netmouse | (no subject)

A ten-minute piece on Motivation, by Dan Pink, author of Drive (with a nod to Tobias Buckell, who just posted about this).

I find I'm unsurprised by these findings. This is what was found when Wikipedia studied why people participate in it, and why we identified the fact that having your work go away there with no notification to you is an active disincentive for people to keep doing it. People want to feel like their work has purpose, and that their mastery is recognizable, if not recognized. Having an authoritarian structure that stifles creativity there has hurt the project, because people want to be creative as they build mastery and serve a purpose. If good work is casually destroyed because someone thought it was off-topic or was insufficiently encyclopedic for wikipedia, people don't stick around to do more of it.

In the middle there, he talks about how the key point with paying people is that you need to pay them enough to take the question of money off the table. Beyond that, paying people more leads to worse performance.

How much do you think you would need to get paid to take the question of money off the table?

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How much do you think you would need to get paid to take the question of money off the table?

I don't think this is really a question of pay, but a question of wealth. Most people, I think, have the same basic financial goal: To accumulate enough wealth that the physical needs of themselves and their loved ones are met, and to feel secure that those needs will continue to be met for the foreseeable future. Until they've accumulated that much wealth, the answer to "How much do you want to get paid?" is "As much as I can get."

How much wealth is that? Well, it depends on what the person's definition of the "foreseeable future" is, and I suspect that that length of time probably varies a lot between people. Some people might measure that in months, or a few years. But if the person wants to plan for an indefinitely long future (my own preference) it's got to be enough so that the investment returns can provide a stable yield high enough to live on comfortably. IMHO, that's currently somewhere between $1M-$2M/person.

Last time I looked, $1M was totally inadequate -- you have to plow back enough money to increase the capital to keep up with inflation, remember; otherwise, you've living on a decreasing income.

$1M would be the lower bound; it assumes about a 3% inflation-adjusted ROI, to supply $30k/year in living expenses. That may be a little aggressive, but I don't think it's unreasonable for a single person over a long timeframe. I'm also not counting the cost of a primary residence in the $1M, and a person with a chronic health condition would definitely not be able to make it on that much.

That said, I initially arrived at these numbers in 2000, so to properly inflation-adjust them, they should probably be increased by about 20%.

Actually, I would guess that a lot of people haven't even approached thinking about accumulating wealth. Many people also have a different level of priority on or belief in the future, so, no, their answer is not "as much as I can get."

That's certainly not my answer, anyway.

But your response points to a difference between a base assumption of a one-time payment and a base assumption of an ongoing paycheck. I was thinking of it as an ongoing, dependable paycheck for the foreseeable future.

Many people also have a different level of priority on or belief in the future, so, no, their answer is not "as much as I can get."

Unless the person has a terminal disease, I have some problems with this, particularly if the person is counting on some kind of safety net. The future will happen. In a country with social safety nets, someone who lives without a care for the future is essentially making a choice to have someone else's taxes pay for their own frivolity.

But your response points to a difference between a base assumption of a one-time payment and a base assumption of an ongoing paycheck. I was thinking of it as an ongoing, dependable paycheck for the foreseeable future.

That's true; I don't think it's a good idea for anyone to assume that they'll ever get an "ongoing, dependable paycheck". The world isn't that predictable. Times change, economies shift, technologies come and go, along with the demand for the skillsets to support them.

Consequently, I think that the existence of a social safety net imposes two responsibilities on everyone, that they should carry out to the best of their ability:

- To continually learn and adapt their skills so that they remain useful.

- To live frugally during good times, putting aside as much wealth as possible for the bad times, to minimize the drain on those safety nets.

Some people have disabilities or other circumstances that force them to draw on the safety net. That's fine...that's what it's for. But those who can reasonably avoid it have an ethical obligation to do so, IMHO.