Early on in my career at Google I attended an offsite seminar for grooming managers. We had the usual set of morning lectures, and then we were split into smaller groups for discussion. The topic was “What motivates people?” Various answers were suggested, but I came up with these four: Sex, drugs, power, and money.
For some reason, they were not happy with my answer.
They seemed to think that I was not taking the question seriously. But history has shown that these four things are extremely strong motivations. They can motivate people to do all sorts of things they wouldn't otherwise consider. Like, for example, to betray their country.
If you look for them, you can find the motivations I listed. They are thinly disguised, of course. Why are administrative assistants so often attractive young women? Is Google's massage program completely innocent? Are there never any “special favors”? The beer flows pretty freely on Fridays, and the company parties were legendary. Of course there are the stock options and the spot bonuses.
I guess I was being too frank for their taste. They were looking for some kind of “corporate culture” answer, like “team spirit” or “collaboration”. I was just being honest.
I soon discovered that the true topic of this three day offsite seminar was bullshit. It was a “course” dreamed up by business “psychologists” and peddled to Silicon Valley companies as a scam. If you've ever encountered “team building” courses, you'll know what I mean. It is a lucrative business. This was just an extra large helping.
They didn't like my frankness, and I didn't see how they could expect to really understand what motivates people if they were not going to address the obvious. They thought I wasn't being serious with my answer, but it was clear that they weren't going to be seriously examining the question either.
So I left the seminar. I didn't want to waste my time listening to corporate psychobabble. My time was better spent writing code and engineering software. I returned to my office to actually accomplish some meaningful work. No doubt I had ruined any chance of becoming a big-wig, but I simply could not stomach the phoniness and insincerity. I was not going to play that game.
6 comments:
An appropriate bottom line question is: how would you classify your own motivation for quitting the bullshit shop (I totally agree that is what it was) and going back to meaningful work? Was it rather sex, drugs, money, or power?
Heh, I was unlikely to get any of those things by continuing the program, but I was likely to get annoyed, irritated, and frustrated, avoidance of which is pretty motivating. I suppose we could motivate engineers by abusing them until they work. That's a little cynical, even for me.
EDGE! I remember it well! I knew what kind of bullshit to expect going in, but I was young and didn't think I could afford to say no when my manager sent me. But it turned out even worse than I expected. I was relieved I never had to work with any of the enthusiastic loons when I went back to work...
Your answer is 100% correct and also quite wrong. The motivations you name are huge indeed, but they're are not the only ones. I get very motivated to solve a challenging code problem, even though I'm only going to get personal satisfaction out of it. I bet you do too. There is nothing wrong with leaders trying to set me up with the space to do just that.
Sure, there are plenty of bullshit artists in leadership. But that doesn't mean well-meaning bosses can't try to make things better.
Your list might be maximally motivating, but promising drugs or sex is exploitative and illegal, even if the broader societal structure hints at it.
I don't claim that these are the only motivators, and yes, I'm motivated by writing good code. And yes, there are certain "difficulties" with taking advantage of sex and drugs as motivation. But let's not pretend that these don't exist.
You forgot food. People are getting crazy without
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