Why Do People Work Hard? | Hacker News Reader

Why Do People Work Hard?

technologyreview.com

53 pointsmhb32 comments

> in environments where they are poorly monitored and paid a fixed wage ... Surely any rational worker would do the bare minimum to get by.

This line of thinking drives me crazy. Work your ass off, not for your company, but for yourself - someday you're going to have a project you really love and care about, or start your own company, or something important for yourself. If you've built habits that are lazy, bad, procrastinating, and blaming others and avoiding responsibility - you can't just flip those off. If you're mopping the floor, be the best damn floor mopper the world has ever seen. This will serve you later when you're working for the causes you care about.

WTB more upvotes for this. Habits are everything. Maybe even the key to life, or at least professional success.

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”

Your sentiment made me think of that quote. I completely agree.

My motto is if one can't be a general, one can be a great lieutenant, or in the floor-mopping case, private. I didn't used to feel like that, but over the years I've changed.

> If you've built habits that are lazy, bad, procrastinating, and blaming others and avoiding responsibility

This is a false choice: work hard vs. lazy, bad behavior. The middle ground is to meet expectations, but don't bother exceeding them if there aren't any benefits. You can use that extra time to learn new things, improve yourself, or actually have a real life outside work.

I got the top job rating in my first job at a giant company, but my boss explained that due to HR policies I couldn't be promoted much faster than the average employee. So I subsequently aimed for a good rating, but didn't bust my ass anymore. I did grad school part time instead. Worked out well.

I was really surprised by the first few paragraphs of this article:

"There's a puzzle at the heart of our economy that has troubled economists for decades. The question is this: why do people work hard in environments where they are poorly monitored and paid a fixed wage, rather than a performance-related one.Surely any rational worker would do the bare minimum to get by."

Really? Every rational worker would do the bare minimum? Even more surprising, the following paragraphs mention peer pressure and employment contracts.

Do we honestly not believe anyone wants to work hard because they like working hard? Because they feel better living up to promises, or even just plain like what they do?

I know the term "rational worker" is used in a scientific sense for Economics, but this article is talking about actual workers in real life, not some theoretical construct.

Yes--more specifically, it's a behavioral study into how they differ.

A rational economic actor tries to maximize profit. That means expending less effort to get the same fixed wage. The puzzle in economics is how, exactly, humans are irrational.

The real problem with economics and human psychology is not so much that humans are irrational Though they often are, they are actually less so in economic contexts than in most others. I think the bigger problem is that classical economics has a rather limited view of "rationality". Just because something doesn't give an immediate or narrowly quantifiable return does not necessarily make it irrational in any reasonable sense.

Exactly. Classical economics assumes everyone's utility function == income. What about the pleasure of a job well done, companionship/relationship, job satisfaction, etc.? Well, since they can't be quantified they are ignored.

That's silly. In order to make comparisons, utility (including the intangibles you mention) can be and is estimated in terms of money. If they don't do that here, that is their failing and not one of economics in general.

> That's silly. In order to make comparisons, utility (including the intangibles you mention) can be and is estimated in terms of money. If they don't do that here, that is their failing and not one of economics in general.

How about you go tell all of the economists that they're doing it wrong?

While you're fixing economists, the rest of us will get along just fine with "economics doesn't model the real world very well". That may be pedantically wrong, but it's far more efficient.

The problem with economics I see is not a problem with most economic analysis; they actually do a good job with most questions in microeconomics (to the extent that economics is the closest we have yet come to a social "science"). The problem I have is when they address what are basically psychological questions, like this article which is mostly on motivation, where their assumption of rationality is not particularly useful. In classical economic contexts, as I wrote in the original comment, people are actually about as rational as they ever get.

Most works aren't fun enough to be their own reward.

What is surprising about this article is the idea that people work hard, which is certainly not always true.

Many people whose work is boring are indeed doing the bare minimum they can get away with.

And many people who work hard do so because they feel they can't work less for some reason, because they're afraid to be fired if they don't for example.

Additionally: People will work hard because if someone is going to be fired, they don't want it to be them. This assumption that they would do the bare minimum assumes they will keep the job no matter what they do. That's not true. That is not even considering things like the possibility for promotion if you stand out above your peers, the possibility for changing jobs within the company, or the possibility for getting a good recommendation if you apply for a job outside the company.

And in situations where it is true, e.g. working for the government, or in unionized jobs, that's exactly what they do do. Hard work won't even get you a promotion if it's done on seniority.

Last year, I took on an interesting role with Mahalo.com. I was a "Vertical Manager" responsible for managing labor, defining tasks, etc. Here are 3 things that I learned:

Educate people. Don't "teach" or "instruct" them. Truly educate them on what you need done, why, and what you expect the results to be. Education is a talent learned through experience. Not everyone is good at it and more often then not a failure in labor can be explained in part by the quality of education distributed.

If … Then rewards often fail. They can be demotivating and worst of all, people will naturally do the lowest amount of work or preform the lowest quality labor for the "then" reward. Dan Pink author of Drive authored an exceptionally good book on the subject of reward and motivation. You should read it.

Kindness, honesty and respect are conveyed in every action that one makes and if people know that you will treat them well, they will treat you well. Motivation isn't some secret science and "doing onto others" is perhaps the most significant cornerstone of it.

What is the difference between "teaching" and "educating"? These are perfect synonyms in my mental lexicon, so I can't really get the distinction you're trying to draw there.

I suspect he means "training" vs. "education". Training is what you give folks on Welfare so they will get a minimum wage job and get off the dole -- ie teach them very basic skills that don't give them much ability to think critically or create a future for themselves. Education is what you give folks who need higher level thinking skills, are expected to be leaders of some sort and need executive decision making skills, etc.

I prefer to use the terms "train" vs. "learn" (educate). Big Companies talk a lot about training their employees and government agencies talk a lot about retraining laid off workers. Big Company Training in my experience only addresses the "how" and not the "why". As a result, it generally is non-transferable knowledge and often is inaccurate to boot.

Training is what I do to my dog when he pees on the carpet.

I don't want to be trained, I want to learn.

I actually think of training and learning orthogonally.

Learning is about increasing your knowledge and comprehension. Training is about increasing your skills. Learning involves study. Training involves practice. Obviously, the boundary is not stark, but you get the idea.

Contrast the feeling of wonder and amazement when you first learned some difficult theory or algorithm, with the feeling of power and confidence that comes from repeated practice using it to solve problems. In my mind, the first is learning, the second is training.

Yeah, these guys have my meaning correct.

In my mind, the difference between teaching and educating is the same thing as the difference between an "instructor" and a "teacher" and explaining my definition of education might be better illustrated using these titles.

An instructor is usually hired (often by a community college) to open a book and deliver curriculum to students. Sometimes, personal anecdotes or experiences are peppered in but for the most part, it's cut-and-dry. A teacher on the other hand delivers curriculum using their own string of lessons and methods. A teacher gives part of his or her experience to each student giving them more then a simple instructor ever could.

My reading of his use of the terms:

"Instruction" is sharing the minimum knowledge required to accopmlish the task.

"Teaching" is sharing the minimum knowledge to effectively understand the task.

"Educating" is sharing the minimum knowledge to effectively understand the task and as much context as is necesasry to understand why the task matters.

This kind of work fascinates psychologists, economists and managers because it raises the possibility that productivity in the workplace can be manipulated by clever management rather than by expensive financial incentives.

In my experience, I've had the best luck simply being clear and consistent about assignments and desired expectations (from both the manager and the worker end). For instance, in regards to this experiment on Mechanical Turk, I would probably include in the description that each photo should have around 10-15 tags if that was the level of categorization that I wanted.

Why don't we start by defining what is meant by "hard"?

Essentially worthless article without that information. Are you working as hard as you can? Is what you consider hard considered hard by everyone?

I try to follow the rule that whatever you do, do it well. When you have to cut down, reduce the number of things you do, not the quality of work.

Amazing how clueless the MIT guys can be sometimes.

While compensation and work product are great metrics for economists to argue about, they aren't the only factor driving people. In fact, I think in most instances work output has no correlation to compensation.

People instinctively do things for seemingly intangible reasons that apply in various circumstances. They figure that the best workers are more likely to get promoted, will get the best shifts, want to help their coworkers, are less likely to get laid off and have personal standards.

Think of it this way... soliders, even conscripted soldiers, commit acts of bravery that are above and beyond the call of duty in combat. Instead of staying out of the line of fire, they charge machine guns, throw back hand grenades, and rescue wounded comrades. To an economist, these things are completely irrational or crazy, because all of economics is focused on studying or manipulating a datapoint on a supply/demand curve.

Life is more that supply/demand. Economics influences life, but doesn't consume it.

I thought it was pretty much determined that most employees just need a minimum amount of salary met, at which point they're fine. Kind of like maintaining a lawn or pool; don't add a stressor by cutting things so close to the limit, but rather keep things plush, so there are no issues.

The combat soldier takes a calculated risk, and is there to assist because not doing so would be too powerful of a demoralizing force and fill themselves with regret. People leap into action at those moments because the alternative is incomprehensibly unacceptable.

Times Roman is so very hard to read on the internet :(

Fortuitously, there's Readability:

http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/

Sorry to be obnoxious, but this use of fortuitously as an all-purpose synonym for fortunately or happily or thankfully really gets on my nerves. Fortuitously means “by coincidence” or “by accident”, or sometimes “by happy accident”. The creation of Readability did not happen by chance. (Though of course, through long and increasing misuse, the word is now often used as you use it here).

Unless the parent was being ironic e.g. "its raining on me - well by pure chance they invented this amazing invention called the umbrella" (I suspect not as knowing Readability exists is not expected, though this ironic use is probably where the convergence of the terms began).

Thanks. You're right - fortunately would have been a better choice.

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