I have always been skeptical about the usefulness of monetary bonuses. Actually there is research that shows that higher bonuses actually lead to lower performance. In the highly entertaining video below you can learn more about it.
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5 Responses to “The surprising truth about what motivates us”
What a fantastic video, thank you for posting it. I like you never saw the point of monetary incentives. I was a half step ahead of the video when I was thinking of open source software which is coming close in some cases to outperforming many products from big box companies.
It seems to be an open-source community shibboleth to unconditionally denigrate bonuses, which seems unfortunate to me. Used properly, bonuses can be a very reasonable incentive — but it depends on the work being done and the worker’s ability to affect the final product, as well as on other peculiarities of the situation. You can’t simply say bonuses don’t work, because it’s easy to point out situations where they do work, and work well. It’s how to differentiate when they do and when they don’t that’s the interesting question.
I found Tyler Cowen’s excellent analysis of bonuses and compensation more generally in Discover Your Inner Economist to be insightful and thought-provoking in discussing rewards in general and more particularly monetary compensation. He suggests monetary incentives work well “when performance at a task is highly sensitive to extra effort” and “when intrinsic motivation is weak”, among other considerations. For open source hackers in particular it’s quite possible neither criterion holds. Ever wasted a day on a single bug caused from excessive haste or simply a momentary mental rut? I’ve done it many times. Another consideration along that last line: “High rewards tend to make individuals ‘choke’.” Perhaps that particularly applies to the software engineering situation.
[...] Door Giedo De Snijder Goed idee om eens naar de video te kijken op de Blog van Jaap A. Haitsma. Een prachtige visuele lezing over het nut van financiële bonusen, met als uitgangspunt: There is [...]
this was an amazing vedeo made a lot of sense and i really agree when you say that money can;t be the only motivator. however what about a couple of other things that motivate… money (if it’s not a non-issue ), power to do what you want – in a good way ofcourse… where you get to make the changes you want and people support you when they see the benefit…
well all said and done i do think this vedeo can give insight to how people really think! thanks for posting this…
Being motivated each day is not easy but when you find a purpose then it’s natural…!
What a fantastic video, thank you for posting it. I like you never saw the point of monetary incentives. I was a half step ahead of the video when I was thinking of open source software which is coming close in some cases to outperforming many products from big box companies.
It seems to be an open-source community shibboleth to unconditionally denigrate bonuses, which seems unfortunate to me. Used properly, bonuses can be a very reasonable incentive — but it depends on the work being done and the worker’s ability to affect the final product, as well as on other peculiarities of the situation. You can’t simply say bonuses don’t work, because it’s easy to point out situations where they do work, and work well. It’s how to differentiate when they do and when they don’t that’s the interesting question.
I found Tyler Cowen’s excellent analysis of bonuses and compensation more generally in Discover Your Inner Economist to be insightful and thought-provoking in discussing rewards in general and more particularly monetary compensation. He suggests monetary incentives work well “when performance at a task is highly sensitive to extra effort” and “when intrinsic motivation is weak”, among other considerations. For open source hackers in particular it’s quite possible neither criterion holds. Ever wasted a day on a single bug caused from excessive haste or simply a momentary mental rut? I’ve done it many times. Another consideration along that last line: “High rewards tend to make individuals ‘choke’.” Perhaps that particularly applies to the software engineering situation.
[...] Door Giedo De Snijder Goed idee om eens naar de video te kijken op de Blog van Jaap A. Haitsma. Een prachtige visuele lezing over het nut van financiële bonusen, met als uitgangspunt: There is [...]
hi,
this was an amazing vedeo made a lot of sense and i really agree when you say that money can;t be the only motivator. however what about a couple of other things that motivate… money (if it’s not a non-issue
), power to do what you want – in a good way ofcourse… where you get to make the changes you want and people support you when they see the benefit…
well all said and done i do think this vedeo can give insight to how people really think! thanks for posting this…
Being motivated each day is not easy but when you find a purpose then it’s natural…!
love this video…..