Good Culture Is the Biggest Productivity Hack, Not AI • Hacker News Board

Re: Good Culture Is the Biggest Productivity Hack, Not AI

#131

Post by zipy124 » Mon, Aug 31, 2026, 11:07 AM UTC

solatic wrote: post #126

zipy124 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On the other hand, it also retains poor performers, who you want to steer to finding roles elsewhere If paying people less encourages poor performers to find roles elsewhere, it encourages your high performers to do this even more probably...

It really depends on the organization, its mission, the employee pool, and the local cost of living. Most software engineers are relatively well-paid compared to the wider labor market, even the engineers who are "underpaid". Kahneman's research showed that once you have enough money to pay your bills, making more than that has rapidly diminishing returns for your happiness. It's much more important to fit in - like…

I don't think we actually disagree here. I agree broadly with everything you said. My point was mainly I don't see a reason to support that assumption that if pay pushes out low performers, I don't see a reason why it wouldn't equally push out high performers? This goes on the assumption that lower performers optimise more for pay than higher performers?

Re: Good Culture Is the Biggest Productivity Hack, Not AI

#132

Post by r_lee » Mon, Aug 31, 2026, 12:03 PM UTC

kaffekaka wrote: post #124

r_lee wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's simply not equivalent to web search, I mean, I don't understand how one would come to that conclusion? we can argue about how much more productive you get, but, it's definitely not the same as what we had before

My bad! I thought you were commenting on the article, did not realize you replied to a comment. Sorry!

no problem!

Re: Good Culture Is the Biggest Productivity Hack, Not AI

#133

Post by solatic » Mon, Aug 31, 2026, 3:51 PM UTC

zipy124 wrote: post #131

solatic wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really depends on the organization, its mission, the employee pool, and the local cost of living. Most software engineers are relatively well-paid compared to the wider labor market, even the engineers who are "underpaid". Kahneman's research showed that once you have enough money to pay your bills, making more than that has rapidly diminishing returns for your happiness. It's much more important to fit in - like…

I don't think we actually disagree here. I agree broadly with everything you said. My point was mainly I don't see a reason to support that assumption that if pay pushes out low performers, I don't see a reason why it wouldn't equally push out high performers? This goes on the assumption that lower performers optimise more for pay than higher performers?

Low pay pushes people to leave, regardless of performance. The argument I'm making is that, in such an environment, you retain high performers through non-economic incentives (sense of belonging, appreciation, etc.) and push low performers out by not providing those. Why would anyone ever stay in an environment that also underpaid you and where you also weren't appreciated and gave you subtle hints to leave? Under-paying actually makes it easier to push out the people you don't want. Under-paying does indeed risk pushing out high-performers; my argument is that this is risk and not a guaranteed destiny, and that high-performers may be incentivized to stay by other means.

Re: Good Culture Is the Biggest Productivity Hack, Not AI

#134

Post by Kinrany » Mon, Aug 31, 2026, 4:13 PM UTC

ElProlactin wrote: post #127

Kinrany wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. So these are all examples of market forces being irrelevant. This isn't the market showing that culture doesn't matter: when the winner is predetermined, culture or anything else couldn't _possibly_ matter, as long as it is not so critical that getting it wrong kills the company in the most literal sense.

I understand your angle, but I'm coming from a different one: these are the "market forces" that matter today across a wide swath of industry, and, most importantly, the most lucrative industry. Capital beats culture most of the time today, so companies optimize how they use capital.

Yes, my objection is to the use of "market forces", which are widely assumed to favor efficiency. What we're talking about is, pedantically, something else, something like "capital allocation game theory". A different game that is not known to favor anything in particular, as far as I know.

TFA argues that good culture is important for productivity/efficiency, so any counterpoint would need to come from a game that does say something about efficiency.