On Employee Motivation (Product Philosophy #12)

hey everybody and welcome to philosophy friday happy friday let's do this all right paul you and i were we're here in bangalore india we've just arrived not too long ago sorry sitting in a hotel suite right now but on our way here in the taxicab to to our hotel you were talking about motivation maybe can you walk back and maybe talk to the audience about kind of some of your thoughts with respect to motivation yeah can i just start off with the me talking about remember i asked you do you want to go skiing okay go for it how about that yeah okay so there's um this idea sometimes i think with when it comes to motivation in the gaming industry particularly okay there's joe rogan uh you know motivation videos and jim rohn and tony robbins and all these things and all those all that stuff but i think motivation is typically

described as somebody who between waking up and going to sleep spends a very little time for themselves gets right to the computer works a lot does a lot of tasks a lot all day long sacrifices a great amount of time and is overall just more of a worker that's what i think people would describe it as and then i was saying to you that there's different phases in individuals lives and sometimes it's hard to uh get everyone in the same bucket and when i was trying to ask you i was like do you want to go skiing and you're like of course i want to go skiing i was like do you want to go do all this like of course i want to do it i was just trying to find your level of sacrifice and then it brought up the topic of myself at my age and your age and your setup and my setup and all these different things i imagine your home the rooms the children that you have your wife and then me uh having a you know i have uh sometimes i have a

the knight is calling me you know friday night calls me you know the world it's beckoning paul come and grab you know grab me by the horns and just ride me right just let's go for this big youthful ride and so um i was asking i was just trying to discover where you are in your life and ask you hey man do you want to go dancing at night do you feel like you should be playing instruments do you feel like you should be running around and doing all these things and we were discussing uh basically as founders avinash myself and you were just also different right and that was kind of like a a a that's like a brief description of where we were talking about motivation in general yeah and so does a ceo for example who may come off to a younger guy a sort of a boring fella a guy who has maybe his family do his laundry or prepare meals or or and then the mundaneness of waking up saying hey

honey and going into his room and saying i am extremely motivated but isn't there also the advantageous uh setup in habits of a more you know different type of lifestyle or is there the younger guy who's super hungry and you know sacrifices the evening night sacrifices tahoe trips with his buddies and stuff like that and are we all on the same playing field and that's what i was wondering like right can we all be you know can we can we work with those different type of perspectives in life and how do you say i'm motivated you're motivated are you motivated enough it's kind of that's what i was just pondering and thinking yeah i think this is an important discussion because when most people think about motivation they think about it in very simple terms it's like hey you guys are the founders of course you guys are motivated to work because you guys have a lot of equity in the company and there's like this very simple way of thinking about why

employees are motivated to work and but for me personally i've always worked and i've made a lot of people rich i've made a lot of people a lot of money and i didn't do that for myself i did it for other reasons and so as leaders of a company i think when we think about motivation it feels like we need to think about it in a better way and i fundamentally i think there's there's a few different aspects to motivation but the one part that i think about is to help people who are doing work because you know we believe in uh work-life integration we believe there's a lot of value that you gain from doing work i think one part is trying to help some people who are doing the work tie why they would the the benefits they get from working and then secondly is to for us as leaders of a company to create a system of incentives that would

reward people appropriately for the level of sacrifice and work that they do in the company and i think that's a part where i think from a systems perspective creating systems in the company um something that we need to think about more and there's a famous quote from charlie munger that you know i talked to paul about a lot where charlie munger says show me the incentive and i will show you the outcome and so i think it's two parts when it comes to motivation of employees in a company it's one you know understanding for a certain employee what is their motivation to work and for that motivation making it stronger or tying tying that motivation to or letting them understand what that motivation is more clearly or the benefits that they get sure and then creating these systems to help them become more incentivized to to work yeah i don't i don't know how on topic or how i'm trying i'm trying my best right here with this philosophy friday at the philosophy friday so motivation

you know creating a system for the company we're here to talk about gaming industry right we're here to talk about the gaming industry and motivation within that gaming industry and i would say that i imagine what's that guy's name uh ochocinco the football player yeah let's just show you cinco yeah chad ocho cinco now a football player must dream of football you know they must dream of that they must hit the bag thinking about how they're gonna destroy the other team and maybe they're not on their favorite team maybe they grew up loving the raiders but they play for the bears or whatever yeah and still there's this probably this extreme motivation for that now when we talk about hiring people at the company sometimes i worry that what you

want for the company is so hard to find that we're just never going to find it because the industry doesn't necessarily create those people instead the industry creates more of what i could describe yesterday as a union worker and a union worker in my definition not that there's anything wrong with being a union worker but i would describe a union worker in my definition like someone who works like a lockheed martin or a bigger industry they're like i'm gonna put in my ten years and then you know i'm gonna get a house and their fantasies like it's not the same as like a football player who's like i'm gonna [ __ ] be mvp i'm gonna have my own shoe i'm gonna change i'm gonna do the coolest dance when i score you know i'm saying i'm gonna be remembered and even i was watching this interview with dennis rodman he said he's so grateful that he's remembered because most basketball players are not

so when i worked with people in various companies as a lead i would say like all right let's talk about your career and i would listen to what they had to say and the kind of things they were saying and their fantasies were really really small they didn't have a big a big gaming industry fantasy like i did some of the guys would say i want to get a house and have my own bench press and then they would i would say do you care are you motivated to say yeah but at seven o'clock six o'clock they would leave and they wouldn't show the kind of stuff that i had but in the companies that i work for the all hands meetings and stuff they'd be like all right guys we're going to make something great every company says that and they say and if we do good it's going to be great but it's really industrial it's very monotonous and so the imagine the individual thoughts in the morning it's kind of like well how can i stretch out my morning really comfortably take a nice route you know

ride my bike put it in lock my bike get my work done and leave it doesn't feel like the whole i'm [ __ ] motivated right and then throughout my career i was lucky to be a younger guy in the startup 2014 2015 and i was kind of having these visions of not being a homeowner in the next 10 years but you know we're weird you know human thoughts of like me saying oh that's my game to someone while they're playing it or to see youtubers going this game [ __ ] sucks 10 reasons why i hate this game i wanted all of it i imagined five-star reviews i imagine shaking people's hands and people saying oh [ __ ] you're the guy that made that game and stuff and so sometimes when i felt at my most motivated i thought like how these strong industries work the football industry the basketball industry they do find people who are like they are likely to be extremely motivated for whatever reasons but it

has to do with those individual thoughts so i don't often find somebody today who goes i'm [ __ ] motivated man like i'm gonna make the craziest game the ui is gonna be beautiful the systems are gonna work even if it was like imagine piggy go a little simple game it flows so simply and beautifully imagine someone going i'm going to make a game that flows beautiful it's going to make supercell's beautiful ui look like [ __ ] really hard to find that level of imagination self imaginations and visions because it's kind of monotonous yeah and you know what i'm saying yeah when i listen to you speak kind of like i think as a product manager one of the things that i like to do is just like break things down and when i hear you it sounds like your motivation to some degree was financial driven but also prestige and so like maybe one of the things we could do is break it down because let's try it so and i've kind of written my list of things that i believe are the primary

components of motivation for people and the first and easiest is financial so why do you do this work you do it to make a living to get paid and in some cases you know the silicon valley model of startups and equity have been driven on this financial model you know you work you're successful and then there's this big financial outcome that's possible and so in the reason just to kind of back up a little bit i think the reasons to break down the different reasons for motivation would be that when you're speaking to an employee or when you're different employees are going to have different motivations so by understanding the different kinds of motivation different kinds of people you could help tie the motivation to the work and potentially strengthen the motivation for them to do great work the second is learning and you know i would say that a few folks at leela that's probably one of their primary motivations we've got you know um a young product manager that's joined us and i believe his primary motivation is

because he wants to learn he wants to become great at his craft and so learning self-development would be like the second key motivation that i often see the third is to your point you want to launch a game and be able to show people this is what i've done so the kind of prestige your accomplishment would be the third motivation being able to show somebody something that you've done and that prestige and you know i know you're very proud of game of war i'm very proud of king of avalon but being able to create a product and have that prestige of accomplishment and have been able to do something is uh for me the the third motivating factor the fourth is just for me discipline which is that for anything that you do some people just have the discipline to just they just want to do the work you know when i think about discipline one of the guys i think about is brett brett's not on right nova yeah brett's not uh here today but uh we'll definitely be speaking to more later but you know brett's all about discipline

and just having like a steady routine that's why he does the work in the fifth and i would say the reason for me the primary motivation for me is what i call desperation and desperation means that i'm doing it because i feel desperate and i think there's different kinds of desperation so for me i'm getting older i feel like i'm getting towards a later end of my career i want to do when i look back on my career i think i've done jack [ __ ] that is meaningful sure and so i feel like i'm running out of time to do something important and meaningful in my life and so i feel desperate not only that but you know both paul and i have taken very small salaries relative to what we were making before in the startup and so when i see my cash balance is going down every month then it's like you are desperate sure when i was working at fun plus on king of avalon my wife was pregnant i was doing everything i can

to get back home and come home from beijing i was desperate so that desperation running out of time running out of money sure running out of opportunity i think is the fifth motivating factor that's a big one i that's one of the bigger ones yeah i've worked with some guys oh not such nonsense yeah okay yeah i work with some people so as a designer i felt like i worked on the same products this the same meetings the same and i stayed this i didn't walk out halfway during the meeting i stayed the whole time i worked on the same p l s i s i work with the same pm's i work with the same metrics guys talk about the same retentions that we're trying to get i talked about the push notification services i interviewed the same people i flew on the same plane stayed in the same hotels and stayed the same amount of everything but to be in a room full of the marketing manager the product team lead the chief of finance or whatever and the designer i was obviously

really underpaid as a designer now that's just how the things work yeah i can't change that but i always thought [ __ ] man i see the marketing manager electric bicycle bluetooth speaker helmet vacations three kids yeah family life yeah financial life sexual life relationship life telling me oh i like to take jiu jitsu and all this stuff how was your weekend they would ask me i said how was my [ __ ] weekend i worked every day yeah you know i'm saying and i commute two hours from a place that i can afford to live and they would be taking the ferry across or ubers and so forth and so just from the designer standpoint because i have a soft spot for all the designers out there and i don't think it's wrong i think it's interesting i think it's i'm blessed to be able to have squeeze my way into some of those fancy meetings but i i can say that i have had the desperation as a

designer where i've said let's say my common payment which i'll put out there my common yearly salary in the bay area that i could likely secure on an average it's about 120 000. that's with you know some people say i'll say i want to make 150. i want to make 200 you know and they'll say oh that's not in the budget bro you know i'm saying the other guys who have had my experience sore in 250 boom plus and so i'm in these areas like commuting traveling the cost of living all that stuff it feels like my 70 hours 60 hours a week is insane and it's capped and so when it came to like studying design a lot i'm getting older i'm being 34 this year and i know so much design that it's getting crazy it's too many features too much [ __ ] and now i'm like how much more can i hang on to these games i have never played the pokemon unite yet i'm saying i'm not up to date on roadblocks and stuff and things are

moving and now i'm feeling this desperation as a designer like if i don't if i can't make a game right now then i will be a 60 hour a week 100 to 120 000 a year that's a great salary i love it but not at the same work ethic not at the same pace of the executives busting 300 400 right i would rather work a normal job for 120 or find something with a little bit more balance because if i can't break out of this ozone layer then i'm going to be in a long table full of people who are like oh my wedding my jiu jitsu class and stuff and i'll be like [ __ ] man and you're just you're tapped so marketing managers ctos product leads business guys some ceos you notice in the industry there's very wild pay gaps right and you can check at the at the lower end entry level paid and stuff like that there's a huge there's a much more motivation not that money motivates everyone

but there it's just a lot of hours in the gaming industry and there's a lot of money that could be made and oftentimes you're sitting right next to somebody who's like they did it and you're like god i'm [ __ ] sitting right next to you i want it too you know what i'm saying and so i have had a i have i think if he drew a pie chart of my motivation it's been like how can i work at a company long enough to have my own apartment before they let us all go because oftentimes they let everyone go unless you're at a big company and then once i get that apartment where am i at now am i going to be a homeowner and then so the gaming industry for me is like you can either go really [ __ ] hard and explode into freedom or remain in a monotonous cure egg get your coffee sit down slow meetings amongst some people

who have a wildly different salary rate than most of us and so this is true for artists qa entry-level engineers and so forth they're we're all dancing around this semi-comfortable salary where the hours are very high so for me one of the things i've always wanted to do was try to piece together my designs and get behind strong [Music] uh creative people like yourself in the executive level and tell them i'm the crazy designer that's gonna help this company please let me be a part of some of the success and i worked like a founder most of my life until i became one but i never was one yeah i never had equity like a founder i'd never had profit sharing i never had you know per diems that were in it that were similar i never had any of that stuff and that's okay the biggest gift in my life

was the work yeah after all that was it i never made the salary that allowed me to have jiu jitsu class three kids and you know i'm saying a electric bicycle but i have had the work and so for me i'm motivated to get into a position even now my salary is lower than what my salary is what it was almost seven eight years ago and i'm still at that point i have some admirable things i have a design team i have a company under my my belt we have a product that i'm largely accountable for and what's changed i'm in that spot now and so that motivation to have that financial freedom is something i've wanted but there's more things there but that's just on the desperation to some degree it sounds like when you were when you were working earlier in your career yeah you were kind of to your point you were working really hard compared to some of the other folks it sounds like the maybe the one other

motivating factor that i haven't touched upon but seemed like that was your motivating factor earlier in your career it has proving yourself that has been for sure absolutely for sure i've always wanted to come off as a um a worthwhile hire yeah you know when i when i when i came to fun plus i remember hearing about someone other someone else's salary who did something just like me and it was the right one yeah it was a lot more i know you're talking about it was a hundred thousand dollars more yeah and and we both had similar things and um they they flew this person out first class and they flew me out economy and my apartment had broken water and there and i was getting major dandruff and this other person was like oh i'm so jet-lagged and stuff and everyone's like why don't you just go lay down and stuff and i was thinking damn man the free to play designer route sucks you know i'm saying even when i had

girlfriends at the time i'd they'd be like can i see your product and i'd show it to them and they'd be like oh they just don't understand it yeah because it takes so long to make a free to play game even worth the damn i i felt like no one understood me i felt like no result was meaningful right my girlfriend would say show me what you've been up to i'd show them some shitty build yeah and they'd be like oh and i'd like [ __ ] no one is excited about me yeah it's not like i'm i know they're not like wow you worked on this big thing it's like god damn it i want to have i want to work in the entertainment industry yeah you know movie stars take their their loved ones to the movie and they go wow you're such a great movie tell me about that you know i'm saying the gaming industry you work on a game you work on a game you work on a game it launches it's crazy as [ __ ] and then everyone starts talking about what's our next one there's never a time where you're like you can reflect and say wow i am a football player i'm a i won a

championship it's just next next next and then the company's like later or you there's change of jobs so i have wanted to have a really big flag in the ground yeah and to look at it and say i came to the moon or something right like i made it and um for someone to say tangibly i liked what you did but uh it's been tough it's been tough nobody understood game of war yeah what i'm saying nobody understood game of war and nobody understood games i've worked on mmos they're just like that's cool so just thinking about these motivating factors just think about your own career my own career yeah i felt like the thing that many companies don't do and we don't do yet but i'd like to try to do is if we were to understand our employees better and understand what their motivations are sure maybe we could help tie these motivations more clearly in their minds the reason why i'm working is because of financial uh you know potential

financial upside is because i will be able to learn enough to you know become a lot better and i think to to your point when you talk about some of the people you've worked with before who said well my dream is to someday be able to buy a house in the san francisco bay area yeah which is in my opinion for an industry where you can make a video game that explodes and changes the lives of millions of people yeah it's a relatively low goal i mean if you've made an explosive video game a house isn't it yeah and part of part of i think what some of the things that we could do especially here in india is like i i don't think a lot of people understand what's possible they don't understand what's possible from a financial perspective don't you understand what we're doing here you know i don't want to call anyone out in our company but there are some people i don't know if they realize that if they learn from some of the folks they're working with like 3x and 4x insurance 5x8 10xing your comp is actually not that difficult even if

they dreamed of being a wildlife photographer yeah it's like well our product is going to take roughly two years to build yeah maybe a little bit more if we slip hard and if we do a good job in two years you can go shoot all the wildlife you want you know what i'm saying here's some interesting things i want to put up in this thing finding the individual motivation sometimes i've noticed recently in some of my team there's a conflict of short-term and long-term sacrifice yeah i've given these passionate talks to some of my teammates passionate man like you don't [ __ ] understand this is gonna be the best oh the best delivery i could give and literally the on the monday following they're like hey i'm going to take a little bit like of a day here because i'm going to go on hiking and stuff like that take a bit of a personal trip yeah personal trip to go hiking and i started to think well maybe this person

is actually motivated by little personal hike trips that's okay i'm not gonna be you know giving him any of my equity anytime soon or for that or whatever but like let's say if i have someone who's motivated by the company's success and they give you good work like they work monday tuesday friday is to monday through saturday or something like that and they're like i can't motivate them on the outcome of the company but they will do hard work to actually be able to go ride dirt biking on a you know on a monday afternoon that's interesting to me because sometimes i can't crack through that like hey man this game could change your life and they're like can i go dirt biking on monday it's like well that's not the outcome maybe i can work with that yes you can but not that's not what i was hoping for right i thought you i thought maybe they would say i'm motivated to take this company to the max right and we're going to go there and they're like yeah i want to work really hard but all that sounds

good but i just want to go dirt biking on monday so i notice that and but at the same time they also want to start their own company one day they also want to make the big salary and stuff like that so there's conflicting short term motivation versus long term yeah i want them to go dirt biking and have fun but can i offer them the same motivational package as the person who's sacrificing his dirt biking trips and his saturdays and his sundays for the company it's like that's a different reward i'll give somebody way more for their motivation towards making the company uh a better better situation than the person who's like motivated by their short-term intermittent rewards as opposed to this long-term sacrificial so i want more long-term sacrifice hopefully but i can work with short-term desires too yeah and i think for our audience i think the the one key message i want people to take away is that i think it's critically important to

understand these motivating factors for people and to avoid what i call like the financial reward fallacy because i've seen it time and time again that if you think that if you increase someone's compensation equity by a lot sometimes even more than 10x then you expect oh yeah they're gonna work so much harder [ __ ] no that's not the case that's not the case that is not the case is that the case oftentimes it's the it's the it's the it's the opposite yeah so with more money and that's why you know i can say that's why going back to what i was saying the best thing i ever got was probably the work if some of the companies paid me the money that i wanted to make which some of the guys i've trained so i've trained some designers and we would go out to dinner and they're like let me buy you dinner and stuff i took a i took one of my designers out well we went out together he was a designer i trained in the past he now i think makes in the 250 000 a year this is someone i trained

and um he's got a great apartment uh i think a six-year relationship with a girl that he wants to marry and he's not not really planning on leaving anytime soon his job because you know it's pretty safe and stuff like that and he's like what's up with you i'm like well i sleep on the floor in my mom's house you know what i'm saying and uh i sleep you know and i i i have [ __ ] dandruff and i work all on time and you know it just doesn't it doesn't sound very nice but at the same time there was uh now now a moment where my wallet has a wells fargo card that's attached to a multi-million dollar company and stuff like that and none of that's mine none of this is mine i'm just a moving member of it so now he's like wow you started your own company and stuff like yeah man he's like what really he's like searching it on google and stuff he's like how much did you raise i'm like we raised 2.8 in our seed we're working on our series a and he's like whoa [ __ ] and so i have felt like

grateful for the kick in my ass i have felt grateful for the work and i do worry about over compensation i want to make sure that the designers on my team get what's fair but i also have a sauce button i want to go hey bro like hey dude let's just put you 10 no let's get you i i'm a nice guy you know i want people to feel good i want people to get a good bonus and feel great but i can say to your point that desperation for me has resulted in a better personal outcome that i wanted for myself which was more control over the product more freedom the the feeling of basically control freedom basically and so i didn't get a lot of financial freedom but i have some admirable career freedoms honestly i think that if i think about all the motivating factors desperation to me is the number one motivating factor like because that's referred

that's what you think it is desperation i think it's it's the number one factor now because i i think so for example desperate well and desperation takes different forms right but like let's say when i see my cash balances going down every month working then it's not just me right now it's like okay this is my family now you probably like the normal person cares about their family more than anything in the world is desperation tied to time and finances yeah so for me it's both financing both that and then you know and then i i would say like um yeah so i would say that's like the most powerful motivating force in my opinion and why i think a lot of startups generally are more successful than than established companies because a company with a group of people that are desperate are going to be so much more motivated to win versus others you remind me of something

somebody told me before which i don't really know about this because i'm i'm 33 be 34 and they were telling me we were going for a jog and we i saw this guy and gal throwing sticks into the river with their labrador dogs and [ __ ] and i was like dude that looks so nice he's like you'll get there he's like but you won't be able to do what you're doing now when you're in your 60s like what investor will i you know i'm like hey guys it's me i got this great game idea you know what i'm saying not that you can't but is there ageism in your opinion in is that true that somebody has said to i've heard i've heard engineers tell other engineers dude you're 30. when the [ __ ] are you going to do something you know i'm saying is it true is there is there like is there investors that will not invest in a 50 or 60 years old do you have to go hard while you're young i mean look at look at a company like y commodore they don't they almost exclusively

invest in very young entrepreneurs true and i think that um so i do think there's ageism so for me that's part of desperation but um getting off of desperation a little bit just going back to motivating factors i think that another reason why a company like tesla is successful is they not only have like the desperation they were you know they almost went on business multiple times elon put all of his investment in you know just one company so like everything is tied to um his work it was tied to his work at tesla but also i think the other thing that helps was this sense of mission right which is like if you if we have a mission that is strong enough that speaks to our employees well enough that that would be another motivating factor to work so i guess long story short and not to ramble on too much but i think the key message i wanted to to speak about and speak to our audience about was essentially just this notion that

one don't be deluded by the financial rewards fallacy people are motivated by financial rewards and outcomes but that's just part of this this is the solution try to understand what all the potential motivating factors for an employee is and then try to make sure that they understand you know by doing the work how and not not to lie to any of the employees but to actually have them understand what the potential outcomes are and how for them personally what the how working at your company would satisfy some of those motivating factors i i have one piece of advice because yeah so i don't know if i'm really the the person to give advice because you know i've had i've had a kind of a crazy career but a couple times there's been some designers who've reached out to me yeah and i've told them they're like i work out i work on a match three game or something like that uh or i work at this company in la la la

and i'll tell them go um into the ceo and ask him out for coffee like tell them i'm gonna change your i'm gonna change your company yeah like say look i know you hired me for my job but i really really want to give and and i i would say if you me if you're interviewing somewhere fly there buy the ticket go there talk to them and they would i would tell them to open up their mind to being motivated is okay now going up to their company today it's really kind of weird and say i did it at sega in fact i'll give you a story i said i would like profit sharing i just said it i said i would like profit sharing and they're like what i was like yes i'd love that i was like look i'm gonna be working so hard and they worked so hard i was so consistent about asking that they

finally delivered me this piece of paper that was filled with all these terms and it was kind of their best shot at whatever and they're like no one ever gets that and i walked out and everyone around me didn't have that and i had this little like percent one whatever and the dates of the profit sharing didn't even fall on the time in which the game was launched it was kind of not even around the time and so it was basically this weird awkward thing that i tried to do and i realized nobody around me had that and everyone was like trying to feel motivated and stuff and there was this lack of understanding that they could actually speak up for themselves and go for it right if you work at a company like a zynga or wherever all of the companies the glue the the pocket gems and you feel like you wanna you want

more and you wanna take it more if you have seen my history i've walked right up to andy zhong for fun plus i've taught i've i've caught i've tried to call the ceo of sega i actually asked to fly to japan when they were thinking about canceling a game that i was working on i've reached out to you a number of times and have developed this relationship and i tell the people today that the people who push me the most or the people who look like they're doing the most with their career you got to go up to them you know and the fact that we're sitting here today you used to slam me you tell me paul don't ever be late again because i would be like late on an average because i was treating the company more like a start-up where it's a little bit looser and you're like never be late and you treated me in some ways whereas man [ __ ] this guy and i'd say you want to go out to coffee yeah i'm saying you want to go out hey i asked you i asked you to go shoot guns with me yeah you know and i and i said let's go shoot guns and i remember you're like boom shooting your gun and stuff and i was like i'm actually trying

to get closer to some of the people who feel like they're making those moves so i would say that some of my guys i go my design team i go hey guys where's your ideas i've been we've been working together for years and no one sent me any ideas on the game they haven't said hey look there's this recipe design there's this cool social collaborative building design none of that and they go oh and someone starts sending me [ __ ] i go you don't have to wait to [ __ ] be motivated you don't have to there's there's never a time in your life where you're gonna arrive at where someone tells you you're allowed to try you're allowed to be a designer you're allowed to be a [ __ ] artist you're allowed to be a pm and so i feel like i just barely had a vague thought at some point in my career a very very big thought i thought man [ __ ] this i'm gonna go walk up here and ask for some [ __ ] you know i remember the first

time i asked for a hourly rate that was like almost doubled in my hourly rate i was like i'd like to make this much and the company was like why i was like oh well because that's my rate and they're like okay and i left there thinking holy [ __ ] i just got to sell the hourly rate i really want it it's like [ __ ] i need to get better at this i need to start asking people hey do you want to start doing why are we working on this game this thing sucks i want to fix this and so some i think some people may actually sit in an area where they don't even know that they can be a motivated employee they go right to the ceo today there's nothing stopping you and saying can we talk about the funding process and all what's the strike price how many total shares are there what do we plan on doing how can i help get us there i'm trying to help you i didn't join this company to just collect paycheck i want to [ __ ] make a massive difference around here i've said those things i've told the company this

i've said these words if i can't make a difference there's gonna be a hole in the wall the shape of my body i'm gonna leave this place so [ __ ] quick i'm just gonna bust out of the wall like a cartoon character because i'm trying to find a place where i can make a difference and i try to set the urgency that i'm the kind of person who's not here to [ __ ] around so let's do it and i think that's some advice that i've given some designers out there it's for and that's goes for anyone that you can ask and can put yourself out there and just be like [ __ ] it what am i waiting for i'm gonna see what's going on around this thing start shaking things up yeah cool and i think maybe we can kind of shift towards we talked about internal motivation for of employees and i think the part that we need to figure out better at leela is not just the internal motivation of our employees but then the sort of like the systems that we can create to help motivate employees to to do the work

and actually just putting charlie munger and i've got a quote here that i thought was really interesting is that charlie munger had a few famous quotes about incentives and the first is never ever think about something else when you should be thinking about the power of incentives another quote well i think i've been in the top five percent of my age cohort all my life in understanding the power of incentives and all my life i've underestimated it and never a year passes but i get some surprise that pushes my limit a little further and charlie munger also talked about a pretty famous example at federal express where basically the workers were being paid by the hour and they noticed that all the packages the efficiency of delivering packages was not very effective and there's anything that they did they couldn't fix that problem but then one day they shifted from paying by the hour to paying by the shift and then all

of a sudden everything got completed wow so that's cool so when we think about this and i i know i've i've spoken about this before one i think that one of the game companies that is that has been doing something interesting with respect to incentives i don't know if they still do it is like lilith but you know i've heard that they paid people to come in and work an extra day on the weekends if you work saturday or sunday you get paid extra but you know i think that's the other thing that we're trying to think about now is you know as we think about incentives to motivate getting work done being able to accomplish more being able to achieve our objectives you know what do you have any thoughts paul in terms of how we can create systems to also motivate employees to do the work i work with this guy named dan ross he was a neuro-linguistic nlp expert ex tony robbins

assistant kind of thing he worked at he worked for tony robbins he got his life coaching certificate and he can help out with weight loss cigarette smoking phobias stuff like that and um i think something like that for at an individual base could be useful and interesting instead of getting the company like massages on friday you hire someone to come in who has a private conversation with an individual and says what the [ __ ] you doing here and i'm saying because i had people i i sought people out like that and i would ask dan you know i'd say i want to make i want to write a book i want to make music and stuff like that i want all stuff and he'd say why you know i'd be like because dude i'm be dope you know what i'm saying and he'd be like yeah but why why do you need all that to feel good why can't you just feel good right now he's like why do you want to do this you want to you want to have love in your life you want to you want you know you want to find a woman you want to have a kids or whatever he's like why don't you just

feel good now and i remember saying all right fine [ __ ] it he's like all right cool now let's start on your goals because you're gonna you're never gonna arrive at a good feeling if you're constantly chasing your goals like try to try to feel good now you know so he would do those things and i i've lost touch with all of his practices i got to get back with him and stuff like that but some even sometimes i think in like you said at the individual level different motivations are different and sometimes motivations aren't healthy it's like oh [ __ ] the only reason i want to make a top christian game is because i think it's going to bring me love and in fact i could have loved today exactly how i look now with my financial status now with my time and schedule now i don't have to you know i'm saying and you know so he he didn't want me to arrive at somewhere and be disappointed and so i think getting some kind of coaching at an individual level could be good or having pdf work where pdfs guide people through questions and answers on what their motivation factors is at the base level so identifying individual

needs eliminating unhealthy you know beliefs and then creating stronger visions and incentives around why the [ __ ] i'm doing this i think could be good i don't have any ideas on any like extra pay or you know i've seen some good stuff like catering lunch and stuff but it could be pretty dumb yeah i think that out there the thing that i've seen in other game studios is just this promise that hey once we have a successful game everyone's going to be rich but there's no specifics yeah that's very and then yeah and then once the game launches it's like and then everyone gets an ipad like wait this was me getting rich and then you see a lot of people that get really pissed off and leave i do think that like people i i think companies do need to be careful that if you're trying to build a long-term company that the incentive system i i think should be specific should be

fair because otherwise you could get that success but then you're going to lose a lot of good people and i've seen that multiple times in my career so i i mean i i do think that the little system sounds interesting sure or you know we've talked about variations of that system for if people are working on weekends or extra how we could potentially um reward them for that i think we should continue to educate people on how valuable the the our equity program is you yourself wrote up yeah you're teaching people about esop yeah because we offer equity at lila and we want people to understand it was there some people who did they didn't ask for it because they're just so new they don't even ask for equity and then we're just like dude let me teach you about it and just give you some what the [ __ ] and so i think if we continue to remind people of the investment that and how we're fair and actually better than other companies

that would be good for us so let's try to keep that up yeah and any kind of weekend program i'm suspicious about it yeah but i've seen companies cater full lunch and it looks like a wedding dinner like i've seen people cater wedding food in steel plates steel containers and you know people just come in and leave for like you know it's like this is disgusting like coming in on a saturday should be a blessing because you're working towards that incentive like so lunch on a saturday i think it's cool for some of the employees who may be entry level but then it gets a little weird you know you've got all the shrimps and the thing like damn this is kind of crazy massages i've seen massages i've seen yeah i don't know i don't think that stuff i don't know if the biggest i don't want a massage i would say probably like a bigger motivating factor system related would be responsibility right like so we've got a skill development matrix if you do

these things or if you build these skills then you know you can get a promotion things like that that's that's another a wording too or storytelling yeah i told a designer recently and i told you this before i said do you want to double your salary in three months and he was like yeah and i said if you worked three saturdays of the month until we launched it only be three months so every month on average if you work three saturdays that adds up to three months if you if you want to double yourself in three months think about that and he's like oh [ __ ] so i tried to like wrap better perspectives around it rather than saying can you work the weekends i was like hey you know one double your salary because i believe i mean whatever he makes if we had a top grossing product i could easily double the salary i mean that's a true statement yeah so sometimes the way in which the i'm coming with creative ways as a manager to actually put it a little bit nice more nicer you know i'm saying

like hey yeah like i said like you know do you want to have more work-life balance and how about and what if i told you in the next two weeks i'll get you a brand new [ __ ] tv or some [ __ ] i've seen people really motivated over tvs i went to a guy's house and he was like my company bought me this tv he was so excited you know it's like hey how about how about i give you a brand new tv and they're like all right what's up and you know what i'm saying i don't know you say well let's meet this next sprinkle or something like that but ways to package things nicer rather than you should [ __ ] go you know that's not really going to do it so i think he was actually interested about that yeah and i think he does have to be a mix of both extrinsic and intrinsic factors and like i i do think there's a danger that if you always have to constantly reward people just to do anything that then they'd get it's like okay we need to complete this goal it's like well what's my reward you know we don't want everyone to always be expecting something to do anything you know what my team actually has asked of

exposure yeah they want me to make a video with them they want to be known for their thoughts yeah so they're like can i go on a youtube video with you because i've made some okay youtube videos that people enjoyed and they're like can you you know can we do a podcast and stuff like that and so uh you know yeah so there's some some of that too like exposure like posting their profile on linkedin like we are so happy to have mahir or sergey or whatever even in our thing and then like trying to get it out there so they actually feel proud like oh wow they're you know they put me front page i think um bandy namco barcelona does a really good job okay if you check out their linkedin profile page i think naughty dog does a pretty good job but i notice bendy and namco does like uh every employee that joins they post something about them i don't know if that or i saw another company showcase a specific achievement of one of their guys they're like

our so-and-so received an award from a scientific community for their efforts in blah blah blah or whatever so if we can keep track of like some of the extra things that they're doing like let's say our one of our project managers completes a extracurricular course for their own personal growth it's like dude we're excited that you know so-and-so has done this and just like giving them thousands of views and so forth helping their linkedin profile grow genuinely caring about their own personal growth i think that's cool yeah all right well looks like we've got some stuff to figure out a ton of [ __ ] on systems as we develop that hopefully we'll be able to come back and talk about it cool um any any other final thoughts uh just uh if you're in a company now when where you're not motivated i feel for you you're my people like those type of people are my people i i know what it's like to want to do great in this industry and to be in a

position where you can't yeah and um i would fight i would fight for it if you can i would say just go for it you know start doing motivational acts you know and go for it that's my final little closing thought all right well there it is that's it that's fun that was that's a philosophy friday huh catch y'all next time all right cool everybody thank you so much [Music] [Music] you