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Motivational Incongruence and Well-Being at the Workplace

journal.frontiersin.org

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Re: Motivational Incongruence and Well-Being at the Workplace

#21

Post by a-saleh »

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…

It seems weird to me that some workplace would mandate physical(?) pair-programming as a default.

And I actually like pair-programming, some of my best code was written with somebody sitting besides me and we have solved some really tricky bugs like this.

But we tend to do this only rarely. Most of my day is spent organizing stuff and reading emails anyway :-)

Re: Motivational Incongruence and Well-Being at the Workplace

#22

Post by T0T0R0 »

It's kind of funny, but when you talk to a lot of fellow worker drones, who lack the kind of free will required to accurately describe their own motivations for holding down a job, most will continuously describe burnout as being at fault and getting fired during a moment when they failed the company.

Like:

  Oh boo hoo, I suffered burnout
  this one time because I was so 
  incompetant. Good on my boss for
  firing me when I deserved it!
Most worker drones with attitudes like this usually cannot or will not describe their core motivations for maintaining employment (power motives, according to the article) as "needing to pay rent" or something similarly compulsory. Maybe it's just too awful too think in such bleak terms.

But this article points to an interesting symmetry of blame: the workers beats themselves up, and the employers express absurd, overbearing demands, or some combination of the two. Worst case scenarios being the blind leading the blind.

You rarely see articles that provide a cold look at employer/employee relationships, and explore scenarios where emotional investment is optional on both sides of the table.

Re: Motivational Incongruence and Well-Being at the Workplace

#23

Post by flanbiscuit »

Can someone re-word the abstract in layman's terms? I had to google what "motivational incongruence" was.

My partial interpretation attempt:

Employees who did not feel like they fit into the culture of the workplace (affiliation motive) led to high job burnout. And people who didn't satisfy their need to have an impact on others, and gain respect and reputation (power motive), predicted increased physical symptoms.

Re: Motivational Incongruence and Well-Being at the Workplace

#25

Post by treehau5_ »

Yeah I have expereined this very thing at work right now, but the great thing about being a human is you can change and adapt at the face of adversity. In my case it was either get fired/quit spend a month or two getting a new job and hear it from my wife or suck it up and be the person myorganization wants me to be -- it wasn't that hard at the end of the day because I get paid handsomly, get to sit in an air conditioned room with a comfortable chair (they even got a standing desk for me)great benefits, get to put food on the table, have clean water to drink, you know.. something 90% of the rest of the world will never get to experience.

My answer to these situations is to humble yourself. Now of course I am not saying the other option is "wrong" especially if it is just as easy for you to find an accommodating workplace but at the end of the day you are paid to do a job, not have all your feelings babysitted. If you find your workplace is stressing you out, go talk to a therapist (or close friend who understands you, spouse, etc) and see if you can identify ways to overcome it. If not, then maybe consider the switch.

I know this will get downvoted here because it sounds very "conservative pull up your bootstraps"-esque

Re: Motivational Incongruence and Well-Being at the Workplace

#26

Post by aantix »

a-saleh wrote: post #21
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…

It seems weird to me that some workplace would mandate physical(?) pair-programming as a default. And I actually like pair-programming, some of my best code was written with somebody sitting besides me and we have solved some really tricky bugs like this. But we tend to do this only rarely. Most of my day is spent organizing stuff and reading emails anyway :-)

I'm pretty sure Pivotal and Carbon Five, two high end Rails consulting firms in SF require pair programming. I'm pretty sure that you can't hire Pivotal without contracting two of their engineering, strictly for pair programming.

Some of my best code has been written with pair programming but I can see the flip-side. There's no day-dreaming, there's no zoning out, complete engagement all day long.

It's the same mental overhead as with taking care of toddlers; you have to be constantly aware otherwise suffer the consequences.. :)

Re: Motivational Incongruence and Well-Being at the Workplace

#27

Post by JoeAltmaier »

treehau5_ wrote: post #25

Yeah I have expereined this very thing at work right now, but the great thing about being a human is you can change and adapt at the face of adversity. In my case it was either get fired/quit spend a month or two getting a new job and hear it from my wife or suck it up and be the person myorganization wants me to be -- it wasn't that hard at the end of the day because I get paid handsomly, get to sit in an air condit…

My old minister used to say "We can have all the morals we can afford". So if quitting isn't an immediate option, good advice to suck it up. In fact just knowing that it will end (eventually) can make it bearable.

Re: Motivational Incongruence and Well-Being at the Workplace

#28

Post by davidgerard »

p4wnc6 wrote: post #20

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 you…

Pretty much nobody in a business is there for the purpose of making a profit. You might think that was the point, but a moment's thought will make it obvious that literally everyone except the few actual shareholders is there for their own reasons. So it devolves into small-ape-tribe politics, dominance, etc. (And nerds are in no way immune to this.) This is the same reason telecommuting is so hard to get firmly in place: bugger the business advantages, the manager doesn't have the sense of control.

Re: Motivational Incongruence and Well-Being at the Workplace

#29

Post by stdbrouw »

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…

The red flag for me was polynomial regression on such a relatively small sample. As you say, it might pan out but it's very preliminary.

Re: Motivational Incongruence and Well-Being at the Workplace

#30

Post by Xcelerate »

I've never understood why companies don't have a mix of environments so that each person can choose what works best for them. Allow options for an open floor plan area, a closed floor plan area, and remote work. My PhD advisor didn't care if I worked in my office, from home, or from the top of a volcano as long as I got the research done that he wanted each week (turns out I tend to work best in coffee shops).
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