Developers—the good ones—don't want to work for you. They want to work for a cause.
Disagree strongly. Solving interesting problems, improving my skill set and my career, and doing good work for the people immediately around me is enough for me. Negative cause (e.g. working for an unethical company, or in the war industry) would be a problem; but the difference between neutral and positive means little to me. I'm older, though (30).
When I get to ownership level, perhaps starting my own thing, I'll care a lot about macroscopics. However, most of us start out as employees and there's more than enough rewarding in mastering the micro-scale stuff. As long as I'm not being asked to do anything wrong, I'm not going to get emotionally involved in how a company affects the world until I'm an owner; until that point, it's just a distraction.
Macroscopics, in my observation, just mean more Kool-aid; and there are just as many good people at companies doing less sexy (macroscopically speaking) but still important things. In fact, I worked (briefly) for one of those "change the world" startups-- a New York ed-tech that's devolved into being a sidekick to mainstream publishers-- and it was all marketing bullshit; the rank-and-file believed in it, but the executives were the most unethical people I've ever met (and that includes drug dealers).
Here's the way I see it: solving interesting problems is what motivates you to wake up and drive into the office every day. Being a part of a cause is what keeps you driving into that same office every day for five years.
Solving interesting problems will only get you so far. In fact, it will get you as far as the next company that comes along and dangles a nice raise in your LinkedIn inbox with the promise of solving interesting problems.
The cause is what creates long-term loyalty. For employers, maintaining this cause is the challenge. Causes are expensive. All too often, causes are set aside in the interest of profitability. To use Todd's example, this is when the food company realizes that people freaking love mac n' cheese and that they'll sell a lot more food if they stray from the cause and start serving the garbage that so many people love. Remember the early days of Google and "do no evil"? Yeah.
The point is - good developers want to care. They can get a good salary anywhere, but can you also make them care.
Some will want to work for a cause, some get fired up over cool algorithms, some care because they're best mates with the rest of the team and can grab a beer together.
But they want to care passionately about their work. That's the bottom line.
I'm sure plenty of people feel passionately about something, but I don't see how that makes them "good" in any technical sense.
The Spocks will always be a better developer than McCoys.
The best developers I've ever known move around a lot, or work at places like Goldman Sachs. They have a clique, and it's well above any loyalty to some hip corporate mission statement.
The best developers I've ever known move around a lot, or work at places like Goldman Sachs. They have a clique, and it's well above any loyalty to some hip corporate mission statement.
Exactly. They care more about keeping their skills sharp than "change the world" mission statements, so they'd rather do machine learning at a hedge fund than grunt work for some 23-year-old kid whose family connections bought funding.
They start thinking about the big-picture passion stuff when they're owners. Before that point, it's not relevant. You care more about growing your skill set and doing good work for (and mentoring) the people around you.
Well, if it's not a real mission—if it's marketing bullshit—you'll never fool your own people. They'll see through that in a second.
Graham Weston has a worhwhile TEDx presentation[1] that presents a more complete thesis on this subject. He raises three criteria: employees want to be a significant part of a winning team on an inspiring mission.
Nobody feels good changing the world if their own contribution isn't significant. Nobody want's to work for a change-the-world startup that can't execute or stay solvent.
But mission matters, even to employees. It's why (as he mentions) the #1 employer of ivy league graduates has horrible pay and really tough working conditions: Teach For America.
Disagree strongly. Solving interesting problems, improving my skill set and my career, and doing good work for the people immediately around me is enough for me. Negative cause (e.g. working for an unethical company, or in the war industry) would be a problem; but the difference between neutral and positive means little to me. I'm older, though (30).
When I get to ownership level, perhaps starting my own thing, I'll care a lot about macroscopics. However, most of us start out as employees and there's more than enough rewarding in mastering the micro-scale stuff. As long as I'm not being asked to do anything wrong, I'm not going to get emotionally involved in how a company affects the world until I'm an owner; until that point, it's just a distraction.
Macroscopics, in my observation, just mean more Kool-aid; and there are just as many good people at companies doing less sexy (macroscopically speaking) but still important things. In fact, I worked (briefly) for one of those "change the world" startups-- a New York ed-tech that's devolved into being a sidekick to mainstream publishers-- and it was all marketing bullshit; the rank-and-file believed in it, but the executives were the most unethical people I've ever met (and that includes drug dealers).