If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions?
This quote came to mind as I was reading a post by Jeff Atwood on the word Lazyweb: From www.codinghorror.com:
It’s hard to pin down the exact etymology of the word Lazyweb, but it seems to have one primary meaning:
1. Asking a question of an internet audience in the hopes that they will be able to find a solution that you were too lazy or inexperienced to find yourself.
…
I don’t mind Lazyweb requests, within reason. Contrary to popular belief, there is such a thing as a stupid question. It’s asked by people who failed to do even the most basic kind of research on their question before they asked. I’m not expecting everyone to read a 32 page document before asking a question, but at least cover the basics before casually deciding to make your problem everyone’s problem.
My wife can attest to my love of answering questions, especially engineering/technology questions. At the same time, one of my biggest pet peeves are questions which are asked simply because the asker has not done any level of work to answer the questions himself1.
For a while, I used to respond to such questions with my Larry and Sergey story. Ask me a lazyweb question sometime and I’ll tell you my story.
When I needed help from a professor in college, I learned to preface the question with a synopsis of what I had done thus far in my attempt to answer it. This seemed to help direct their answers more specifically to my particular failure of knowledge, as well as assure them that I wasn’t being lazy.
This post was originally just going to be a link to a video. Then I started doing some more research and some more digging and this post is what I’ve come up with. I think this is a testament to the magnitude of the idea I’m going to be passing on. Thus, whatever you are doing, stop now and pay attention.
“There’s a mismatch between what science knows and what business does.” – Dan Pink
Dan Pink will describe in 10 short minutes (along with an awesome animation) the truth about what actually motivates us. Surprisingly (or not), money is not what motivates us (generally speaking). Instead, the three factors that lead to better performance & personal satisfaction are:
autonomy
mastery
purpose
Not only that, but we have the research1 and data2 to back this up.
The following animation is adapted from Dan Pink’s talk at the RSA3:
Note: you may need to click through if you can’t see the video above.
As much as like doing what I do, I also feel like I’m being stifled, especially as a result of old-fashioned nine-to-five, carrot-and-stick incentives. Thus, when I think about wanting to work at a small company, it’s not because I don’t like people or want to work with fewer people, it’s because there is more freedom to do what I want, more freedom to explore, to freedom to innovate, and that’s what I want.
To be clear, this isn’t about working less, it’s about working best. If I can get done in six hours what you think should take eight hours, why can’t I go home early? Am I being paid to be available to solve problems or to actually solve problems? Work that requires even marginal amount of thinking should5 be Results-Only Work Environments, not Presenteeism Work Environments.
All the money in the world can’t buy happiness and I’d rather being making $10k (or whatever) less and truly enjoy what I do; and this is the problem.
Currency for motivation is becoming more intangible. … [A] fun/surprising reward can be more motivating than a functional cash incentive or discount. A competitive, peer interaction and temporal element drives motivation. Case in point look at how 4Square drives engagement.
I think the current generation of engineers6 gets this idea. We aren’t as tied to money as we are tied to autonomy, mastery, and purpose. I like purpose, it makes me feel like I’ve actually done something useful. And I like mastery, because I’m sort of anal like that. And I like autonomy, because I’ve found ways of doing things that work really, really well for me and get the job done. And money can’t buy any of that.
I see this at play in my own life in literally everything outside of work (i.e. my seven-to-three job): writing plugins for WordPress, running a triathlon, leading a Bible study, taking photographs. These are the things that make me happy. Engineering makes me happy too, but not as much as I think it could; which I believe has to do with the current method that I practice it.
Why Intelligent People Fail
Content from Sternberg, R. (1994). In search of the human mind. New York: Harcourt Brace.
Lack of motivation. A talent is irrelevant if a person is not motivated to use it. Motivation may be external (for example, social approval) or internal (satisfaction from a job well-done, for instance). External sources tend to be transient, while internal sources tend to produce more consistent performance.
“A long history of research has demonstrated that rewards can decrease motivation and attitudes (Festinger & Carlsmith, 1959), alter self-perception (Bem, 1965), increase overjustification (Lepper et al., 1973), and turn feelings of competence into feelings of being controlled (Deci & Ryan, 1985).” Source: Effort for Payment: A Tale of Two Markets↩