Sex, Drugs, Power, and Money

Early on in my career at Google I attended an offsite seminar for grooming managers. We had the usual set of morning lectures, and then we were split into smaller groups for discussion. The topic was “What motivates people?” Various answers were suggested, but I came up with these four: Sex, drugs, power, and money.

For some reason, they were not happy with my answer.

They seemed to think that I was not taking the question seriously. But history has shown that these four things are extremely strong motivations. They can motivate people to do all sorts of things they wouldn't otherwise consider. Like, for example, to betray their country.

If you look for them, you can find the motivations I listed. They are thinly disguised, of course. Why are administrative assistants so often attractive young women? Is Google's massage program completely innocent? Are there never any “special favors”? The beer flows pretty freely on Fridays, and the company parties were legendary. Of course there are the stock options and the spot bonuses.

I guess I was being too frank for their taste. They were looking for some kind of “corporate culture” answer, like “team spirit” or “collaboration”. I was just being honest.

I soon discovered that the true topic of this three day offsite seminar was bullshit. It was a “course” dreamed up by business “psychologists” and peddled to Silicon Valley companies as a scam. If you've ever encountered “team building” courses, you'll know what I mean. It is a lucrative business. This was just an extra large helping.

They didn't like my frankness, and I didn't see how they could expect to really understand what motivates people if they were not going to address the obvious. They thought I wasn't being serious with my answer, but it was clear that they weren't going to be seriously examining the question either.

So I left the seminar. I didn't want to waste my time listening to corporate psychobabble. My time was better spent writing code and engineering software. I returned to my office to actually accomplish some meaningful work. No doubt I had ruined any chance of becoming a big-wig, but I simply could not stomach the phoniness and insincerity. I was not going to play that game.