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in reply to Money vs. Perl

I think you are proving the generally accepted rule that money alone is a poor motivator for technical people. Once tech people reach a basic comfort level (food, shelter, computers), higher levels of cash alone won't make up for a bad job or uninspiring work.

Paul Graham talks about this in his essay on great hackers and I've heard it mentioned elsewhere.

I too took my current job for reasons other than money and I have not regretted it. In fact, the company I left, who had offered me more money to stay, had a lay-off soon after I departed. I have no way of knowing if I would have been part of the lay-off, but I certainly felt like I had made the right move.

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Re^2: Money vs. Perl
by BUU (Prior) on Mar 17, 2005 at 16:11 UTC
    What on earth makes you think that this is anyway unique to "techincal people"? To be slightly pithy: Money motivates most, but happiness motivates all. By which I mean: Everybody wants a job they enjoy doing. Everyone. Now this may or may not be possible depending on where the person's skills lie, but that in no way diminishes their wanting happiness. And of course, a large part of happiness in a typical job is making enough to feed, clothe, shelter yourself and so on, and obviously this desire for food and clothing is no way unique to anyone. So really, saying "techincal people are less motivated by money" is a silly, arrogant saying. Now you probably didn't mean it that way, but I wanted to point it out that your statement some how implies that "techincal people" (whatever that is) are some how better, because they're less interested in money. Which isn't true.
[reply]
      I didn't mean to suggest this phenomena was unique to tech people--that's just the limit of my experience. I don't have enough data, anecdotal or otherwise, to comment on other fields of employment. So limiting my statement to technical people is purely a function of my limited knowledge of the workforce. I'm sure you're correct that people in many other fields feel the same way.

      Graham also limits himself to tech people because that's who he's talking about in his essay. I should also clarify that I don't consider myself one of the "super-hackers" he refers to--although I wish I was one. :)

[reply]
Re^2: Money vs. Perl
by zakzebrowski (Curate) on Mar 20, 2005 at 23:40 UTC
[reply]

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