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Motivational Incongruence and Well-Being at the Workplace

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Re: Motivational Incongruence and Well-Being at the Workplace

#11

Post by freddyc »

hacker_9 wrote: post #7
ams6110 wrote: post #2

I quit a job when I felt burnout developing. The cause? Pair programming. I just cannot that close to someone for the majority of the workday without feeling constant low-level stress and annoyance, and I can't focus and think about problems in that setting. When you have to sit in your car for 15 minutes every morning just to summon the resolve to get out and go into the office, something's wrong with your work envi…

I had a similar experience that made me quit my last job, but for me it was being in an open plan office. I just found that I felt constantly under someones gaze, and I couldn't look around without looking someone in the eye. It was a low level stress like yours, and was really uncomfortable when trying to work through problems. For example I find closing my eyes helps me visualise a process in my head, but then some…

I had a very similar experience where I actually dreaded going into the office because I knew my productivity would fall off a cliff. I slowly found myself accepting the day would be a loss with pointless meetings and other distractions, and got into the habit of doing my "head-down" work later once I got home. My wife pointed out how stupid that was (and frankly, unsustainable) so I pretty quickly jumped ship to a different company with a much better office design/remote work policy where I felt a lot more comfortable.

Re: Motivational Incongruence and Well-Being at the Workplace

#12

Post by nikanj »

ape4 wrote: post #9
dasmoth wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for writing this. I particularly like the suggested desk arrangement -- although I'm not sure I can see it catching on given that pairing is often coupled with long tables in open-plan offices. Once upon a time, I thought programming was an introvert-friendly career. That seems to be changing fast.

I guess they want to get rid of the deep-thinking reflective introverts.

Their idea of a great hacker comes from movies such as Swordfish

Re: Motivational Incongruence and Well-Being at the Workplace

#15

Post by erkkie »

kristianc wrote: post #6

I'm not sure how much this advice will be heeded. In a lot of places in tech, there seems to be a culture where companies are more concerned about maximizing units of work at the expense of more intangible factors. You see this in Agile, Kanban etc methods of work where personal development is completely subjugated to the needs of the project. Insofar as a guiding principle behind the work does exist, that too tends…

I agree with your general sentiment and have my share of seeing ridiculous ceremonies of current-workflow-fad-of-the-year being enforced on people, kanban is a great system for managing deliverables in an ad-hoc environment.

It's a false premise (and unfortunately all too common, both self-inflicted by developers themselves and by managers) to think that tracking and managing work pipeline == maximizing output at the expense of the worker.

Re: Motivational Incongruence and Well-Being at the Workplace

#16

Post by sctb »

anbende wrote: post #4

The title is sensationalist. They found correlational evidence to link their measures of "motivational incongruence" with burnout and physical symptoms. It was NOT causal. They also did not test or control for anything. No tests of stress, social support or anything else that could mediate these effects. Their measure of implicit motivation is also a little rough: they had raters count the number of, for example, aff…

Thanks, we updated the submission from an article which had the title, “Burnout is caused by mismatch between unconscious needs and job demands”.

Re: Motivational Incongruence and Well-Being at the Workplace

#17

Post by a3n »

ams6110 wrote: post #2

I quit a job when I felt burnout developing. The cause? Pair programming. I just cannot that close to someone for the majority of the workday without feeling constant low-level stress and annoyance, and I can't focus and think about problems in that setting. When you have to sit in your car for 15 minutes every morning just to summon the resolve to get out and go into the office, something's wrong with your work envi…

I may be wrong, but my unresearched feeling is that extroverts promote these kinds of things, and introverts (like myself) are made to look bad for not liking and thriving in these imposed environments. Not team players.

One size doesn't fit all.

Re: Motivational Incongruence and Well-Being at the Workplace

#19

Post by jMyles »

ams6110 wrote: post #2

I quit a job when I felt burnout developing. The cause? Pair programming. I just cannot that close to someone for the majority of the workday without feeling constant low-level stress and annoyance, and I can't focus and think about problems in that setting. When you have to sit in your car for 15 minutes every morning just to summon the resolve to get out and go into the office, something's wrong with your work envi…

This phenomenon is one of the distinct situations where I have found that the effects of cannabis are helpful.

Smoke a bit with your partner, go for a walk, maybe apologize or retract some things if necessary. Maybe stop being such a perfectionist and just merge what does work now.

Re: Motivational Incongruence and Well-Being at the Workplace

#20

Post by p4wnc6 »

I wrote a blog entry about something similar -- but trying to take it back one level and understand why do certain managers go to the trouble of hiring people only to plug them into physical environments that are demonstrably toxic for human beings (not merely introverts v. extraverts, but for almost any human in general).

Sadly, I think it's just age-old politics. You're hired for the political effects it has on your boss -- including looking like a l33t h4x0r in your violently-collaborative open plan office doing Agile. Kills productivity and morale, but managers & executives aren't compensated for actually producing anything, so it doesn't matter. And HR'll always spin some other story about turnover because the one thing they have to avoid at all costs is actually providing a healthy workplace.

[0] http://suitdummy.blogspot.com/2015/05/why-hire-underemployme... >

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