Note that management of any kind involves creating incentives for your employees/subordinates/those-who-listen-to-you. The incentives include both carrots and sticks and sticks are punishments and are meant to be so.
Punishments seem to have rapidly decreasing returns, especially given the availability of alternatives that are less abusive. Otherwise we’d threaten to people when we wanted to make them more productive, rather than rewarding them—which most of the time we don’t above a low level of performance.
This is a shift of topic—heaping scorn is one particular sort of punishment. Firing someone who isn’t working after having given them several warnings is a punishment, but it isn’t the same as a high-flame environment.
Punishments seem to have rapidly decreasing returns, especially given the availability of alternatives that are less abusive.
I don’t understand the point that you are arguing.
Basically all human groups—workplaces, societies, countries, knitting circles—have punishments for members who do unacceptable things. The punishments range from a stern talking to, ostracism, or ejection from the group to imprisonment, torture, and killing.
In which real-life work setting you will not be punished for arbitrarily not coming to work, for consistently turning in shoddy/unacceptable results, for maliciously disrupting the workplace?
Of course all societies have punishments, but that doesn’t address the point you were responding to which was that Linus was more on the power-play end of the spectrum. The ratio of reward to punishment, your leverage as determined by the availability of viable alternatives, matters in determining which end of that spectrum you’re on.
And that has implications for the quality of work you can get from people—while you may be punished for blatantly shoddy work, you’re not going to be punished for not doing your best if people don’t know what that is. The threat of being fired can only make people work so hard.
Linus was more on the power-play end of the spectrum. The ratio of reward to punishment, your leverage as determined by the availability of viable alternatives, matters in determining which end of that spectrum you’re on.
Um. How do you determine the ratio of reward to punishment for Linux kernel developers?
Also whether you engage in power play is determined by your intent, not by ratio or leverage. Those determine the consequences (accept/revolt/escape) but not whether the original critique was legitimate or purely status-gaining.
You bring up some good points. I would go so far as to say that given a) the amount of subjective interpretation from the observers, b) the limited number of first-hand witnesses, and c) the difficulty of comparing the small number of sample societies for which we have observers, that in the absence of evidence roughly the strength of a formal study, this thread may not be able to reach an agreeable conclusion for lack of data.
Punishments seem to have rapidly decreasing returns, especially given the availability of alternatives that are less abusive. Otherwise we’d threaten to people when we wanted to make them more productive, rather than rewarding them—which most of the time we don’t above a low level of performance.
This is a shift of topic—heaping scorn is one particular sort of punishment. Firing someone who isn’t working after having given them several warnings is a punishment, but it isn’t the same as a high-flame environment.
I don’t understand the point that you are arguing.
Basically all human groups—workplaces, societies, countries, knitting circles—have punishments for members who do unacceptable things. The punishments range from a stern talking to, ostracism, or ejection from the group to imprisonment, torture, and killing.
In which real-life work setting you will not be punished for arbitrarily not coming to work, for consistently turning in shoddy/unacceptable results, for maliciously disrupting the workplace?
Of course all societies have punishments, but that doesn’t address the point you were responding to which was that Linus was more on the power-play end of the spectrum. The ratio of reward to punishment, your leverage as determined by the availability of viable alternatives, matters in determining which end of that spectrum you’re on.
And that has implications for the quality of work you can get from people—while you may be punished for blatantly shoddy work, you’re not going to be punished for not doing your best if people don’t know what that is. The threat of being fired can only make people work so hard.
Um. How do you determine the ratio of reward to punishment for Linux kernel developers?
Also whether you engage in power play is determined by your intent, not by ratio or leverage. Those determine the consequences (accept/revolt/escape) but not whether the original critique was legitimate or purely status-gaining.
You bring up some good points. I would go so far as to say that given a) the amount of subjective interpretation from the observers, b) the limited number of first-hand witnesses, and c) the difficulty of comparing the small number of sample societies for which we have observers, that in the absence of evidence roughly the strength of a formal study, this thread may not be able to reach an agreeable conclusion for lack of data.