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Comment by johan_larson | Hacker News Reader

Generally speaking, if you have to pay people to do it, there is something nasty about the work. It's strenuous or dangerous or dirty or degrading or stressful or boring. If it were actually fun, people would be doing it for free.

(Exceptions, anyone?)

We programmers are quite lucky. At its worst our work is only frustrating. And we are well compensated, usually.

Don't get me wrong; programming itself can be lots of fun. But what you get paid for isn't the fun stuff. I doubt there is anyone who gets excited about upgrading and debugging aging Java applications.

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> if you have to pay people to do it, there is something nasty about the work

a) Even if it's a job I would do for free, you need to pay me because I need money in order to live.

b) Even if it's a job I do because I love it, you need to pay me to ensure that I do it at the pace and with the guarantees you need.

I wouldn't call either of these "nasty", although the first is arguable at a global scale.

Generally speaking, if you have to pay people to do it, there is something nasty about the work.

It's also a question of time management. I can only do N things in a week/month/year. If you want one of those things to be your thing, you're going to have to convince me to priorities it over other things. Money is a quick and convenient way to do that.

> Generally speaking, if you have to pay people to do it, there is something nasty about the work.

Unfortunately, I can't pay my rent with 'delightful work'.

Do you think tax returns and complying with other bureaucracy is fun?

There are myriad reasons why people form firms and a body of literature around it. Start with Coase's Nature of the firm :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nature_of_the_Firm

> Generally speaking, if you have to pay people to do it, there is something nasty about the work.

I don't believe this is true. Almost all people need to earn money to live a reasonable lifestyle, society as it is.

Considering the number of hours in the day: enjoyable, non-nasty tasks may be off the radar unless they are paid.

I feel like what you are saying is an excuse for employers to treat employees poorly. "We're paying you, so..."

It doesn't have to be this way.

> Generally speaking, if you have to pay people to do it, there is something nasty about the work.

No, generally speaking, it just means that the work you do has some value for the people paying for it, since they need it done and they lack the skill, the time or the will to do it.

It says nothing about how fun or stressful or nasty the work is for you (it might be fun for you and boring for someone else).

I've been getting paid to do fun stuff my whole career. No sense in doing it for free if someone will pay you to do it though. :-)

>If it were actually fun, people would be doing it for free.

How much fun? Whatever you think is fun, I'm pretty sure I can think of something more fun. That's not me saying I know what is fun, just saying it is a subjective term. Also, what is fun today may not be in 2 weeks time.

>> Generally speaking, if you have to pay people to do it, there is something nasty about the work

I think this misses the point that a) you need people to do the fun awesome stuff at scale (you can't do everything), and b) you may not have the skills to do the fun awesome stuff yourself.

Practically speaking, I think you're right, but you don't have to accept that as the status quo.

>> If it were actually fun, people would be doing it for free

The trick is combining fun with career. Doing fun things for free is not scalable as we do kinda need money to survive.

> if you have to pay people to do it, there is something nasty about the work

Even if someone loves doing something they can still ask to be paid to do it for other people

Sometimes, doing it for other people is the nasty bit.

The work doesn't scale and do more things and handle more customers if you don't hire more people and develop better systems

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