I’m sure it is, and that’s actually why I think it might be good that it’s lessened/dampened. Because there are other attracting forces for talented and dedicated people beyond money.
One is altruism or a belief in the importance of the work, another is intrinsic satisfaction of the job, and a third is a sense that the workplace is well-organized and has a minimum of red tape and hoops to jump through.
Get rid of the parties, glamour, and pressure, and these other virtues become even more important. Basically, I’m positing that some people were until recently trading valuable/important/satisfying work for glamour and parties and fun times hanging out with their coworkers. That doesn’t seem like a good trade to me.
The real danger, to my mind, is that losing the glamour/parties/fun might be so important to some of these very successful people that they just quit entirely, and do nothing at all. That would be a real loss. My guess is that while this will happen to some extent, that glamour/parties/fun are not the primary attractive feature of work for the people who are making the world move forward.
Ah, I see — the devil is in the detail. We are not really disagreeing about most things. I see it as a policy question where I think that network effects are more important, while your focus is (correct me if I got that wrong) on the importance of individual motivations.
that glamour/parties/fun are not the primary attractive feature of work for the people who are making the world move forward.
You are right, but their secondary effects are potentially more important: attracting more people who can work on moving the world forward. I can see why having a significant amount of people like that could be problematic for any organization, which is maybe (?) enough reason to avoid them on the policy level.
(there was a post about that some time ago, I tried to find it again but couldn’t. The basic argument was that charities should not claim to be the ‘single best’, since they could benefit more from people giving overall than competing against each other. The basic argument still holds: for big causes, more people are generally better if you can efficiently use them, whatever their primary motivation really is.)
I’m sure it is, and that’s actually why I think it might be good that it’s lessened/dampened. Because there are other attracting forces for talented and dedicated people beyond money.
One is altruism or a belief in the importance of the work, another is intrinsic satisfaction of the job, and a third is a sense that the workplace is well-organized and has a minimum of red tape and hoops to jump through.
Get rid of the parties, glamour, and pressure, and these other virtues become even more important. Basically, I’m positing that some people were until recently trading valuable/important/satisfying work for glamour and parties and fun times hanging out with their coworkers. That doesn’t seem like a good trade to me.
The real danger, to my mind, is that losing the glamour/parties/fun might be so important to some of these very successful people that they just quit entirely, and do nothing at all. That would be a real loss. My guess is that while this will happen to some extent, that glamour/parties/fun are not the primary attractive feature of work for the people who are making the world move forward.
Ah, I see — the devil is in the detail. We are not really disagreeing about most things. I see it as a policy question where I think that network effects are more important, while your focus is (correct me if I got that wrong) on the importance of individual motivations.
You are right, but their secondary effects are potentially more important: attracting more people who can work on moving the world forward. I can see why having a significant amount of people like that could be problematic for any organization, which is maybe (?) enough reason to avoid them on the policy level.
(there was a post about that some time ago, I tried to find it again but couldn’t. The basic argument was that charities should not claim to be the ‘single best’, since they could benefit more from people giving overall than competing against each other. The basic argument still holds: for big causes, more people are generally better if you can efficiently use them, whatever their primary motivation really is.)