What are the types of atrophy?

What are the different types of motivations among top engineers?

• Assume 100% of the engineers on a team are top engineers. Some are motivated by being "out there"/risky-creative/R&D types. What are the other types of engineers? What are different ways to motivate/reward each of these types?  (recognition for the hard workers, freedom for the creative types, etc?

• Answer:

  My qualifications: ACM World Finalist, highly ranked on TopCoder, early engineer at a recently IPOed company. I've also been very fortunate in terms of being able to work with other top engineers. Some of these are things that motivate me, others are things that seem to motivate those around me. Ambitious mission. Top engineers are generally more excited doing something ground-breaking than doing something that makes a lot of money. Think "Organizing the world's information" () and "A free world-class education for anyone anywhere" () as opposed to or . Open-ended problems. When you're the best at what you do, it's no fun to work on a problem with a well-understood solution. You want something that really challenges your creativity and your abilities. Top people don't want to spend their days writing CRUD applications. Freedom to pick projects and approaches. Micromanagement is stifling, especially for people who are constantly coming up with great ideas and approaches. One company that I worked at managed to hire great people, but the VP and CTO were both huge micromanagers, and the best people would leave quickly (either after a few months, or the day after the 1-year option cliff). The annual engineer turnover rate at that company was literally 75-80% for two years (until the micromanagers were removed). A chance to work with and learn from other top people. It's really exciting to work with an finalist or a CEO whose last company went public. Finding people like that can be an immense learning opportunity, and can often compensate for other shortcomings (e.g. a boring idea with an amazing team is more appealing than an amazing idea with a humdrum team) Having a streamlined, low distraction work environment. It's frustrating when a crappy build system, an excess of meetings, or the lack of a second monitor slow down your productivity. The better you are, the more frustrating it is to feel slowed down. Addressing these motivations is not easy. Some ideas: give engineers 20% time to ensure that they're challenged and engaged; provide guidance about what needs to be done but let engineers pick their own projects; try really hard to have at least one notable founder or early engineer (someone with well-publicized successs or amazing credentials or someone who is a well-recognized leader in some field).