This post is here to capture that thought because I'm building a theory of administration that's based on the balance between power and motivation. I firmly believe that many institutions in my country(México) could be 'fixed' if in the process of design them, the focus were placed on these two concepts. But that's material for another post lets focus on the subject at hand.
To sum it all up these are:
The VC's want you to work hard to make them money.
The entrepreneur wants to work hard to get ahead of the competition.
The decisive argument on the matter, as usual is up to science, and science basically says, the most efficient way for a human being to work is 8 hours at day, 5 days a week, more than that an productivity drops until it actually is dangerous for the human and for the work being done to put more hours.
The programmers speak
Science speak
The thought i was talking about is somehow related. In the comment area of the first link there is one particular argument that shows one flaw of the way we rationally argue, quote
We need to readdress the point that work is a negotiation between employer and employee. The first pays mainly money and maybe some other stuff in exchange for something, mainly the ‘production’. As such, the employer has the right to demand high output and quality. The employee has the right to work some place else.Let me state first that my motivation for this critique is fairness. So the comment sound smart and enlighting and in a way it is. Put it plainly, the employer here has a range of options, a huge degree of possible decisions to make when dealing with a lazy employee, and the employee has only two, stay or leave.
The unfairness resides exactly in that difference, the employer can torture the employee, can motivate him, can move it to other place in the company, can do many many things, he is in a power position. The employee only two. Let me make this clear, there is no unbalance of power here, when it adds up, they both have tremendous power, because the employee is valuable and he carries knowledge and know-how useful for the company, and costly to lose. Is just that the power is too focused on two decisions while the power of the employer is spread in many possible decisions.
TLDR, the power relationships can be balanced fairly if we take into account, the weight each possible decision it enables the parties and the plain number of those possible decisions, not just the sum of the total weight.
In the next post i want to talk about the importance of perceived fairness in motivation.
