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How Not to Kill Motivation

What are some easy-to-follow tips and tricks for organizations and leaders to avoid demotivating programmers? Share your personal experiences or observations on what works best in maintaining a motivated and productive programming team.


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Top comments (8)

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miketalbot profile image
Mike Talbot ⭐

My primary rule is that a team should be "unafraid". Fear breeds negative behaviours and causes stress. We all make mistakes, we all fail at things, we can all be late delivering a project because something unexpected cropped up. Not creating a sense of fear when things go wrong means people surface their problems much more frequently and have support in finding the answer, rather than anger or mockery.

My second rule is that I expect all team members to be "kind" to each other. For example, a standard that says code reviews and general commentary must not be passive-aggressive and should focus on functionality, rather than the reviewer's preferred method of solving a problem.

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Michael La Posta

Not creating a sense of fear when things go wrong means people surface their problems much more frequently and have support in finding the answer, rather than anger or mockery.

This is such a key thing, and props to you for recognizing that. Shame it's not more common in many work environments.

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erikgiovani profile image
Erik Giovani

Nice rules 👍

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erikgiovani profile image
Erik Giovani

Only one: Be empathetic to everyone.

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AlvBarros

One big issue I had was that whatever I'm doing wasn't "perfect". Sometimes it doesn't have to! Just make it work, you can improve it later.

Something that applies even beyond software development.

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Erik Giovani

That depends, if we talk about code it is always good that it works well, I don't mean to over engineer, but in case something doesn't work well it is always good to ask for a second point of view so you avoid to improve it later and work twice 👌

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anes

Wrote an article about why people tend to quit side-projects a while ago. Really helped me with my focus on long-term projects.
dev.to/aneshodza/beginners-guide-o...

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Maia Wonder

I dig