> Give them a little pay rise every 6 months
Everyone gets the same raise as long as they aren't obviously failing? A lot of people who have a more competitive personality would be completely demotivated by something like that.
Everyone gets the same raise as long as they aren't obviously failing? A lot of people who have a more competitive personality would be completely demotivated by something like that.
I feel the urge to constantly outdo oneself and everybody else tends to burn people out (it has burned out me), and innovation or change just to complete a checkmark on a CV can lead to unnecessary and abandoned projects. Like it happens a lot at Google for example.
I find this worldview to be very detrimental to teamwork. People are different, we have diverse motivations and personalities, and we have to find ways to use this diversity to our mutual advantage, instead of trying saying that some of those are right and some are wrong.
I strongly disagree, constant competition and a desire to be the best/most payed in a team dissolves cooperation. Why should I contribute to a team if person A tries to "win teamwork". I'm not saying you do that, and I'm not saying I believe that, because:
> People are different, we have diverse motivations and personalities, and we have to find ways to use this diversity to our mutual advantage, instead of trying saying that some of those are right and some are wrong.
I absolute agree with that statement. Mutual advantage to me is exactly that, even if I know someone else is smarter than me and can produce more quality work than me, the fact that I still contribute to the team success should mean I also get regular raises. Even if I only do the menial work those go-getters deem not worth their time.
Getting regular raises for contributing to the everyday work of a company is appreciation, and I gladly continue to the company if I feel valued. But not at the expense of my physical or mental health. If have the feeling I constantly have to outsmart and outdo everyone else just to keep my job and stagnate, my appreciation for the company drops. It's worst when the company instills the feeling that I'm replaceable at a whim if I don't put it 110%.
Again, I'm not saying you think that way. I'm saying that cooperation and inter team competition are orthogonal, but in my experience competition can demotivate people who otherwise deliver regular, good work. Not exceptional, and exceptional isn't always needed. Constant good work is more valuable to me that irregular exceptional.
I understand that you wouldn't be motivated by competition, and that's fine. I wouldn't want to work in a company that forces everybody to compete. That's actually my point: working in a company that builds it motivation structure that suits only one personality type is wrong, whatever personality type that is.
What you pay me changes my family experience, so I care deeply about it. What you pay someone else doesn’t, so I don’t care about the latter.
I know someone who quit a job at Boeing years ago in part because he was at the bottom of the pay ladder doing tons of work while the highest paid non-manager in his department didn't do anything except keep the printers stocked with paper.
Throwing incentives on competitive people can be toxic, but the opposite problem is that when high performers don't get rewarded the organization will rot.