Excellent Job, Mate!

In one of my team's meetings centred on the topic of the "manager's appreciation" (believe it or not, the software development teams take sometimes the time to discuss about other topics that just .net frameworks or best design practices), I came up with the idea, on the spur of the moment, to inquire around the table about a simple choice:

What is it more important for you: the appreciation you get from your manager, who in spite of his technical background may not be totally aware of your professional prowess, or the praise you get from the senior developer who works beside you and knows very well how valuable you are?

Of course, most of the attendance jumped immediately at the low hanging fruit: the manager's recognition matters the most (I would have thought that they did that only to please me, till one of them mentioned that there is where your bonus is coming from, so the answer was no brainer, dude!), but a few of them acknowledged that being appreciated by a colleague who is good at what he's doing matters a lot for them.

Next day, I was pleasantly surprised to have one of my senior developers, let's call him Dwight (who, by his outspoken personality and straight way to communicate the unpleasant thing that in spite of the best treatment, that piece of software so much touted about is dying, has attracted the wrath of the higher management on him, and implicitly on me) has asked me for a brief meeting to follow up on pour discussion about the "peer's appreciation" with a concrete example. He came to my office to specifically praise Irene's stellar performance in VehiclesForUs, one of our main products, which is in its final QA stage before release. Irene is now fixing bugs, some of them critical, with an enviable speed and she proves reliable, thorough, precise, sharp.

And then I read this article in Globe and Mail which talks about a new research unlocking surprising secrets about peers' recognition. And the more I read the better I felt... I knew the truth revealed by the assumingly highly paid research all along, since my early years as a professional. The sparse "thank you for your work" that you get occasionally from your grumpy, young boss is less important than the "cool, man" brief statement you are rewarded with by your guru colleague, the insufferable swe-geek (from software geek, mind you) who's building dream code with the easiness others make an omelette. His praise would make instantly my day. Of course that wouldn't bring more change into my pockets, but would make me feel really good about myself, confident in my skills built with so much effort in years of enthusiastic, although hard work.

It all comes to that new level of motivation (the experts call it Motivation 3.0, to separate it from the classic Motivation 2.0 which is an elegant way to name the old "stick and carrot" approach) where you want to do something with your life that is both meaningful and enjoyable, and also a reason for being proud and maybe leave a bit of legacy behind you. And it's not about showing the others how smart you are, to get their votes of confidence, it's about feeling you are on the way you started to pave when you were young and restless, and the only dream you had was to go in a history book as the first guy who stepped on Mars (this opportunity is still out there!) And none of these dreams ever started with any material compensation. The word "money" had no place in the workshop of dreams. And, believe it or not, still hasn't.
This is good news for the corporations, of course, where the "money savings" is the sweet lullaby, but there's definitely more attached to the notion of "work" than the bare view of a corporate tower filled to the edge with grey cubicles and politically correct people, also grey to fit in the décor. After all, the beavers are not organized in business units. And they are not grey either...