Ask HN: What motivates you in your work?
What is the breakdown of your motivation in choosing jobs, contracts or building startups? How much of it is money driven and what are the other factors? Did it change in the course of your career?
In no particular order:
Money: There's a certain threshold of that I need to achieve to maintain the lifestyle that I want. I'll take as much over that threshold as I can get, but below it is a no-go.
Remote: I move a lot, my average lease anywhere is 6 months. I want to live in every state in the U.S. and perhaps a couple countries in Europe and Asia before I die, being able to be remote lets me make that happen.
Professional Satisfaction: I like the problems that I'm solving to be overall interesting, that is, I would like them to have some novelty and perhaps be challenging my existing skill set. I am not interested in just doing route work where I am stagnating by just exercising the same skills or challenges over and over again. If not, it becomes difficult to be motivated for the day-to-day work.
Ethical Behavior: I set a high standard for the ethical treatment of clients and client's clients and I expect my employer to as well. This means not collecting or sharing private user data if we do not have the resources to do it securely. This means turning down feature requests or projects because the client is asking for behavior that is legally dubious, abuses privileged information, or would be do more harm to the client or the client's clients then good. I do not believe in selling a project to someone if I cannot stand behind the service. That is will be overall beneficial and has the possibility to succeed. I don't want to waste someone else's money on a project that has no or little chance of success or promise them false hope in order to make a sale.
All three of those are genuine ends in themselves. If any is missing, I'll be unhappy. If I'm not earning enough, I'll be worried. If I'm making a fortune but doing horrible work, I'll yearn all day for something else. If I'm eagerly diving into the latest tech but my clients are dissatisfied, I'll feel like I don't deserve their business.
Each goal is also a means to the other two, but it's important to keep that in the background. Of course I'll earn more if I keep my clients happy, but if that's my only motivation, things will eventually break down. One reason I freelance is that I value the interpersonal side of software development, meeting with clients and helping them achieve their goals.
There are projects I've really sought that didn't pay as well I could make but were interesting or would let me develop new skills. There are projects I've sought because of who I could work with. I'm willing to give up some cash for those ends. I'm still financially motivated, but I like my job and I take pride in it, so money isn't everything.
1. Working with people that challenge me, make me laugh, and who do great work. And who I can have a beer with :) That goes for the team here and our customers.
2. Doing projects or products that are challenging and somehow "meaningful" to me. I like to enter unchartered territory in my projects where possible.
3. Earning enough money to be happy day to day (I don't need much), but having the slightest opportunity to earn LOADS of money :)
It did change my career. I started out earning good money contracting ($200K) and got bored after 4 years. Then started a business working with good people but bad clients and non-meaningful project, the business failed after 4 years. Now I'm building products and projects with great clients earning reasonable money, and working with a fun team.
It's all about playing with technology and using it to solve problems.