> Motivation is a hired trait. The only place where managers motivate people is in management books.

This seems entirely false to me. To be honest it is so incorrect it significantly puts into question the rest of the article.

1. I have absolutely had managers motivate me to work harder. I have also had managers completely demotivate me and cause me to quit. How on earth can anyone who has worked in the industry for any amount of time say that "The only place where managers motivate people is in management books"?

2. Of course most of the facile strategies mentioned in the article (like 996, micromanaging, etc) won't work. The article then generalizes this to all strategies - but "if terrible methods can't solve it, nothing possibly can" feels like a shaky argument at best. A good manager understands this, and motivates by helping you understand how the things you are doing are actually critical to the success of the team and the company. (If success of the company isn't something you're interested in, then yes, it's going to be hard to motivate you.) A poor manager sabotages motivation in a hundred different ways - he makes you feel like your efforts are totally wasted, or fails to articulate why they are important.

I’ve been working for more than 30 years. I was seriously demotivated by managers, but never motivated by them. The beat I got was protection from them to give me free space to work. But the motivation was always internal.

Being a manager myself, I never got to motivate anybody do anything they didn’t want to. If they wanted to, it worked, but the motivation AFAIK was internal.

Of course that is one person speaking. Milage can vary.

> A good manager understands this, and motivates by helping you understand how the things you are doing are actually critical to the success of the team and the company

Your definition of a "good manager" is essentially "does not actively sabotage work of subordinates". That's not motivation, that's merely absence of active demotivation. A person knowing how and in what ways their work contributes to the success of the unit and the whole are absolute basics and if a person is not aware of those either their manager is incompetent as hell or actively hostile.

Reminds me of those job ads where "benefits" section contains gems like "salary paid on time". That is not a benefit, that is such a basic that even mentioning it puts into question everything about such company.

I'll agree with you that the author tried to put in a sound bite and it failed to clarify the author's point.

The author is trying to argue for hiring early engineers who have exhibited ownership values and who want to take ownership for their work. These are the people for whom you establish "extreme transparency" (see: late in the post), a Google Doc for them to help align with others on high-level plans, a kitchen for people to informally talk in, and then get out of their way. That kind of environment is indeed in and of itself quite motivating for a certain kind of engineer.

Of course, it doesn't scale to BigCorp-size. Eventually you have too many cooks in the kitchen. The truth is that the vast majority of engineers really do want someone to tell them exactly what to do, so that they can come in to a highly structured 9-5 job and earn a paycheck that pays their mortgage and feeds their family. Author's prescriptions do not apply to large companies or to most engineers, and Author makes it clear as such.

I have experienced both.

I d argue its not the manager that motivates people that can only be found inbooks. Its the manager that can come in and mend a toxic and dysfunctional team.

The toxic teams end up breaking good managers in the end and they either become part of the problem or leave.

The hero manager described in the phoenix project is a myth.

The motivational one imho is very real but they need a good platform just like everyone else.

A lot of those books are more about persuasion than motivation - they can look similar from a distance.

I've only experienced de-motivation from managers, personally. At least for me, motivation comes from ownership, impact, autonomy, respect. You can cause me to lose motivation in a lot of ways, but you can't really cause me to gain motivation unless you've already de-motivated me somehow.

You can de-motivate me in a lot of ways, some examples:

- throwing me or a coworker under the bus for your mistakes

- crediting yourself for the work of someone else

- attempting to "motivate" me when I'm already motivated

- manufacturing a sense of urgency, this is especially bad if you try to sustain this state all indefinitely

- using AI or market conditions as a fear tactic to motivate the team

- visibly engaging in any kind of nepotism

Honestly this list could go on and on, but those are some that come to mind.

It is.

Motivation is a whimsical thing.

  The fantastic element that explains the appeal of games to many developers is neither the fire-breathing monsters nor the milky-skinned, semi-clad sirens; it is the experience of carrying out a task from start to finish without any change in the user requirements.

(a) make sure that the goals are set to stone and crystal clear

(b) the team can do their work without any unnecessary distractions

(c) try to remove some of these "necessary" distractions as well

It can be really hard. And it can very ungrateful. I aim to be a nightwatchman, and I'm really proud of myself when the team thinks I'm getting paid for nothing. The bigger the structure the bigger the drama and I don't want them to be any part of it.

Meanwhile I struggle with stakeholders who are like "c'mon, you already build the skyscraper, we just want you to move the parking lot from the underground to second story, how hard can it be, you have all the parts in place, just move them around".

So what did those managers do to make you more motivated?