The Pyramid of Motivation 🏔️
A practical guide on motivating your engineering team, and yourself.
An investor of mine once told me that most startups fail when founders run out of motivation.
On the outside, it looks like all sorts of practical reasons: cash is over, product-market-fit can’t be found, wrong hires — but these things mostly happen as a consequence of founders not trying anymore
These days, I still think about this often.
Engagement and motivation makes or breaks teams, which in turn makes or breaks products. That’s why, when you hear advice from seasoned CTOs or VPEs, it is often about ethereal things like momentum, bias for action, and making people look forward to their job.
All these things may look fluffy… until they don’t.
So, in this article, we will explore the intricacies of motivation in engineering teams.
We'll dive into both theory and practice, drawing from personal experience, insights from leaders in the community, and proven strategies from successful tech companies.
The goal is to give you actionable advice to transform your team's motivation and performance, and possibly your own, too.
Here is the agenda:
🧭 What is Motivation — understanding the core elements that drive engineers and how they vary from person to person.
🌟 Beyond Productivity — exploring the second and third-order benefits of a motivated team.
🔺 The Pyramid of Motivation — my own framework and guide to creating an environment where motivation can flourish, including key strategies and common pitfalls to avoid.
🏢 Examples from Successful Tech Companies — learn how Microsoft, Twilio, and Atlassian, and more, have tackled motivation challenges and their results.
Let's dive in!
🧭 What is motivation
Anyone who has worked both in motivated and unmotivated teams can immediately spot the difference, and will always try to recreate that mojo in their teams.
But what exactly constitutes motivation in the context of an engineer, or an engineering team?
Intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation 🎭
A useful way to look at motivation is to split it into two types:
🧠 Intrinsic motivation — comes from within. It's the personal satisfaction an engineer gets from solving a complex problem, learning a new technology, or seeing their code make a real-world impact.
🏆 Extrinsic motivation — involves external rewards or pressures, such as money, promotions, or recognition from peers and superiors.
You almost always hear that intrinsic motivation is good and extrinsic motivation is bad, but I personally believe you should strive for a healthy combination of the two.
We are humans, not ascetics who only live for their internal worlds, so there is nothing wrong with looking for validation, being happy when our peers appreciate us, or wanting to earn a lot of money.
In my experience, problems rather arise when one of these angles is too dominant:
People who are driven too much by extrinsic factors tend to adopt opportunistic behavior, feel more insecure, and prioritize short-term gains.
People who mostly care about intrinsic growth may overly focus on their own mastery, to the detriment of the overall team and business success.
As a manager, you should help both sides:
🔍 Understand — learn what motivates your teammates on an intrinsic level, so you can help them with their personal goals.
🚀 Incentivize — create an environment where individuals have healthy extrinsic incentives to do great things, like achieving a common goal, recognition and a good career.
This was echoed by Alina Mihai, a Senior Frontend Developer, on the community 👇
I believe my actions are influenced by intrinsic motivation, but highly motivated teams I worked with had common objectives that everyone committed to, felt psychologically safe to make mistakes, and ask for help. Team spirit, feelings of belonging, and the trust to rely on others also motivated me a lot to do my best work.
To figure out where you stand on this, think about your individual team members and ask yourself: