Top Motivators For Developers (Hint: not money)

It depends how you count, though. I recently read a book that claimed inflation is more like 6 or 7% - for the things that matter.

The government decides what goods to put into the "standard basket" to calculate the inflation. They can choose goods that make inflation numbers seem good.

Yes I know it is usually not 10% (although we might still be in the middle of an economic crisis - Greece, one of the Euro countries, just going bankrupt). I am not sure if a typical salary raise is 10%, either. I am pretty sure that with salary raises alone, you won't be making significant headway as an employee (your company won't upgrade you from 50K/year to 100K/year). The only way to earn more is typically to switch jobs.

I never had a contract that said "salary will be raised by 10% every year", it was just a number I took out of thin air.

In my recent ploy to get downvoted, I'll sum up my view of this: Fuck you, pay me.

Human language is full of figurative generalizations, and no author expects them to be taken literally (there are two in this sentence alone).

What the author means to say is "It is commonly believed that X is generally a good motivator. While sometimes true, there exist some professions (ie. much of software development), for which the reality is more subtle, and Y actually motivates people better", where X is various rewards (ex. financial) and Y is different opportunities for autonomy, mastery, and purpose. But that wouldn't fit in a title, so you get a simple generalization, with the deduction of specifics assumed to be an exercise for the readers.

In my recent ploy to get you upvoted, I'll point out that some of the most brilliant programmers I know break the generalization in the article and follow this philosophy. They work as consultants making 5x the salary of their full-time counterparts, with precisely your mentality: I don't care if you respect me or honor me with social motivation or whatever. This is a business transaction, and I'll crank out amazing code at amazing speeds as long as you keep paying me $250/hour.

Not a top motivator: http://www.xach.com/img/doing-it-wrong.jpg