prevent me from sweeping my apartment floors tomorrow morning? What about demotivating me and keeping me from eating dinner tonight?

You can create a situation where I can become demotivated but ultimately I set my own level of motivation.

Maybe I couldn't demotivate you when it comes to your personal stuff, but I bet I could demotivate you in the workplace.

Well, maybe not you -- you might be an exceptional person in this regard -- but the majority of people.

Yes, I generally agree with that. But the fact that you are able to take an action that leads to people being demotivated doesn’t mean that you demotivated those people.

The people demotivated themselves as a result of your actions.

They could’ve just as easily remained motivated — they just chose not to.

That's like saying nobody can ever steal from anyone else because I wouldn't be willing to bet my life that I could steal your wallet from you. Just because things aren't 100% reliable, doesn't mean they're not possible.

OK then how much would you be willing to bet that you could demotivate or motivate me?

The difference in the wallet theft vs. motivation idea is that you have 0 control over my motivation. I am in 100% control of my motivation. You may be able to try to increase or decrease my motivation but you can’t control it.

Motivation’s not a thing you can pick up and take like a wallet. It’s not real and it’s mine.

I think if I were your direct supervisor I'd be about as confident in my ability to demotivate you as I would be in my ability to steal your wallet if I were a proficient pickpocket.

And you’d be wrong, in my opinion. If you’re a proficient pickpocket you’d be able to use your skill to take my wallet. I have no skill at actively protecting my wallet or knowing anything about pickpocketing.

If you’re my boss, I’m very confident that my ability to maintain my motivation is superior to your ability to demotivate me.

I’d confidently bet $5,000 on that — not that it’s a wager we can play out unless we work together one day.

I mean, I get what you are saying I think... but was is the practical difference between "you can put me in a place where I become demotivated" and "you can't demotivate me"?

The whole industry of coaching seemingly contradicts this take. I can become motivated from someone sharing a vision of what is possible that I didn't understand or believe in, and I can become unmotivated from eating dinner from watching a documentary on the food industry.

> you can put me in a place where I become demotivated

You’re leaving out an important word there.

> you can put me in a place where I can become demotivated

It’s not a foregone conclusion that I become demotivated because of your actions. Because your actions don’t guarantee my reaction.

> I can become unmotivated from eating dinner from watching a documentary on the food industry.

Yes, except that the demotivation is your action. Many people can happily eat dinner after watching the same documentary. The movie maker can try to influence your reaction but they don’t dictate it.

That’s the problem with homo economicus, the rational choice agent that makes economists swoon but is not so easy to find in reality. People have many reasons why they do what they do and sometimes they don’t understand their own motivations.

> People have many reasons why they do what they do and sometimes they don’t understand their own motivations.

So we’re in agreement here right? That people are doing things themselves. Others are not forcing their actions. Regardless of whether people consciously understand the reasoning behind their actions, their actions are still their own.

That’s where I think it gets complicated. At a physical level, yes, of course. But at the psychological or moral level, it’s murkier. People can be coerced, manipulated, or just plain drugged, and in a legal setting we would consider those to reduce culpability.

You do make a fair point that makes me reconsider this more.

However I think drugging someone is where you edge away from the concept of motivation into something else. But then it’s like is giving me a sulfonylurea motivating my pancreas to release a bit more insulin? Kind of, I think?

Maybe if you’re doing something that produces an involuntary and uncontrollable physical reaction, you can’t describe that as motivation? I’m not set on that though.

Setting aside drugs…

Sophisticated methods of coercive manipulation involve the coercing party looking at all the choices and options available to the target, and systematically removing or undermining all but the preferred option. Dark patterns in UX, legally dubious arbitration dispute clauses in consumer contracts, push polling, etc.

At that point, the target is still free to choose, but the options they choose from are stacked. They can still choose a non-optimal choice but probably won’t.

Two things not mentioned that I believe destroyed 'business culture' and employee motivation:

- Covid. Doesn't matter what you believe in how dangerous Covid is or is not, in Covid times companies happily required their employees to work in unsafe conditions (and now they're back at it again with requests to come into the office). A contract was broken in that time; why work for peanuts to risk long covid.

- A professionalisation of management. Ask a boomer, you used to be able to start at the bottom of a company and work your way into leadership levels. As an 'elder millennial' I have never worked in a company where that is possible: the leadership level usually consists of McKinsey, management consultant, finance people. If you don't have the background in those things you'll clearly never end up on that level. So why bother? (what's worse: complete demotivation because the leadership level has no domain expertise so spends its time inventing vague, waffely strategies far removed from the tech the company produces. see that recent linkedin google-employee post complaining about 'glassy-eyed leadership')

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/dhtheriault_my-hot-take-googl...

How do the custom underline styles work on that site? I've never seen handwritten-style underlines before.

Comes standard on Squarespace (which I've liked except for the expense) in the WYSIWYG post editor. I would not know how to make them from scratch.

It's a SVG path (look for element ".TextShape-node" in devtools), most likely animated using a rect "clip-path".

Here's an example using SVG path and clip-path: https://codepen.io/wildpeaks/pen/eYXMxoP

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