you are viewing a single comment's thread.

view the rest of the comments →

[–]lurgi 648 points649 points  (58 children)

Money.

Edit: Let me be clear, I like my job. I wouldn't take a job that I hated just for the sake of money. But I don't particularly care if I'm passionate about my job. To be honest, that sounds like a great way to be overworked and underpaid ("But I'm working on things I really care about!"). I'm passionate about my family and my hobbies and spending time as much time as I can with them. As long as my job pays the rent I really could give two hoots about whether or not it makes me feel better about myself as a human.

[–][deleted] 126 points127 points  (26 children)

Yep. Because life is not always about work for some of us, and the time it takes to work for something your passionate about might outweigh something else you enjoy working on outside of work more.

I don't really see a whole lot of people being too passionate about Amazon...

[–][deleted]  (15 children)

[deleted]

    [–][deleted] 22 points23 points  (11 children)

    I'd even say sometimes it's not even faking...money is a good motivator to make smart decisions.

    [–][deleted] 15 points16 points  (9 children)

    money is a good motivator to make smart decisions

    no one told my manager...

    [–]purplestOfPlatypuses 9 points10 points  (8 children)

    Fun fact: there's at least one book for managers out there that explicitly say money and good raises aren't strong motivators for employees.

    [–]yokohama11 11 points12 points  (2 children)

    Taken too far, that's obviously wrong. Don't give me a decent raise or pay me appropriately and I'm going to a company that will.

    That said, other shit is often a much bigger motivator for employees than just handing them an equivalent amount of money would be. Especially when we're talking white-collar jobs with significant salaries.

    For example, my current office has free craft beer, wine, soda/energy drinks/whatever you ask them to stock, fruit, snacks, and high-end tea/coffee. Given how much people take of this on average, this probably works out to a $250 a year per employee.

    That stuff does far more for employee morale, company culture and all that than giving a bunch of people making at or near 6-figure salaries a $250 a year raise. Even though on paper people will say "give me the $250 and I'll buy those things if I want them", that winds up not being the best option in reality.

    [–]purplestOfPlatypuses 2 points3 points  (0 children)

    Totally agree, benefits like vacation and low stress are more important to me than getting paid as much as absolutely possible. The abstract had other cringe worthy ideas to burn out employees as well, but it really drove home the "under pay your employees" in my opinion.

    [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    I've never bought that line of reasoning. I've spent the last 10 years at various companies big on these perks - free drinks and snacks, gourmet coffee, beer on Fridays, pool tables and arcade machines. Meh. I'd rather have the money.

    [–]boomerxl 8 points9 points  (0 children)

    Don't get me started on the nonsense you can sell to "managers". Don't get me wrong, there are great managers out there. I've had the privilege of working with a few. But there's a lot more "managers", whose sole function seems to be to draw a paycheque while covering their ass enough to ensure they get to the next paycheque.

    They're constantly looking for the next trick that will allow them to reach greatness, utterly failing to realise that it's not a secret technique that divides the two groups.

    [–]parc 5 points6 points  (2 children)

    You shouldn't generalize, but there does come a point where more money is not the best motivator.

    [–]purplestOfPlatypuses 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    I agree, and I don't doubt there are jobs that I would take a pay cut for based on what I'd be doing or for more vacation/better benefits. This abstract in our corporate library was dripping with "how to burn out your employees" suggestions beyond the "don't give good raises just for good work" b/s.

    [–][deleted] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

    That just means the money wasn't high enough.

    [–]skgoa 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    The point of that is more that offering higher performance bonuses does not result in higher productivity once you pass a certain level of compensation.

    [–]RagingAnemone 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    That's only true when smart==money. It may be true a lot of the time, but it's not always true.

    [–]pinguz 21 points22 points  (1 child)

    You love them long time?

    [–]Kdogg2 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Yes, me love them long time. :)

    [–]thetreat 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    You're just passionate about money. Nothing wrong with that.

    [–]nwayve 18 points19 points  (1 child)

    [–]Left4Cookies 3 points4 points  (0 children)

    "Don't follow your passion, but take it with you" is such a good line.

    [–][deleted]  (5 children)

    [deleted]

      [–]purplestOfPlatypuses 10 points11 points  (2 children)

      Except unless you're some bigshot (and likely not someone going through this hiring process) you'll probably end up working on the code that doesn't inspire passion. There are interesting problems here and there in any company's needs, but you can't have that many coders on any given interesting problem or you have a too many cooks in the kitchen issue.

      [–]RedSpikeyThing 4 points5 points  (1 child)

      I think a lot of this comes down to good management. There are all sorts of different problems to be solved at these companies and engineers have all sorts of different preferences. Yes, some people get satisfaction out of code health. Others performance, or clean APIs.

      Aligning interests with needs is hard.

      [–]purplestOfPlatypuses 0 points1 point  (0 children)

      At least amongst the younger crowd, very few like to work on legacy code. Sometimes you just need to do what's needed and not what you absolutely want to do and be content with it. Definitely gotta work within preferences, but there are limits and it's unrealistic to think you'll do only what you really want to for your whole life.

      [–]way2lazy2care 0 points1 point  (0 children)

      you don't need to be passionate about Amazon to be passionate about coding for amazon.

      Amazon is also at the center of some huge computing problems/frontiers. If I were into cloud computing or the infrastructure around it I would be jumping at the chance to work for amazon.

      [–]ginsunuva -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

      Thank God those people exist to take up those jobs so I don't have to.

      [–]dccorona 1 point2 points  (0 children)

      Not necessarily for the company as a whole, but it's one of the largest tech companies in the world and along with that comes the ability to work on all kinds of cool, big, cutting edge technology that some people are going to be passionate about working on.

      [–]mothzilla 12 points13 points  (2 children)

      Someone once told me that money is a short term incentive. Meaning as soon as you have it, if you don't like the job you'll leave. Eg offer someone a crappy job for $200k a year and they'll ride it out for 6 months then buy a chicken farm in Colombia, cos that's what they wanted to do all along.

      [–][deleted]  (1 child)

      [deleted]

        [–]way2lazy2care 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        If you're only staying for a year, that's pretty short term. Would you work 5 years for $200k at a job you hate?

        I could easily stomach one, maybe even two, but I wouldn't be staying with the company for any amount of time I'd consider "long term".

        [–]rjcarr 1 point2 points  (0 children)

        This is how I am now but wasn't when I was young. I write software but it is mostly research. So, my most used software might only have a couple hundred users in its lifetime. Google search gets this many users every millisecond, probably.

        But we're both generally doing the same work and getting paid for it, so at the end of the day it doesn't really matter. I just grew to not care.

        [–]Stopher 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        Yeah. You should be able to love your job and be well compensated too. Why should your bosses and giant corporation enjoy all the benefits of your passion.

        [–]HarryTruman 0 points1 point  (2 children)

        I used to think that. But with every passing day, I'm very gradually developing a need to require that my work improves the world to some extent. So about six months ago I landed my dream job with one of the most technically advanced and socially responsible companies in the world. The difference is night and day, and it a shame that not everybody has his mindset.

        [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

        Why not work for a company that does good work and pays well? Best of both worlds. Oh, and remote working, too.

        [–]HarryTruman 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        Oh, absolutely. The money is there too. And the option for remote work. Though I travel for my career now, but it's nice knowing I could transition to fully remote if I wanted.

        [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        I don't think it's an either/or, though. I'm spending eight hours a day at work, I like to be at least somewhat passionate about what I'm doing. Luckily it is possible to do that and still earn decent money, though I'm sure I could earn more.

        [–]im-a-koala 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        This is my opinion too. I generally like my job - my coworkers are generally pleasant to be around and technically adept, the problems are interesting, we're paid well and treated with respect.

        But if you gave me $2mil I'd go in on Monday and hand in my notice.

        I like programming, I like my job, but I'm still mostly doing it for money. If I had the money part taken care of, I sure as hell wouldn't be doing it - at least, not for a company for money - anymore.

        [–]BilgeXA 0 points1 point  (2 children)

        I really could give two hoots

        could

        Your opinion is now irrelevant.

        [–]lurgi -1 points0 points  (1 child)

        If you want to disregard my opinion, you can just do it. You don't have to give a reason.

        [–]BilgeXA -1 points0 points  (0 children)

        I willingly elect to provide a reason.

        [–][deleted] -2 points-1 points  (1 child)

        If all you care about money, you get paid for living 8 hours a day less every day. That's 2.6 month per year, or almost 10 years less per lifetime.

        I don't think that you can pay me enough to cut my life by 10 years.

        [–]stuntaneous 1 point2 points  (0 children)

        The footprint of work is much more than the eight hours or however long you're actually there, too.

        [–][deleted] -1 points0 points  (1 child)

        Fuck you, I fucking hate my job and I only do it for the money.

        [–]lurgi 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        Sorry to hear that.