I've always thought that the IT sector should unionize. There are only so many ways for IT people to stop being treated like that, and a union is one of them.

As far as motivations go... Well, I set small goals. A certain number of a certain item every hour. I'm a procrastinator, big time. My motivation is more procrastination. If I have to finish 2 things this hour, get them done quick so I can put off the next 2 and waste the intervening time in whatever way I see fit. It works for me, because I get to waste time and have my work done all at once.

Yes, negative motivation is alive and well in most workplaces.

I remember working for a company that instituted a 60 hour work week to get products tested which included having to come in for 8 hours on sat or Sun. This happened for 6 weeks. Finally the Dept head told everyone he would slack up on the weekend requirement as long as machines being tested were making progress. That weekend pretty much nobody came in. The following Monday he was furious that nobody voluntarily wasted their weekend and re-instituted it.

Again, management and planning mistakes punish the workers.

The raw power of the negative. (NSFW language)

Coffee is indeed for closers.

This is the nature of the tech industry, in my experience. I've never worked on a project that was well organized or didn't turn into a death march at some point. Never. I'm on one again right now. And the goofy thing is I love my work, so I keep putting up with it. Generally I end up putting up with it somewhere else. So I end up with such disgust and disrespect for my management that I have to leave and go somewhere I believe in. Until they burn me out. It really really sucks that the industry is this way.

My wife never understood me and my relationship with my work 100% until she got into the tech industry. Now when I tell her how things are going at work, the management over-promised and now we're going to work weekends, she looks at me very mournfully and truly gets it. She gets that it sucks not only because of having to work weekends and long hours, but because I still love my work. So in the end they can abuse me to some extent and because I love the work and the challenge of solving the problem, I'll put up with it. And then I'll get burned out and move on. I'm not sure how to gain motivation in those situations. My motivation is that we don't have kids, don't have a mortgage, so I always know in the back of my head that I can tell management to take the job and stick it and I can leave. And then I do that if it gets to be too much.

My motivation is pretty much entirely internal. I work with my brother on database software and don't have many set deadlines, something along the lines of "within six months" is as close as I get. So what I do is I give myself deadlines; I'll say, "Okay Brian, get these changes done by Friday or else" and then start working like mad. The funny thing is I don't really have a "or else" for myself, nor do I reward myself when I meet my self-imposed deadline. I just know I have to do it so I work as hard as I can to get there. When I don't I keep on working until it's done.

Not sure if that makes any sense, everyone I tell this too outside my brother seem to think I'm crazy.

Mafia ties?

This is really a negotiation...an attempt to get you to trade something (your time) in return for something (supposed job security, an ataboy, Alex Baldwin's set of steak knives, etc). Slapping the other party around with known, unpleasant realities, plus a few exaggerations for effect is a negotiation tactic. It may be 100% bluff, but if you're negotiating individually rather than as a group, it can be tough to call them on it.

If it works, why wouldn't they do it? Obviously I don't know your circumstances, but I've seen a lot of people complain, threaten & then knuckle down and do exactly what was ordered. Repeatedly.
Now there are follow-on issues around the quality of the work done and the long term turnover, but at least where I am, many of the people who take this approach to motivation have an 18-month to 2-year stint in a role, then move on, debris in their wake, so those kind of issues don't matter to them.

Glengarry Glen Ross

CEJ is no stranger to the workplace woes that I faced, I've cried in my beer to him many times. He gives good back rubs if you are stressed, by the way. But I digress...

I don't think it is just the tech industry. I decided to take a chance and make a bit of a zag in my career recently. It was not difficult to make the transition from a task perspective, however it was a definite shift in culture. I was expected to work weekends, holidays and was to be available at any time of the day for the latest fire drill. At one point, the team pulled an all-nighter - came in on Sunday morning and didn't leave until Monday afternoon.

At first, I thought it was something that would even out and get more sporadic... it became more the rule versus the exception. The deal breaker was the "come to Jesus" talk. Iron fisted motivation doesn't work on me. Repeatedly threatening me that my job is on the line is just not a motivation in any sense. Yes, the task may get completed, but my respect for someone as a manager goes away. A lack of respect for my personal time and space did not translate into a happy worker.

The good news is that I escaped and I'm much happier these days.

What continues to baffle me is that people put up with it. Folks still work there and probably will continue to do so for years to come. Good jobs and good working environments exist and as an employee you can't get complacent and let organizations do stupid things. Vote with your feet and find work elsewhere.

I've always envied the mobility of folks in the IT business, whose skills are needed just about everywhere nowadays. But I do see the obvious downsides.

I once heard a department head (not at my own place of employment) grumbling about the personality of his IT manager. "The good news is these geek types are totally expendable," he said. I was disgusted. They fired the poor guy a few weeks later.

What motivates me: zombie pirate robots.

Man, you guys and your whole "I'm special! Management talks to me sometimes!" brag routine is really boring me. I don't even get information about deadlines unless I insist. Otherwise I just get someone popping in from the other end of the office asking me if something's done, or what's taking it so long. Oftentimes I only know about such projects because I overhear that it'd be a neat idea.

We might need to work on our organizational structure a wee bit.

hehe that's awesome! At my old place of employment we had a CEO that would pull that trick. What was worse that he'd go to our CIO and ask if it could be done and the CIO would come to me and ask and i'd say no not with resources available to us and give him the list of what it'd take to get it done. Next meeting we'd get that same little pep talk.

Just one of the reasons why i'm a contractor now

Well obviously I've now missed the opportunity since I'm not going to start working on it 'till tomorrow.

I'm thinking that there is a very special place in hell for douchebags that talk like that.