[speedplane]

I entirely agree that general standards of productive time are not at all productive with many people. But the problem isn't just the time of day people work, it's the compensation they receive for it.

If you're told to build X, you might do it in a day, a week, or a month, many companies or managers wouldn't be able to tell what was appropriate. On the other hand, if you were told that you would receive Y percent of revenue of product X for the next three years, your incentives would totally change. You would be incentivized to work as efficiently as possible. More than just money, you would have an increased level of ownership in your own production, which would build confidence and value over the product you build.

[noir_lord]

For me it's the freedom to set my own priorities, tell me what you want and I'll build it.

As for a sense of ownership, not a problem when you're the only dev.

I own everything that isn't the windows server and desktops.

All the Linux servers, the network, the android terminals the production software, driver terminals etc are all my responsibility.

[speedplane]

If you're an employee, you actually own nothing. To own it, you need to put some skin in the game, feel the burn when things fail and share in the bounty when it succeeds. A "feeling" of responsibility, is one thing. But having your bottom line decrease when you mess up "feels" quite different.

[noir_lord]

> As for a sense of ownership

Note the word sense, clarifying is fine but why be needlessly pedantic.

[dahart]

You moved your own goal post. :P True ownership doesn’t require “skin in the game” or feeling any burn, or really any work at all. Buy stock, get money. Why beat around the bush with working hard and feelings?

[dahart]

That might work for you, you are certainly echoing a pervasive social belief, but some studies show that financial incentives for abstract tasks don’t work that well -- they can backfire and be very demotivating when it’s not obvious how to achieve the goal. And many studies show that non-cash incentives work better than cash incentives. In software, the financial reward is not what motivates many programmers.

OTOH, there are easy ways to increase the level of ownership for employees without tying it to compensation. That’s one of the ways I identify good managers from bad ones. The bad ones try very hard keep people focused on tasks the managers came up with. The good ones know how to get the employees to design the tasks, and then help the employees fit themselves into the solution so they have strong self-identity, all while making sure the right tasks are getting done.