Thu

May 24
2007

Jimmy Guterman

Jimmy Guterman

Do You Work Better If You're Working For Free?

After we finish the next issue of Release 2.0, we'll be turning our attention to a series of open source reports, the first of which we'll be unveiling at OSCON. Another project I'm working on -- one outside O'Reilly Radar that has nothing to do with technology -- makes me wonder about how different groups consider open source projects.

I recently finished producing a two-CD set that benefits several charities. All the performers on the set -- there were 36 of 'em -- worked for free. The fellow who painted the cover image and the guy who designed the package worked for free. The record company is putting it out without expectation of making a dime. For most of us, it's simply a cool project. All the performers and visual artists, because they believed in the project, were at the top of their game here.

But when we moved into the "professional" realm, working with people who were getting paid and performing their tasks as part of their everyday business, we met many more problems. The printing company kept getting the fonts in the booklet wrong (it took six go-rounds to get it right); an engineer input one song at the wrong sampling rate, forcing us to remaster one of the discs at the eleventh hour.

All these problems were solved and I am quite happy with the finished project. But I wonder if it's just coincidence that all the people on the project who worked for free did their work flawlessly and we only met trouble when we worked with people for whom this was just another gig. It's dangerous to extrapolate from one idiosyncratic example, so I'd like to end with a question: When you've undertaken open source projects with different groups of contributors, have you encountered anything similar? Do people work better when they're working for free?


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Comments: 20

  Steve [05.24.07 08:00 AM]

I suspect it's more a question of passion. You're unlikely to work for free if you're not passionate about the job, but many (most?) people do their job for the money. It's not called the daily grind for nothing.

  Tim O'Reilly [05.24.07 08:02 AM]

The Maker Faire provided another great example of this phenomenon. It was amazing to see all these people putting heart and soul into their booths for no commercial gain, just to show their work. It was especially impressive on the midway. Working a ride for hundreds or thousands of kids for two days is hard work, not to mention that you've got to truck your stuff there, set it up beforehand and take it down afterwards.

It was jarring in a wonderful way to go to a Fair, see all these people standing in line for rides, and realize that not a penny was changing hands.

In fact, I had an interaction with someone in one booth who remarked how some visitors were rude when materials ran out for one of the projects. He didn't have much truck with that. "We spent over a thousand dollars on the materials we had," he noted.

So there's the challenge, Jimmy. How sustainable is this kind of effort? How scalable?

But it's a great question to wrestle with. If we didn't have to work for money, what would we do? Bucky Fuller used to argue that everyone ought to be paid a living wage for doing nothing, because the ones who used that opportunity creatively would make so much value for the rest of us that it would pay for all the people who went fishing.

I think we know from the experience of welfare states that he was wrong. But clearly, he's wrong only for certain people. What makes some people thrive in a "for free" environment and others not? That is also a very good question...

  Andrew Langmead [05.24.07 08:48 AM]

I think it is more of a matter of enthusiasm rather than paid or not paid. Enthusiastic students learn more and retain more than unenthusiastic students. A drop in enthusiasm can cause sports teams to lose more.

When you have a volunteer organization, the only thing keeping them there is their desire to have the project they are working on succeed. Once that desire diminishes, they just disappear.

For professionals, you start getting other factors that are keeping people doing what they are doing. The paycheck obviously, but also things like current and future career goals, how well they can sustain their current position, work overload (when a volunteer finds that they don't have time to do everything they want to do, they may re-prioritize. When a printer spends too much time on your job, they may be using up time that they need to be spending on another client.)

When you can find someone who can be enthusiastic about their current job and remain that way, you might get a result as good as, if not better than the volunteers. Better, because they may have more time to spend on the project than the volunteer does.

  Christopher Johnston [05.24.07 09:51 AM]

I have found that I tend to put more care and effort into the things that I want to do rather than I have to do. I think that many people dislike their jobs and it is a "have to" rather than a "want to". Obviously if you are giving your time away it is because you want to and you will also want to do a better job because you care about it on a deeper level.

  Kevin [05.24.07 12:31 PM]

As a web developer by trade I tend to take on side projects that I can either do for free, or have very little restrictions on them.

I like to work without pressure or major deadlines since that's all I'm subjected to during daily duties, and I think the end result is that much better.

That's why I pick and choose what I want to work on rather than try and do as many projects as fast as I can just to make a quick buck.

I think it gives me an outlet to feel like I "run the show" and thus makes it a lot more tolerable to work in Corporate America.

I'm an open source programmer, btw.

  Brett [05.24.07 12:46 PM]

Working for free isnt the point.

Its as simple as occupation versus vocation.

Occupation takes up your time, the daily grind, the 9-to-5, its what you do, not what you are.

Vocation (despite the common use as industrial trade) means one's calling, the cause you give yourself to, the higher purpose. As Steve said, Passion. It says something about who you are, even what your values are.

  TH [05.24.07 02:04 PM]

Do I work better, if I'm working for free? Yes. Unreserved, wholeharted YES.

http://words.grendel.at/archives/2004/04/09/accepting_money.html

  adamsj [05.24.07 03:56 PM]

I guess it's just my week to mix music and technology.

Tim, you say:

Bucky Fuller used to argue that everyone ought to be paid a living wage for doing nothing, because the ones who used that opportunity creatively would make so much value for the rest of us that it would pay for all the people who went fishing.

I think we know from the experience of welfare states that he was wrong.

Did the irony of posting that in a discussion involving The Clash and Camper Van Beethoven occur to you?

  Tuukka Hastrup [05.24.07 06:39 PM]

Considering bad experiences of welfare states, the Nordic countries and Finland at the head are doing great now that the investments in people start to pay off. Just for one example, see the Global Competitiveness Report. A current bottleneck is the lack of entrepreneurs, which applies to other parts of Europe too.



Interestingly, one could say founders of a venture "work for free" while they don't get a salary. Thus I see a path from creative idleness to enthusiastic entrepreneurship.

  Albert Cardona [05.24.07 09:48 PM]

There is middle ground: scientists. The pay is low and one can get away without accomplishing anything at all. Yet, the opportunity is there for those who'd rather spend their time creatively. And what impressive creations have come out of enthusiastic scientists! Perhaps Bucky Fuller referred to such crowd, considering his daily environment.

  NY NJ [05.24.07 09:51 PM]

Every situation is different.

If a skilled professional is not under pressure, distractions and deadlines and has time to donate their expertise to a project they are passionate about - it is more likely that their output will have fewer imperfections.

Of course, this pertains to everyone in the chain of command of a project - from beginning to completion.

That Printer and that Engineer referred to in the post would likely not be in business if they were not able to satisfy their clients most of the time with competent service.

  Peter Wayner [05.25.07 04:02 AM]

Oh, I think it all depends upon people's moods, the weather, their stress level and many other things. A number of open source projects are pretty uneven. They have some very sophisticated features mixed with some rudimentary ones because the creator was only interested in the sophisticated features. Is this better? It all depends what you need. If you're looking for rudimentary features, though, you might be better off with a professional service with the right incentives to provide exactly what you want.

  Enki [05.25.07 04:06 AM]

If you want to meet a few thousand passionate people working for free, you should definitely check out the ccc camp this year:

The Chaos Communication Camp is an international, five-day open-air event for hackers, builders, and makers organized by the Chaos Computer Club (CCC), to be held from August 8 to 12 on an old Russian military airfield near Berlin.

The camp probably is the best place for some of the most interesting inhabitants of the planet to meet, greet, and discuss. If you’ve ever wanted to meet some of the masterminds behind tomorrow’s technology and social structures while they’re sunbathing, cooking or launching a kite, this is your chance.

The CFP still runs till June 5th. See here: http://events.ccc.de/camp/2007/Final_Call

  Jacob Kaplan-Moss [05.25.07 06:49 AM]

One big difference between paid and free work: when you're getting a paycheck you're somewhat beholden to He Who Has The Cash. That is, paid programming gigs have more and different pressures than "do the best job possible"; you've got to finish on time to fulfill a contract, etc.

Working on Open Source is fantastic because the only metric that matters is quality. The code I write for Django is the best code I write because I don't have to compromise in any way. So yeah, I do work better if I'm not getting paid.

  Stefan Meretz [05.25.07 08:26 AM]

Due to your observation we distinguish in Oekonux-Project [oekonux.org] between simply and doubly free software, where *simply* means (only) the freedom concerning the product, and *doubly* additionally addresses the productive process. Thus simply free software gives freedom to the user, and doubly free software gives freedom to users _and_ producers. When hackers code free, when they code what they really want and think is the best, then the quality is higher. When they code for a third aim, they code alienated and not for their own (or common) purposes, the quality is less good, generally. There are, of course, shades of grey. More...

  Michael Chui [05.26.07 01:10 AM]

I would work worse for free IF it seemed to me that my job was pointless, the environment was oppressive, and the people were stupid. I'm not getting anything out of it and neither is anyone else; why am I working?

It's not about money. Never has been. Economics is not about money. It's about value. And while people might still believe that money is the quintessential quantifier of value, it isn't and we all know it. Every one of your contributors got value from it. It might not be transferrable value, or tangible or liquid, but it was real. Money just happens to be valuable, too.

  Michael Sparks [05.26.07 01:14 AM]

Asking "Do you work better for free?" misses the point completely. If I do something for free, its for love, not for money. You can't buy love. Something borne from love is always better (in at least some quality) than something made for money.

And it shows, often in the most unlikely of places. A penguin in a boot screen (or more per CPU). The things that _sometimes_ mark out something as amateurish also mark them out as loved. They can also however mark them out as much more lovable.

  Toivo Lainevool [05.26.07 09:54 PM]

As some people have pointed out, I think there is some confusion between cause and effect. People work for free because they are passionate about something. People who are passionate about something work better. I just blogged about not being able to beat passion.

  Seth Dickerson [05.28.07 01:13 PM]

I would agree with the argument for passion vs. pay. The real key, as stated, is - what is your calling? The claims agent at an insurance company will be far more passionate about his *paid* job if he has been through a natural disaster (flood, fire, etc.) and knows how much his help is to someone.

I have helped coordinate medium-size volunteer efforts (~200 people) and there is a huge difference between the ones who are there because they followed the crowd and the people who are their because they knew we were helping the city. Even with menial tasks such as moving rocks, anyone who saw the big picture of an entirely revamped landscape for our schools put far more effort into what they were doing. They saw the purpose - and they felt like part of it, which is the most powerful way to ignite passion that I know of.

  Dubai [06.14.07 09:46 PM]

Its about self interest in the job at hand. This interest starts with the ability to choose a project. This leads to an increased deep personal since of ownership. Personal ownership leads to a natural since of personal responsibility. Following that the volunteer performers in the case of the album were above average in character, ethics and skills who feel some strong deep personal responsibility it is clear the quality output should be very high because they are getting the drive to perform from within themselves.

Compare that with some one who sees the project as one task in a never ending line of task to be performed.

Motivated volunteers will 9/10 times perfom better at anything given equal resources.

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