What Actually Motivates People

I have one-on-one meetings with a lot of people. We sometimes talk about growth and motivation. If you do too, you definitely heard them say that what they’re looking for is “more money, a clear career path, awesome benefits.”

Now let me be super clear: money matters and more is better. I’m not the one to say that money is bad or should not be in the picture. But if you think that’s what drives people to do their best work, you’re missing the bigger picture.

I’ve managed teams for over 15 years. I’ve seen people turn down promotions. I’ve seen engineers take pay cuts to join different projects. I’ve seen the same person be disengaged in one role and absolutely on fire in another.

It never, not once, has been about the money.

The Comp Trap

In this context, compensation is anything material you get in exchange for your work. That’s salary, bonuses, RSUs, benefits, job titles, the works.

Here’s what happens in my experience when you try to motivate with compensation alone: someone shows up saying they’re unhappy or they have another offer somewhere else. They claim it’s because of money, so you do what managers do to retain talent: a dive and save. You scramble with HR and your boss, figure out an approval, and offer them a raise.

They consider it, and they accept it. It all works out for… about two months. Then the dopamine fades and they’re back to baseline. They’re now miserable again, and they’ll just quit anyway. Or, if it really goes well, they’ll want another raise at the next round of performance reviews.

You see, money is kind of a negative motivator: too little causes dissatisfaction, but beyond a certain level that allows for a chill lifestyle (for whatever definition of chill lifestyle you have), it doesn’t create motivation.

Suppose you make a certain amount. Say it’s 50 thousand. Suppose you’re ok with that, it allows you to have the lifestyle you want and not worry about dinner or emergencies. All is good. Now suppose you have a colleague. Same job title, same team, same level, same office. You do the same job. You find out they make 30 thousand. How does that make you feel? Now imagine you find out they make 80 thousand. Does that change your mood?

Yeah, I thought so. But as you still make the same 50k that makes no sense, right? Point is, your comp is proxy for your value in the company, and therefore a signal of worth. Being considered “less worthy” of your colleagues stings.

What Actually Works

Think about your own career. When were you most enthusiastic at work? It was probably when you were building something you cared about, learning fast, and had the freedom to figure out how to do it.

The research is clear. Daniel Pink’s book “Drive” nailed it: workplace motivation comes from autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Here’s what that looks like in practice.

Autonomy: Let People Own Their Work

Autonomy isn’t about “do whatever you want.” It’s about having control over how you accomplish your goals.

In my experience, junior managers tend to be too directive and give all specifics to their engineers. I have seen requirement docs with exact SQL queries to be used, or class names, or precise Figma designs. That sucks.

Granted: giving too little guidance is also a thing. Especially with more junior staff, giving too much freedom makes them just confused and scared. But even then, there’s a certain balance to be found, depending on the level of their maturity.

You always want to be crystal clear on the “what” and the “why.” But for the “how” you could be more or less vague. In any case, leave some room for owning the solution: being able to say “I invented that” beats “I implemented that” any day.

That’s autonomy. You’ve given them the problem, the context, and the guardrails. Now let them figure out the solution.

Mastery: Create a Path to Getting Better

I know sometimes it doesn’t look like it, but actually people want to be good at things. That’s kind of universal.

That’s what games are like: you start at level 1, then improve as you go. The goal is to become not just decent, but good. So good you can beat the last level and finish the game. That’s super addictive. That’s mastery: that drive to improve, to push your limits, to look back at your last year’s work and cringe a little.

How do you develop mastery, you ask?

One way is training: get access to books, courses, maybe a subscription to premium content. Some people even like conferences, though I think they’re a waste of time mostly, and completely useless for “mastery.”

Another, more important way, is developing mastery by doing work that stretches you.

Give people problems that are slightly beyond their current skill level. Not so hard they’ll surely fail, but hard enough that they have to figure out something new. Solving real problems is where most learning actually happens, at least for me. The challenge (and it’s no small feat) is to create an environment where it’s safe to experiment and learn on the job. Where “I tried this approach and it didn’t work” is a valid outcome, not a failure.

If instead you have every project pre-chewed so it becomes solving the same problem over and over with just a slightly different context and you have no room to experiment because “it’s inefficient”, you lose your mastery and probably your will to live.

Purpose: Connect Work to Impact

I once had a director who used to receive, like most executives, loads of proposals. His response to pretty much all of them was: “ok, but you need to answer the so what question.”

That’s purpose: purpose is the answer to “ok, but so what?”

And no, your company mission statement doesn’t count. That’s more useful as a guiding beacon, but it’s too generic to be the why behind daily work.

Purpose is specific. It’s real people benefiting from your work today.

I spent multiple years working with multiple teams building internal tooling, in multiple companies. Sounds boring, right? Tools for other engineers. Not exactly saving lives.

How do you keep those teams engaged? You ask for positive feedback, which is easy because your “customers” are in the same building as you, and you make the impact real. Random idea: every time your team ships a feature, share a Slack message from someone who used it: “This saved me 3 hours today.” “I could finally debug that issue because of your tool.” “This made my life so much easier.”

Now your team isn’t building “internal tooling.” They are making their colleagues’ jobs less painful. That’s purpose.

If you can’t connect someone’s work to real impact, you have two options: find the connection (it’s probably there), or question whether the work should be done at all.

What Doesn’t Work

Since we’re here, let’s also talk about what not to do. I’ve seen first hand all these techniques backfire badly.

Forced Fun

Mandatory team building, company parties, ping pong tables are kind of pointless in my book. These are fine as extras, I guess, minus the “mandatory” bit, but they don’t create motivation. An unmotivated person at a pizza party is just an unmotivated person eating pizza. An unmotivated person who is required to take their own personal time and use it to eat pizza with their boss is actually probably an annoyed, pizza eating person.

Public Competitions

Leaderboards, “employee of the month,” compete for promotions. These create extrinsic motivation. Extrinsic motivation is like fast food or porn: it feels great, but it’s really bad for you in the long run.

From a business perspective, having some sort of visible “competition” (formal or informal) makes people optimise for the optics. Here’s what I mean with that: if my goal is to win the “delivered features” race, I’ll throw out half-baked solutions all the time. If it’s about closing tickets, I’ll work on the easiest, fastest to close issues instead of the important ones.

Inspirational Posters, or Speeches

I’ve sat through my share of all-hands meetings where leadership tells everyone to “be passionate” or “bring more energy.” Meanwhile, the actual problems stay exactly the same. And I can actually understand where they’re coming from: I think it’s pretty normal to have good intentions at the high level and then drop the ball in the trenches.

But here’s the thing: if someone’s unmotivated because they have no autonomy, hearing “take ownership!” in a monthly all-hands doesn’t help. If they’re burned out from repetitive work with no learning opportunities, empty talking about “growth mindset” isn’t going to change anything. You can’t inspire your way out of structural problems.

The Bottom Line

Building a motivated team starts with giving people autonomy over how they work. Create opportunities for mastery. Connect their work to meaningful impact. And yes, pay them fairly. But understand that’s just table stakes. The real game is creating an environment where people can do their best work and grow while doing it.

That’s what actually motivates people.

Understanding this about yourself and your team can change things.