I hope I don't offend you, but it feels a bit selfish to try to change them to be more motivated. For many people, a job is just something they have to get through to survive and there's nothing wrong with that. In a way you are lucky because these people will likely never enjoy their jobs as much as you do.
Don't forget that they may very well have other things besides work that inspire them, but those things might not pay the bills.
That said, this is simple and eloquent, but in practice it's not always this straightforward. The question is, can the 3's expect fair and consistent promotions and recognition, and do they feel that you understand what is needed for the project to succeed? Your superstar 3 may be a single "we know you've done great work here but we just can't get you on that project/we don't have the budget for a promotion/there's no one else available to do this maintenance work right now" from becoming a middling 2 or a no-longer-works-here, and those situations may not always be in your control.
I think the biggest teller of an unmotivated person is a generally negative, problem-focussed attitude. No matter the hour of the day, "We can't do x, because..." will destroy nearby "We can do this, if...." people, eventually.
If you actually need people to work long hours, then ... you aren't doing it right.
It's not an issue as long as your top-tier performance is recognized and rewarded on consistent and equitable basis.
However, we don't live in such perfect world. In a world of stack-ranking and office politics, you will never get top marks year after year, and get compensation that is inline with your contribution.
Slowly, it becomes a mentally toxic environment for high achievers, which is a real shame because I think it's possible for them to co-exist happily.
Chances are though, management itself is also complacent if you have department full of 9/5 ers.
I worked on a team at one point where someone sat on a high-priority bug for a couple weeks without saying anything. Someone finally asked if he was making any progress, and his response was just: "Well someone else wrote that code, so..." He hadn't even tried to look at it. His response after that conversation was to start emailing other people asking if they could fix it, instead of trying to learn that part of the code base. You can spend hours doing that sort of thing, but it's not time well spent.
If you are trying to build a company of any scale at all, yes, everything, if these are the people you hire. For those individuals, there is nothing wrong with this attitude towards work, but over the long run it will most definitely affect their job security and lifetime earnings. If that's the price they are willing to pay, then that's perfectly fine.
i take offense at this sort of attitude, because it implies that the employees are beholden to make _you/the boss_ successful. I imagine that they aren't doing more than what's required because that's what they are paid. I imagine they don't get shares of the company, nor reap the profit if it was successful (and also don't take the risk when it's not).
If a boss tries to make me do more work, but don't offer the equivalent in rewards (which, in my eyes, must be some form of equity and/or profit sharing scheme), then either i won't do it, or will just get by. Unless the company is truly doing something i believe in, or i have something personal, it's not worth it.
This line, which always seems to come from founders, is to my mind pure and utter bullshit. Taking a job with a company that may fail soon is absolutely a big risk, particularly if it's paying below market. Even more so if this person is "passionate" and spends every waking moment thinking about that company's problems, as so many founders love to encourage employees to do. I fail to see how this is any less risky than spending someone else's money (investors) to pursue the creation of a new company. The fact that employees don't share in that reward is just a matter of who was able to get their names on the paperwork, and it has nothing to do with who takes on more risk.
I'm a founder of a bootstrapped start up, and I agree with you 100%. Early employees take on a ton of risk, and high level employees take on a ton of risk as well. Both tend to be compensated additionally with stock options offering additional upside reward in the marketplace compared to other jobs available.
Regarding going above and beyond a given job description, it's not about working insane hours, nor is it about 'passion', whatever you define that as. It's about gaining a level of trust between employer and employee. At scale, top-level employees don't have time to do consider every single aspect of a job and outline it in a job description before hiring someone, and they need to be able to trust their team to step up when the unexpected occurs.
On the other hand, employers need to earn the trust of their employees that they will fairly compensate them when they do go above and beyond what is asked. Sadly, all too often this doesn't happen, or the employee doesn't stick around long enough to see the payoff. The payoff doesn't always come in terms of stock options either. Sometimes it's just a promotion or a bonus.
Either way, my point was that, as a founder, if you want to be able to grow your company, you need to surround yourself with people you can trust, and that trust is earned when dealing with the unexpected. As an employee, if you want to move up to higher levels in a company and earn more money, you need to take risks and prepare for the unexpected. If you don't trust your employer will compensate you for this, then leave and find one who you trust to do so. If you don't want to step up and help out when things go wrong in your company, don't expect the marketplace to reward you with higher pay, a bonus, or stock options.
It's astonishing to me the number of people here that feel entitled to try to abuse their employer. Being motivated doesn't mean working more hours than you are paid for, it means trying to do a good job during the time you do work vs trying to do as little as possible while not being fired for poor performance.
But if you are passionate about making a change in the world, or even just doing an amazing job at one small thing you love, then you are in the right place. Be in the right place. Don't treat others and yourself poorly by being in a job you hate.
It feels a bit selfish to do the minimum you
can at a job because you too afraid to actually
try for something you enjoy.
I greatly respect people that work for less than they might in the case of non-profits.
I like when my clients says the tools I've developped are extremely useful to them, and sometimes it means sticking my neck out and not doing the bare minimum.
Sadly, you're not that important to the success of the company. You can quit tomorrow and they would find a replacement in due time and continue on.
Also, it's highly unlikely that the founder and CEO is going to end up a multimillionaire even if you were a high performing software engineer.
> What's in it for me?
How about not wasting your life? I mean dude, you're spending at least 40 hours a week working. Why not find something you love doing?
How about not wasting your life? I mean dude,
you're spending at least 40 hours a week working.
Why not find something you love doing?
Sure, there's the occasional night or weekend that I'll work; I'm not going to leave my project in jeopardy, or my coworkers in a lurch...But, I don't owe my employer anything more than they owe me.
Theres nothing wrong fullfilling your agreed work hours, with a reasonable expected work amout and spending time with family.
Sure, you could take their money and do the worst possible job you can. Do you think this is a good idea? The owner ends up with a crappy wall and you end up with a bad reputation.
Everyone has things outside of work, like family, that are more important than work. That's not justification for doing the minimum you can do.
For most, a job is about surviving in this world.
Your coworker who is just like you, except she's now two or three or five years into her job at your company. She used to be super motivated, and wanted to do all of the same things that you do, but that's all been beaten out of her as the company and the team ignored her efforts are rewarded other behavior.
Your coworker who is super motivated by something that the company values. Assuming you're a programmer, perhaps you're motivated by building features fast, and not worrying about technical debt, whereas your coworker is motivated by going slower and making sure technical debt is kept to a minimum. The company rewards stable easy to fix code, and doesn't care about moving out features quickly, so your coworker looks like a hero to them.
You coworker who really doesn't care too much about doing more than the minimum required to keep their job. They've got lots of other things in their life that keeps things interesting, and if work is a nice steady routine that's a good thing.
etc.
There's a reason that the team is the way it is: The company values what they're providing enough to keep rewarding their current behavior. Don't project your values onto management and assume that they agree that your team's behavior is sub-optimal. If you can't figure out how to either (a) provide the same value that your coworkers do or (b) deliver your value in a way that the company recognizes and appreciates, you should consider changing companies.
Don't believe me? They're comfortable and secure. They're happy with their output. They're apparently paid well.
You were unhappy with your situation - you want things to be different than what they are, and it was grating on you (and may or may not have led to burnout from your description), until eventually you left.
I've been in a very similar scenario:
I joined a "corporate" that had been running an Internet site for a decade. They had not built a new system in years, and had a massive monolithic ancient app with hundreds of hardcoded rules for individual accounts, where every change required tons of effort and they maintained a QA team at least the size of the dev team. Very few of the dev team seemed interested in things like learning new technologies, trying out different development methodologies, finding ways to make the system better as opposed to the task list of feature and bug requests. (I'm not even sure it had revision control.)
Short version - I get annoyed quickly at, for example, rules about arriving at 9:00am (my train schedule meant I tended to arrive at 9:10am, or at 8:30am, and I didn't want to hang out at work...). I'm told that even though I'm being productive, I'm setting a bad example, and they don't want others to start doing that. (I'm thinking: "Why don't you just deal with bad performance, whether the person arrives on time or not?", as well as "Yeah, and I leave the office at 6pm, so I'm at the office longer than them!")
Slightly longer version - I work with my manager to get my team (also not happy with the status quo) together in a room somewhat separated from the dev team, and we pump out code for several months a lot happier, until ultimately we all got better offers.
There's a much longer story, but the point is that _I_ was the one unhappy with the situation, and this affected my motivation to the point of the occasional debilitating day of non-productivity. The original employees were happy with their situation, and many probably still work there doing the same job they were doing nearly a decade ago now.
Holing myself up for a month and working towards a new job paid off and I'm now in a better place as a developer and person.
"It gets better"
Maybe it's an American thing but here in EU most people won't work for free.
I actually did this in my early years and the outcome was never positive for me: I worked nights, weekends, many more hours to help the team, get this great product or project done. In the end? We were let go and upper management got a nice payout and moved onto their next company.
This has happened so many times to my friends in the tech industry, it's crazy. As a result of this behavior, I started my own company and never looked back.
But it is your job to figure out why you got unmotivated people.
* Is your hiring process borked?
* Is there something wrong inside your organisation that's regularly breaking motivated people?
… and so on …
Terrible management and/or micromanagement is one of the key reasons a dev can lose motivation. It also doesn't do anyone's morale/motivation any favors to see colleagues get fired. If a manager has had to fire people, and do so repeatedly, then the fault is not so much with those getting fired than the organization/management/hiring process.
One of the key reasons why I've seen dev lose motivation after joining a company is lack of investment on the part of the manager in the employees future goals. I've been in situations during my entry-level days when my manager always made me draw the short straw - did wonders for my motivation.
Also some management people have completely unrealistic expectations from a hire whose job they hardly understand and with whom they never really talked openly.
In my view, money also is a good fallback motivation, if you can't figure out exactly what it is that someone wants out of his job, or you can't provide it. Truly, I've probably had only one job in my life where I honestly thought "I wouldn't stay here NO MATTER WHAT they pay me!"
But I think what you say would highly motivate me anyway. People like numbers and making numbers bigger. That's why people feel bad if they don't get enough Facebook likes. So if you give people clear numbers and a path to increase the numbers they will be motivated to do it, even if they don't care what the numbers stand for.
I've probably had only one job in my life where I honestly thought "I wouldn't stay here NO MATTER WHAT they pay me!"
As everyone mentions sometimes there is other stuff going on in peoples lives, or they are just not that interested in building the same CRUD app for the umpteenth time that has you terribly exited because it is your first go at it and you want to prove yourself.
That being said, when on the motivated side of the fence, I want to offer you some advice that was given to me by my manager some years ago: You can't keep a good man down. Eventually management will see you put in extra effort, don't drop the ball and is constantly pulling the project out of the fire, and that will result in rewards be that promotions or freedoms or whatever. It might not always be as quick as you want, but you can't keep a good man down...
I hope that helps.
I left 8+ years ago and last I heard, those 2 managers are in the same position.
Entry-level here, and I'd say i'm the 9-5 type, but don't consider myself "don't really care to achieve any more than mediocre" is it possible to be motivated but still work at a reasonable hours? If it's not, then I'm kind of discouraged
The secret is to learn how to say "no." People think it's a dirty word, but as and industry we're terrible at estimation and "no" is your most powerful way of fixing that situation.
> we're terrible at estimation and "no" is your most powerful way of fixing that situation.
This is also my problem half the time, and that's what made me wonder if I keep realizing my estimate was off, and it's taking me more time to complete my original estimated work, does that make me a "9-5, unmotivated worker"
Now, I try to take that attitude wherever I go. When I say 9-5, too many people took it to literally mean 9am-5pm. I do a task until it's done, a 9-5 person would do it until 4:59pm. If I'm done, I'll leave early or late, a 9-5 person would be on Facebook and leave at 4:59pm. It's pretty depressing to be in the middle of some design, be interrupted and turn around to find my colleague gone because it just passed 5pm... happened a few times...
I don't count the hours that I put in anymore. It's either getting a task done, doing something with the family or learning to improve myself or having some down time. I do take work home, wouldn't recommend it to everyone, I also take home to work. Somewhere between 20 and 30, I realised that spending 1/3 of my life just 'having a job' to survive isn't living so I seek out roles that align with my personal mission and go for it!
It used to be about money. Why do you want this job? Because I need the money to start my life, family, etc. But I've since realised that if you're hard working, frugal and sensible, moneys the last of your worries, it is more of what have you accomplished in life.
Sorry, getting a bit heavy here hehe, but having alot of key people die around me made me question what it was that I was doing.
So to bring it all back to your question, don't be discouraged by my views of work. When you're motivated, do whatever it is that interest you, forget about 'reasonable hours', just enjoy what you do.
> I don't count the hours that I put in anymore. It's either getting a task done
how do you define task? if you have a task estimated at 1 day, and by the end of the day you're not finished with it, do you finish it or count it as wrong estimation and finish it later?
I became a senior frontend engineer in about 1 1/2 years.
I am extremely efficient at problem solving - I still have a lot more to learn I find each day though.
I'm less surprised by out of touch management once in a while and more surprised by individuals so confident in their demotivated lifestyle and their ability to maintain it long term with no consequences.
I don't see anything wrong in working agreed work hours, and completing a reasonable expected work amout and that's it. I think that's just recognising you have family and other responsibilities.
A lot of companies think your not motivated if your not doing 80+ hour weeks, for little added gain. Your not a founder, or have little or no equity and so have a limited upside. I don't why companies expect founder level commitment for non founder level upside.
In this case your biggest duty is probably to your loved ones and family. And not sacrificing that over some misplaced sense of duty. I'm sure a lot companies would not do the same if the positions where reversed. They'd probably fire you pretty fast, if you had issues effecting work. Keep that in mind.
It's the classic rhetorical: why not just work consistently, and not have to worry about cramming? Why do people behave that way (in either school or work)? In my personal experience, I've found the only time I cram, is when I'm stuck doing something I really don't care about (happened constantly in school).
One or two demotivated people? Well, okay, they're probably to blame.
But when you have a company full of them it's a toxic company and poor management that caused it.
Some of us are happy with working at a steady pace without many external symptoms of exctitation. I even believe this is better in the long run, people don't burn out and are better-rested.
Perhaps by doing their job to a satisfactory standard and abiding by the conditions of their employment?
If that's not good enough, the contract should make it clear just what the job really entails.
I want to add to this by saying, it's terribly difficult to keep yourself motivated in a team with unmotivated people. I left my last job because all the team cared about was money, job security and doing their 9-5. At my current place, we could fire half the staff and the company wouldn't miss a beat. Sadly, there is no management, leadership or clear direction. We are self managed and so it's very easy to spot the handful of proactive staff because they usually end up picking up all the tasks which eventually causes burnouts and reduced motivation etc... I've tried to motivate my team mates but how do you motivate someone who's comfortable and secure in their 9-5 and don't really care to achieve any more than mediocre? Nobody gets fired and everyone's on pretty good pay for the job they do.
So I really do agree with this point. Find people who are not satisfied with the status quo. You can't change everyone, in fact, you can't change anyone. All a manager can do is hope to keep these people accountable if they do not hold themselves responsible.