- Compensation ✅: how to motivate folks financially. Some good progress here.
- Non-Comp 🚫: how to motivate people without using monetary tools. Not started.
Ah, motivating humans via extrinsic rewards... Remember this scene from 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit'?
Maroon: I got [Dumbo] on loan from Disney. Him and half the cast of Fantasia. [Opens blinds] Best part is... they work for peanuts!
(Marron throws a handful of peanuts out of the window and Dumbo flies off sucking them up with his trunk.)
Valiant: Well I don't work for peanuts. Where's the other fifty?
Maroon: Let's call the other fifty a carrot to finish the job.
Valiant: You've been hanging around rabbits too long.
Unfortunately, engineers don't work for peanuts either (or carrots). Or maybe fortunately, because otherwise we all wouldn't have jobs. Guess we'll find out when GPT 6.5 comes out?
But... engineers don't just work for $$$ either. In our Hiring chapters we learn that $$$ are needed to prevent getting a 'no' from candidates... but they shouldn't get you to a 'yes'. Great engineers are motivated by WAY more than just money. Getting the money part straight is no joke though, so we will help you out there. The other part should be a lot more fun.
The TellApart CEO, Josh McFarland, used to say: "My job is to leave $ in your pocket and memories in your head." As managers it is our responsibility to make sure we help our engineers end up better-off financially, and with great stories to tell their families. YOLO.
Reward Systems are usually reserved for Head of Engineering level managers. We've rarely seen individuals below this level be required to think end-to-end about how to reward their teams. These sections will be written with that audience in mind, although we fully expect some of the recipes to be useful/interesting to other audiences as well.
There are so many different angles to reward systems that it's easy to get lost in the subject. We actually recommend working backwards. Someday, your CEO will come to you and ask how much budget you need for Engineering. This means you'll need to put together two documents: a Comp Planning and a Hiring Plan. Until that moment comes, a lot of the work you put into any type of reward system will likely end up blocked on your CEO, who does need to approve them and has bigger fires they are focusing on right now.
Once you start working on the comp plan you'll realize how important the market comps, comp philosophy, and all the other ingredients & recipes become. So budget yourself 2-4 weeks to work through it all. Yes, your CEO will say they need the budget yesterday, and that 'how hard can this be, I could throw it together in a couple of hours.' You should probably avoid telling them that you can also throw it together in a couple of hours, and that the 2-4 weeks of work will be convincing them. Use a Level of Effort negotiation: "I'll get you a draft in 2 days which won't have a lot of market research backing up my recommendation. Let's review that together and decide how much more effort we want to put into sharpening the numbers then."
So don't waste your time, and wait until the right moment...
- Drive is a wonderful book explaining where human motivation comes from. Great reading before you embark on revamping your reward systems.
Drive book.
My thoughts re: Vic. His best advice to me: “do you remember when you were promoted? Do you remember when we launched Google+?” Focus on the 5 year plan and not on short-term goals (e.g. promotion).
TITLES -When is it too early -One way door -Gets people confused. [2020] https://docs.google.com/document/d/1naA7iE1irGbnYpCs7g0RyWroiycmEuzsEk2baHt-j0o/edit [2021] https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XV1CMHvBw_bmLSNolRs3GOnqH2kR7gauKIphLtiCehw/edit#heading=h.5sm6n5rmnezr [2023] https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oLpaN140UA9RDsABt74PI8MtMr4kA2cAYaSDgrcy4R4/edit#heading=h.pejwisdxmwvr