How to Motivate Your Developers

June 26th, 2013

When developers are not motivated, progress is slow and quality is low. This ultimately affects company revenues and can lead to reduced opportunities for all employees. Motivation leads in the opposite direction: wealth and happiness. The first thing to understand about motivation is that it's internal. We can't force someone to become motivated, but we can still have a strong influence. Here are my top three picks to increase motivation from my presentation at IPC 2013 in Berlin.

Goals

Motivation is our reason to act towards a goal. There are two common ways to express that reason. We can say that we will go to work because it's 8am or in order to finish building a game that improves the logic of pre-school kids. The first one is reactive. Someone or something else is in control of our life, and it's unpleasant. The second justification has purpose. When we identify ourselves with that purpose, you can feel pride and pleasure from your work. Great quality and productivity naturally ensue.

Small wins

A goal may seem far away and if we can't achieve it quickly, we lose interest. The idea is to cut our work into smaller pieces. To become a Karate grandmaster takes much time, but getting a new belt shows progress and gives a sense of achievement. Software is similar. We can stabilize our code for demos more often. It's not as fast as a straight path, but remember that we'll stay in the game longer if we can see tangible progress rather than abstract percentages.

Use of talent

No developer enjoys doing repetitive tasks and staying in one place. Developers want to use their full range of talents as much as possible and gain new talents. Don't give tasks too difficult for one's skills, but just difficult enough to provide a challenge. Another way that we can help them improve is by sending them to conferences and workshops. Not only will the come back more motivated, but will also have increased productivity from all the new techniques that they learned!

Previous: Hiring the Right Skills Next: Speed Up Your Database