On SharedAwarenessSystem, AlexSchroeder and BayleShanks wonder aloud why it seems so much fun to program for free, yet not so much fun to program for money.
What prevents programmers from having fun and getting paid for it ?
(1) could eventually be dealt with by commoditized financial derivatives designed to smooth earnings (a form of "job insurance").
(2) could be helped by more organizations/corporations devoted to taking care of things like matching programmers up with jobs, and doing billing, helping with legal issues, etc (like http://asynchrony.com/; but they closed).
I've collected some other ideas for organizations, and a few similar organizations, at http://rdrop.com/~cary/html/to_program.html#software_bazaar .
Should I move that list here ?
– DavidCary 2004-02-27 02:09 UTC
(see SoftwareBazaar for more replies to this thread)
Programming for work doesn't suck because you're getting paid for it. You're getting paid for it because it sucks.
People only pay you to do things that you wouldn't otherwise do. That's why they pay you. It's incentive. It tips your personal cost-benefit analysis in favor of doing the task they need done. If you were doing it anyways, they wouldn't give you money for it. They'd save that money and buy ice cream with it.
I don't think there's a way to find work that's enjoyable like play is. I think it's a pernicious myth: there's a job out there for you that's fulfilling, fun, and well-paid, and you just need to find it. The corollary being that if you are working in a job that is not your personal dream position, then it's nobody's fault but your own.
That dream job, in fact, does not exist. The trick instead is to find jobs that give you the most buck for your bang, and apply your energy to non-work activities that are enjoyable and fulfilling. Yeah, it's kind of depressing to realize, but at the same time it's kind of freeing. You're under no obligation to find fulfillment in the labor market, just like you're under no obligation to find fulfillment in paying your taxes or taking out the trash or any of the other tasks that you have to do even if you don't like them.
People only pay you to do things that you wouldn't otherwise do.
That's certainly true for many jobs. Nobody wants to do them without some kind of compensation, yet lots of people want them to be done, and are willing to pay cash for the benefit of avoiding doing those jobs themselves.
But there are at least 2 exceptions that I know about:
In other words, rather than paying these people to do something no sane person would do for free, I pay them to tip their cost-benefit analysis into doing my fun job rather than someone else's fun job.
:Above all, find ways to have more fun. There's no evidence that people produce more when they hate work. …
:Ignore anyone who says you're paid to be miserable or that having fun at work is tatamount to ripping off the company. … Just keep in mind the difference between pleasure in work and the joys of sabotage or revenge. … add a little zest, fun, or humor to your work …
:For example, there are Southwest Airlines flight attendants who lace preflight safety announcements with large doses of stand-up comedy. It's more fun for employees, and more likely to get passenger's attention … Or the young worker at a tool and die company whose design for a new riveting machine made it almost as much fun as a video game: "…. could you load the rivets fast enough to keep up with the machine? …"
:– Escape from Cluelessness book (c) 2000 by Lee G. Bolman and Terrence E. Deal
(Is this excerpt short enough for FairUse ? – DavidCary)
You came up with some great examples (although the programming example is the best) of the false syllogism of "enjoying your work". Here's the rough outline:
#I enjoy being in the outdoors. #A job as a park ranger requires being in the outdoors. #THEREFORE, I would enjoy being a park ranger.
The fallacy here is not realizing that a job that requires situation X also require situations W, Y, and Z. Being a park ranger isn't just about nature hikes and sniffing flowers: there's paper work, there's road clearing, there's hours in the office, there's getting pushed around by bureaucrats and politicos and logging companies and such. There's shooting sick bears. There's picking up trash. There's isolation and loneliness.
If you're a park ranger, you don't look out at all the visitors to your park and think, "Man, those SUCKERS! I get to do the exact same thing as them, and I get paid for it!" Park rangers don't get paid for enjoying the outdoors; they get paid for all the other crap they wouldn't do otherwise.
Another example is being a prostitute. If you like sex, why wouldn't you become a prostitute, right? But you don't get paid as a prostitute to have sex with people who you care about or who you find sexy. You get paid to have sex with someone you don't know and you wouldn't have sex with otherwise.
Now, a more realistic way to put it is this: if you have to put up with situations W, Y, and Z anyways, why not get situation X out of it? Like, if you're going to have to sit in a fluorescent-lit office for 8 hours a day, shuffling papers and dealing with meetings, why not do a job like that where you also get to do some programming? The enjoyment is a condiment in the otherwise bland and ucky soup of work life. It may make it better, but, hey: it's still work.
Some people seem to have more fun at some programming jobs than others.
I sort of hoped someone had figured out why that is. Or otherwise figured out ideas for making below-average jobs a little more fun, even if there is some minimum amount of ickyness common to all paying jobs.
(accidental ickyness and essential ickyness – analogy with Wiki:NoSilverBullet)
(A link to studies on why programmers in some environments are more productive than programmers in other environments would be good.)
How can we encourage people to hire programmers ?
Some ideas seem to require quite a few programmers to work together to implement:
Other ideas only require 2 programmers to cooperate:
I want everyone to BrainStorm? up a few dozen crazy ideas, then test out a few of the most promising-sounding ones.
I want everyone to help collect and share a list of proven-to-work ideas.
Wellll, I guess I question your premise: that there are programmers having fun at their jobs. I was a programmer for 15 years, and I never met one.
Programming is fun. Programming for money is not. And it's inherent in the reasons people would pay you to program.
But, y'know, I've done enough of my Jacob Marley imitation, I guess. If you really think programming for money can be as fun as programming for pleasure, more power to you. I hope it works out, although I know it won't.
Lastly: why would this be on-topic for CommunityWiki?
I guess organizing groups of people so that they can both earn money and have fun at the same time would be on topic, don't you think? The particular programming focus is just due to our professional background-bias.
I've been talking a lot about having fun and still earning money with other people such as my girlfriend who teaches bellydancing, for example. I also talk about it at work a lot, where I'm one of the "old hats" and I'm trying to teach the newcomers something about how to organize their lives around their working life instead of beeing eaten alive by the company. There are management issues, organisation of teams, organisation of your own time, separating family life and hobbies from work (or not!), etc. From this point of view, the messages above are just unorganized shots in the dark, rambling and full of programming-bias, but it could eventually expand into an interesting section of the wiki.
"If they have to bribe me to do it," a person might figure, "it must be something I don't want to do." -- Alfie Kohn (found on Wiki:ForBestResultForgetTheBonus )
I'm so happy I found the Creating Passionate Users blog In particular, the Never Underestimate the Power of Fun post. It makes me suspect that I can adjust the "fun slider".
So what's this about http://CodingInParadise.org/ ?
See also