Motivation

Motivation is usually thought to be the greatest influence on how well people perform, and most productivity studies have found that motivation has a stronger influence on productivity than any other factor.[5]

Whatever else its critics might say about Microsoft, everyone agrees that it has succeeded in motivating its developers to an extraordinary degree. Stories of 12-, 14-, even 18-hour days are common, as are stories of people who live in their offices for weeks at a time. I know of one developer who had a Murphy bed custom-made to fit his office. In its local area, Microsoft is known as "The Velvet Sweatshop," which suggests that, if anything, Microsoft might be doing too good a job of motivating its employees.

Microsoft's approach to achieving this high level of motivation is simple. It explicitly focuses on morale. Each group at Microsoft has a morale budget that can be used for anything the group wants to use it for. Some groups buy movie-theater style popcorn poppers. Some groups go skiing or go bowling or have a cookout. Some groups make T-shirts. Some groups rent a whole movie theater for a private screening of their favorite movie.

Microsoft also makes extensive use of nonmonetary rewards. During the year I spent working at Microsoft, I received three team T-shirts, a team rugby shirt, a team beach towel, and a team mouse pad. I also took part in a team train ride and a nice dinner on the local "Dinner Train" and another dinner at a nice restaurant. If I had been a permanent employee, I would also have received a few more shirts, a Microsoft watch, a plaque for participating in the project, and a big Lucite "Ship-It" award for shipping the project. The total value of this stuff is only a few hundred dollars, but the psychological value is much greater.

Microsoft doesn't ignore developers' personal lives, either. During the time I was there, the developer who had the office next to mine had his 10-year-old daughter come by every day after school. She did her homework quietly in his office while he worked. No one at the company even raised an eyebrow.

In addition to providing explicit support for morale, Microsoft gladly trades other factors to keep morale high, sometimes trading them in ways that would make other companies shudder. I've seen them trade methodological purity, programming discipline, control over the product specification, control over the schedule, management visibility almost anything to benefit morale. Regardless of the other effects, the motivational efficacy of this approach speaks for itself.



Professional Software Development(c) Shorter Schedules, Higher Quality Products, More Successful Projects, [... ]reers
Professional Software Development(c) Shorter Schedules, Higher Quality Products, More Successful Projects, [... ]reers
ISBN: N/A
EAN: N/A
Year: 2005
Pages: 164

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