Re:So I’m the guy who sent the t-shirt out as a thank you
by DanielStraight on Thursday October 03, 2013 @11:41AM
(#6489704)
Exactly. This guy accidentally crossed into market norms by doing something that seemed completely reasonable at the time.
Imagine you ask a friend over to help fix your car in exchange for beer. This would clearly not be interpreted as payment, but as a way of saying thanks. Now suppose it turns out they generally like beer but hate the particular kind you purchased, so you feel bad and give them $10 to buy themselves a beer they like. Suddenly, thinking you were doing something nice, you've crossed into market norms.
This, as far as I can tell, is basically what happened.
The problem is when the worlds of social norms and market norms cross. The book gives the example of Thanksgiving dinner, and what would happen if you offered your mother-in-law a couple hundred dollars to pay for the meal at the end. Another example is sex: paying for sex makes it a very different situation. (Also note the difference between giving someone flowers on a date and giving someone cash.)
The book describes a research experiment, where participants were paid $5, 50 cents, or nothing to perform a short task of sorting shapes. The people paid $5 sorted 50% more shapes than the people paid less (since they were more motivated), but the people paid nothing did the most of all since they were motivated by helping out the researchers.
This ties in with intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation - if you're getting paid, it's extrinsic motivation, and then you're motivated by whether you're getting your money's worth.
(There's a lot more, but I don't have time to get into it, so check out the book.)
The point is, that if people report bugs for free, it's part of the social norms world, where they are keeping the world safe, making it a better place, etc. If they are getting paid, it's part of the market norms world, and they expect to get paid what the bug is worth. With Yahoo, the lines got crossed: giving a T-shirt is generally part of the social norms world, but giving a $12 gift certificate crosses over into the market norms world, and $12 is insultingly low. This is why it would have been better for Yahoo to give nothing.