Skip to content
0:00 / 0:00

#motivation#danpink#autonomymasterypurpose

The puzzle of motivation | Dan Pink | TED

TED

28M subscribers • 18 videos on Hallway

YouTube
  • Recommended by 3 people: 3 on Hacker News.
  • A classic. People kept recommending it from 2010 to 2026.
  • Presented by Dan Pink, author
  • An opinion. It argues one side of a question engineers disagree on.

Beginner. No background in the topic needed.

12M views17 years ago3 recommendations

Tools and practiceCareers and interviewsCode review and teamworkDeveloper productivityEngineering management

Dan Pink argues that traditional carrot-and-stick incentives are often counterproductive for creative tasks, advocating instead for autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

Visit TED.com to get our entire library of TED Talks, transcripts, translations, personalized talk recommendations and more. Career analyst Dan Pink examines the puzzle of motivation, starting with a fact that social scientists know but most managers don't: Traditional rewards aren't always as effective as we think. Listen for illuminating stories -- and maybe, a way forward. The TED Talks channel features the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes (or less). Look for talks on Technology, Entertainment and Design -- plus science, business, global issues, the arts and more. You're welcome to link to or embed these videos, forward them to others and share these ideas with people you know. Follow TED on Twitter: twitter.com/TEDTalks Like TED on Facebook: facebook.com/TED Subscribe to our channel: youtube.com/TED TED's videos may be used for non-commercial purposes under a Creative Commons License, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives (or the CC BY – NC – ND 4.0 International) and in accordance with our TED Talks Usage Policy ted.com/about/our-organization/our-policies-terms/ted-talks-…. For more information on using TED for commercial purposes (e.g. employee learning, in a film or online course), please submit a Media Request at media-requests.ted.com

Why it's here

3 people recommend this

What people say. Engineers frequently reference this talk when discussing developer motivation, compensation structures, and how to build productive software teams.

Ey7NFZ3P0nzAeon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Antirender: remove the glossy shine on architectural renderings”

> The idea that money is not an effective incentive to drive behavior is wishful thinking It is obviously an incentive. But I think it's not an effective one and has many morally bad side effects. I highly recommend taking a look at the work of Daniel Pink related to money as an incentive. See The Puzzle Of Motivation (~20min) link to this video

hoopon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Does business school teach people how to assert power before they're ready?”

I'll read them all over the next couple of hours. (I am sick in bed anyhow :)) Readings that I recommend are "The Great Jackass Fallacy" (I got my copy <$10 on Amazon) and "Drive" by Daniel Pink. There's also a Youtube/TED video that sums up "Drive" very well. link to this video

arkitaipon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Employees That Stay In Companies Longer Get Paid Less”

Have you seen any of Daniel Pink's work on what motivates people in business? It might inspire you to focus on other incentives than just pay salary increases. link to this video

nreeceon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Functional Fixedness - The Candle Problem”

The Candle Problem was used as an insightful example by Daniel Pink in his TED talk on the surprising science of motivation - link to this video

DeepDuhon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Why did a Train Carrying Biofuel Cross the Border 24 Times and Never Unload?”

Traditional incentives are often not as effective as you think: link to this video The best way to have motivated employees for creative tasks is to give them a high base salary, good working conditions and hire suiting ones in the first place. For repetitive jobs the incentives might work, but these are also the jobs where you should think about automation.

ChrisMarshallNYon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Ways to improve mental health for software developers”

I remember a TED talk that Dan Pink gave (I think this might be it0), in which he mentioned a company that did "20% time." Atlassian; not Google. 0 link to this video

gretchon Hacker News • Mentions

On “California needs real math education, not gimmicks”

This Ted talk (includes a lot of data) shows that motivation via money hurts creative problem solving. link to this video

ismailmajon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (February 2026)”

How do you scale a more human management system when both the manager or the managee can be incompetent or malicious. I'm aware that incentives are often counterproductive or insulting for white collar workers where there are elements of creativity in the job, but I feel like to get it to work you need trust which IMO cannot be scaled to big companies like Google. FYI, I'm paraphrasing, perhaps badly "The puzzle of motivation | Dan Pink | TED". link to this video