Why my Mom and Ted Neward Irritate Me

November 9th, 2009

My mother is a psychologist and recently visited me us here in Idaho. We spent some time talking about the psychology behind some agile practices. Pretty cool!

Additionally, we ended up on the one mystery topic that has always eaten away at me. That mystery for me is simple:

Why does one person or team pursue excellence relentlessly while another hits the door at 5:01 and doesn’t think about software development until tomorrow morning?

I got into the same discussion with Ted Neward at the recent P&P Summit while playing pool. Heck, it was almost an argument. :) I said something stupid that night. I said, “It’s all about incentives.”

Wrong.

One Theory: Incentives

I have had the opinion for years that there must be some motivator, some technique, or some dynamic that will affect people positively to simply care. This is the whole idea behind coaching, after all. A well-versed and motivating individual comes into a team and works with them to get better results. This happens every day.

If this will really work, it necessarily means that people are motivated by incentive. What I mean by that conditions like salary, a great leader, wonderful co-workers, free pizza and soda (or something) will inherently motivate someone to care about excellence.

Certainly no one can deny that incentives like these contribute to an enjoyable workplace. Heck, I love visiting the Microsoft campus and downing those free V-8s. All of them combined though, probably cannot cause someone to ponder, read, and learn. Incentives cannot move someone to try a new coding technique just because it might be interesting.

The Irritatingly Simpler Theory that is Likely True

There is just something about unique about people who can’t stop trying to improve. It isn’t the great boss or the great office space that causes me to think about the finer points of TDD in the shower. It’s just because I can’t NOT do it.

Both my mom and Ted Neward tried to get me to see that incentives will get you behavior and results (sometimes the ones you actually want), but can’t create passion. That is something that is simply innately there or not there.

This isn’t to say that there is no value in the person who wants to do their bid and get fair pay for a fair day. That’s not what I’m talking about. I am talking about the fact that most genius is recognized by relentless pursuit, the kind we can’t define.

The Good News

OK. Uncle, I get it. The great news is there are so many of us passionate geeks out there striving to improve. You wouldn’t likely be reading this if you weren’t one. Heck, I even geek to work with some!

What’s your theory? Are passionate professionals just the obsessive-compulsive ones?

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  • http://elegantcode.com David Starr

    All of these comments are cool.

    Here’s the thing: I shouldn’t even have used the term 5:01 in this post. There are plenty of passionate people working for lame employers that have every reason to get out fo there and practice Kaizen on their own. That will certeinly lead to a better company, and a better team.

    Further, I wonder about something. Do driven people gravitate to that for which they have a passion?

    I understand plenty of people are not on fire for their chosen profession. Isn’t that sad? I mean, who wants to spend so much time doing something you you don’t love?

    I’ve known programers who decided to move into other careers. Go for it! The point is to do what you love and do it with passion. If you are lacking either, why not go find what works for you?

  • http://blog.coreycoogan.com Corey Coogan

    I wrote a post about passion in software developers. I totally agree that this is extremely important. In my post, I outlined some ideas to try and inspire passion. Sure, some people just absolutely don’t care and won’t get inspired no matter what you do, but others just need someone to remove their blind fold.

    http://blog.coreycoogan.com/2009/07/22/passion-in-software-development/

  • Steve Py

    @David Starr

    Yeah, it’s true. I came in on Friday morning to officially say I was quitting. I can only think of 2 reasons for it. #1 as I mentioned before, or possibly #2, He was paranoid about letting 3rd parties into the office when no one was there.

    I remember in the interview, one question set off small warning bells. “How well do you work with difficult personalities?” I can, and have worked with just about every kind of personality. At first I thought he was talking about the technical lead who was a bit eccentric & difficult to talk to at first. Actually, he was talking about himself. When the rest of the team was having a team meeting to discuss a set of requirements, they started at 07:00 and went right through to 10:00 then took a break where the tech lead went out for a smoke. The boss walked into the office around that time and asked what everyone was doing sitting around. Then when the tech lead came back he grilled him for leaving everyone waiting and wasting time. (maybe 10 minutes) That afternoon I did a demo with another dev of the functionality I started earlier in the week and we were discussing using a UI similar to what users are used to with Excel. When I had started up I’d moved many of the shortcuts into folders to de-clutter my desktop & start menu. Since we did the demo on my machine the other dev had to ask me where the Excel link was. After I pointed out the “Office” folder, the boss piped in and told me to put the icons back on the desktop.

    I was amazed that anyone would work under those conditions.

  • http://relentlessdevelopment.wordpress.com Grant C

    I agree that generally people are passionate or not, but Steve makes a good point about the amount of apreciation you get having an effect on that.

    For a couple of years I worked at companies where the work was dull and laborious, and nobody listened to anything the developers had to say or gave them an opportunity to shine. It really put me off programming for a time, and although I was still passionate, it was about my various hobbies and not development. As you say, not enjoying your work really sucks.

    Fortunately that acted as a catalyst and made me start learning C# so I could get a better job – I’m now regularly coding in the evenings again, blogging about all the cool stuff around, and often work an hour or two extra (at my new job) just because I want to keep going on some interesting problem!

    So while I think your mum is right about traditional incentives like money not making people passionate, motivators such as the those identified by Fred’s company (such as being appreciated!) can certainly make a difference.

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