Just thoughts

Sunday, June 6, 2010

When you loose your motivation...

Yes, I did loose it, but it arose a question: when you work for a great company, when you're surrounded with awesome, smart and intelligent people, what makes you loose the motivation you had? What makes you feel that what you do has no benefit or has no good reason? What makes you just throw in the towel and say "I can't do it anymore"?


Getting interrupted - just imagine that you work nicely on something and the product manager pops up at your desk and says stop, do something else, then after you started the other thing, you're stopped again and assigned to another task. Best way to annoy someone and of course results in nothing being finished.

Idiotic internal software - you're used to a software. I'm used to Perforce for example, but have to use SVN, which compared to Perforce is literally shit. Or, I love to add references to the support requests I answer, but I can't because someone didn't configure properly the Google Custom Search engine and the reference box is useless.
Let's say that the Perforce/SVN thing I understand because Perforce is freaking expensive, but I will certainly never understand the Custom Search thing because 1. it's free and easy to configure, in fact a child can also configure it, 2. because it's been configured by someone who very likely has BS in Computer Science, yet it isn't working. It annoys the hell out of me.

Communication - the lack of it. Let's say you're part of a community in which you are recognized as top contributor. But even if you have this nice label, the common users get insight into product updates, experiments and special programs way before you. I'm actually sick of this; renders that nice title useless and gives the awkward thought of just throwing it away.


Appreciation - probably one of the biggest reasons someone will loose their motivation is if the work they finished isn't appreciated. A few simple word like "Thank you" or "Awesome" makes them happy and will motivate them, even if only a slightly.

Burn out - Oh yeah. You know this well.

You may observe that I didn't put on the list the money factor. In my opinion if money is a motivation factor, then you haven't chose well your job.

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