harry@ucbarpa.Berkeley.EDU (Harry I. Rubin) (02/14/90)
Quite a while ago, my partner Ed Hernandez and I carried out a
survey concerning the motivations of software professionals. Part
of the survey was done by posting the survey on the net and asking
people to e-mail (or print and U.S. mail) their responses to us.
Well, we received a large number of responses. We analyzed the
survey responses (as well as some results reported in the literature)
and wrote a paper, which was presented at a conference on research
in the field of computer personnel.
Several people suggested posting the results of our research to
the net. That sounds like a good idea, so we are now doing that.
This message is being posted in same the groups in which the survey
was originally posted. Following please find, first, the citation
for the conference paper, and, second, a copy of the abstract of
the paper. The abstract states the hypotheses we were investigating,
and the conclusions we reached.
If the abstract gets you interested in reading the paper, please
consult the conference proceedings in which the paper is published.
I am sure the proceedings are available at many university libraries
and at many firms' technical libraries. If not, they can be ordered
from the ACM. If, after reading the full paper, you have questions,
you may contact myself or Ed.
Thank you to those who helped us by completing the survey.
-- Harry I. Rubin
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Title: Motivations and Behaviors of Software Professionals
Authors: Harry I. Rubin and Edward F. Hernandez
Journal: Proceedings of the 1988 ACM SIGCPR Conference
on Management of Information Systems Personnel
Date: April 7-8, 1988
Pages: 62-71
Availability: available from ACM Press, order number 443880
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ABSTRACT
This paper reports on a study exploring the motivations
of professional software workers. We hypothesized that
extrinsic motivation is more important to software profes-
sionals of today than to those of fifteen to twenty years
ago, and that among those in the field today, it is most
important for those who had been in the profession for the
shortest time. Conversely, we hypothesized that intrinsic
motivation is less important to software professionals of
today than to those of fifteen to twenty years ago, and that
among those in the field today, it is least important for
those who had been in the profession for the shortest time.
We also expected to find that hours of recreational computer
use would be positively correlated with intrinsic motivation
and negatively correlated with extrinsic motivation.
A review of the literature uncovered a number of stu-
dies of DP/MIS personnel which showed that they have high
growth needs. This indicates that DP/MIS personnel are con-
cerned with intrinsic factors. We found no longitudinal
surveys studying the motivation of computer professionals.
Analysis of data from studies in 1969-70 and 1972-73
[26, 27] suggested that at the times of these studies
intrinsic motivations were more important to software pro-
fessionals than to the general workforce, and extrinsic
motivations less important. However, the numbers of respon-
dents in these studies who were software professionals were
so small (three and eight, respectively) that the results
are not statistically valid.
We designed and carried out a Survey of Software Pro-
fessionals (``SSP''), obtaining responses from local
businesses and through the Usenet worldwide computer net-
work. After analyzing data from the SSP and from the ear-
lier studies we have concluded (1) that the longer a person
has been in the software field the less important extrinsic
motivations are to them; (2) that intrinsic motivation has
not changed over time, nor does it change the longer one
remains in the profession; and (3) software professionals
who engage in recreational computer use have higher intrin-
sic motivation than those who do not.
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