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I seem to battle with myself often over the thought that money is a poor motivator for hacking well. In fact, even a friend of mine and I agree that since we started working for the man it's taken a lot of fun out of the creative process of the self-education and exploration that hacking promotes

someone different...

Money is not a motivator. It is a distraction. It is a necessary evil.

You know, I've often wondered about this odd "anti-money" perspective which seems prevalent in certain corners. It seems that a lot of geeks have an attitude about money and employment which is a little, well, juvenile. I don't mean to sound insulting but, really, "the man"? Who talks like that? And a distraction? I'll tell you what's a distraction. Having your credit cards maxed out, that's a distraction. Having your car repossed, that's a distraction. Being given the opportunity to make a living doing what you love, that's a gift.

The minute money ceases to become an object (read: salary wages, open source development, coding for personal pleasure) the craft is almost elevated to an art form, and everything has it's purpose.

I really don't think money has anything to do with it, and I don't really think that this conversation is limited to coding. It's really a question of principle and work ethic. Personally, when I have a job, I feel morally obligated to do my best at that job. I think this is true regardless of what that job is. If you're being paid to dig ditches, then dig the best damn ditches that can be dug. Anything less is simple laziness.

And also, money ceases to become an object only when you've got a hell of a lot of it :)

I'm paid a salary, but with OT incentives. Given that, it's very easy (and a number of the developers I work with do so) to just hack'n'slash your code and produce 100 kinds of crap

Don't give them a pass by saying "oh, they're just distracted by the money." Some people just don't give a damn about what they do. It's not that their work ethic has been somehow "corrupted" by being paid, it's that they never had one to begin with.

The art in programming, I've found, is in how maintainable you strive to make your code

Don't limit it that much. I have tons of respect for the early era game programmers who had to scratch and scrape for every last bit of memory to get those 8-bit graphics on the screen. There is art in writing maintainable code, but there is art in writing code that squeezes every last ounce of oomph from a machine, in writing code that runs in as little time as possible, in writing code that uses as few system resources as possible, even in writing obfuscated code. There is art in doing anything if you do it well.

Do you find that the free software you develop overall tends to provide a better learning experience/more fun/more satisfying than your day job?

Honestly, no. I love my job, and I love the interesting challenges that it throws my way. Now, that may be because I work for a great company, but for the most part I think it's a question of attitude. I enjoy creating solutions to problems. I enjoy accomplishing things. And honestly, on my own I could never write anything as challenging, or that would accomplish as much, as what I do for my job. So when I get an assignment at work, I look on it as an interesting challenge, rather than just "a job." When it comes right down to it, the difference between most programming tasks, corporate or open, isn't technical, its in the minds of the people who do them.

For myself, I've never been the type to agonize over money. I value my happiness and creative satisfaction far above a new car

You know, I have to say, I actually like money. It's nothing major in my life, it's not my primary goal, but I like it. I like having money, but most importantly I like not having to worry about money. So when someone gives me the chance to do something I love, and make enough doing it that I never have to worry about the rent, I tend to think of that as a Good Thing.

...I personally believe that money is a terrible motivator for anything creative,

Too limited and too extreme. Money is a mediocre motivator for anything at all.

and think that the idea of having to show up at 7:30 AM under the assumption that I'm ready to think is something about my lifestyle that may need to change quickly

I don't know about you, but at my job I can show up pretty much when I want (within reason, I'm in by 9-9:30) as long as I don't leave until 8 hours later. That's a question of business culture.

I have a story that I like to tell to people concerning friends of mine in school that saw that I was a capable person in CS without trying, whereas they struggled through their Liberal Arts degree. Inevitably, we all have that friend who comes to you and says that s/he's changing majors to CS because s/he likes to play with computers. The sentence that follows betrays their true intentions however. If the next words are, "Plus, programmers get paid a whole lot more than x.", you should, as a friend, advise them that they are making a mistake. If the next sentence is not related to the money, they may be doing the right thing.

Well, here's another story for you. My senior year of high school, I was bent on pursuing a career as a professional writer, and wanted to be an English major. Luckily, my parents are very wise people. My mom had taken a look at the job market, and knew that I loved computers and was good with them. She summed it up very nicely "If you write a great novel, no publisher is going to ask what you majored in, but no one is going to hire a programmer with an English major. Study something that will let you get a job, and worry about that other stuff later."

Luckily, I have always been the sort of person who knew logic when he heard it. Now, maybe my case doesn't really apply, because I had already pursued programming for fun before, because I had always been interested in pursuing "an art" of one kind or another. And I wouldn't say I'm in it for the money (I took my current job over one that offered about 8k more, because I liked the stuff they were doing better). But it was originally financial (or perhaps pragmatic) considerations that led me to choose CS.

Sorry for jumping around so much in my replies. Feeling a little eclectic today.

Some people drink from the fountain of knowledge, others just gargle.


In reply to Re: Free Software Development, Money, and the Hacking Experience by DeusVult
in thread Free Software Development, Money, and the Hacking Experience by mothra

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