Comment by f1shy
1 day ago
I’ve been working for more than 30 years. I was seriously demotivated by managers, but never motivated by them. The beat I got was protection from them to give me free space to work. But the motivation was always internal.
Being a manager myself, I never got to motivate anybody do anything they didn’t want to. If they wanted to, it worked, but the motivation AFAIK was internal.
Of course that is one person speaking. Milage can vary.
This is a core part of systemantics [0]! People are going to do what they’re going to do, as a manager the most you can do to help is to put people in the right teams and to get distractions out of their way.
It’s a difficult idea to accept but once you accept it, it’s kind of liberating. It follows that hiring and then work-assignments during roadmapping are the two points of highest leverage in making a mutually-successful employee-manager relationship.
The problem you’re solving there is a search problem. You’re trying to discover if the employee’s motivation landscape peaks in any dimensions that align with the roadmap. They can be the most skilled person in the world, but if the peaks don’t overlap, the project will never run smoothly. It also follows that in extreme cases where you have a tenured employee that you want to retain for future work, you should absolutely let them drive and shape the roadmap.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systemantics
I read that book as I was 8 or 10! Must be still in my head!
You're making a nuanced point but it's correct. Good managers can give a little motivation (mostly by talking about and finding the right areas to work on for those people that don't otherwise already know). But for the most part good management is buffering the core that allows individuals own motivation to be self-sustaining (and productive over time) and also making sure that people aren't on a path that won't be useful (i.e. the manager knows the company will never fund phase 2).
Good managers will help you find your own motivation and set you up to follow it. Bad managers will kill it.
In this case, I would prefer an average manager that does not try to interfere with my motivations.
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Great managers absolutely can provide motivation. They can have a genuinely compelling vision for a product - "we're going to build the best damn FooGadget on the web". They can figure out what motivates their reports and work to make it transparent to them - for example some engineers like to see positive client feedback, whilst other engineers like having thorny problems to solve.
Yes. It stands to reason that if a manager can demotivate you, then they must be able to do the opposite. Both building the vibe and killing it can achieve that in terms of extrinsic motivation, culture, the psychological contract, and so on.
These are important factors to consider for people who work in highly collaborative teams as opposed to those who prefer to be 10x lone wolves, which is the impression I get from the article and the overall startup vibe I've experienced over the past few years.
HN might be over-indexed on the "leave me alone to do my work", "I don't have friends I have colleagues," type of person but it's not representative of the entire population.
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I want to hazard a guess that a motivational manager is just like a well-oiled cog in a machine. You essentially never notice them as having influence over your motivation and only pay attention to the squeaky and rattling and faulty ones.
The best one I had in that regard was just a nice dude who I wanted to help as much as I could since he'd help me when needed. I don't think any other way would really work in the current landscape. Whenever a manager talks about our grand product and the clients dying to get a taste of our artisinal code stew, even they can't take themselves entirely seriously. The only thing that seems to help is just being liked so your team wants to make your life easier. (outside of money/benefits/promotions and maybe short term gaslighting)
I've found the best managers are very aware of the "clueless manager" trope and suffer from imposter's syndrome more than most, but use that to make them good managers doing what you said: recognizing & owning where they are blind or lack skill (working on it, asking for help), helping where they can (doing a share of the shit work, or backfilling holes), and trying to be a nice person (building a relationship beyond the manager-employee dynamic). This doesn't mean they are your friend, but most people want to work (and win!) with people they like.
>> I never got to motivate anybody do anything they didn’t want to.
I'd be willing to bet that as a manager you've gotten people to do the shit work no one wants to though, mostly by explaining why & how it's important, sharing it across the entire team, working to eliminate dumb parts of it and stepping in to do some of it yourself - and yes, occasionally assigning it directly. To me, that's motivation: sustainably coordinating energies in a shared direction for the greater good.
I think you can indirectly motivate, or is that something else? If you create a good working/team environment and reduce the factors that demotivate people, then you will indirectly motivate them. This includes working on yourself as a manager. There are of course edge cases, but most people will thrive if the environment is good.
I agree with the parent because what you're describing doesn't indirectly motivate people, it merely avoids demotivation. If the person doesn't feel motivated by themselves (e.g. someone burned out or who does not care) they won't suddenly be motivated because the environment is good. It's still an internal force.