"I'm happy where I am."
Several years ago as I stared back at this engineer I tried offering a level-promotion to, my mind raced towards wild hypotheses on why they would decline. Isn't everybody looking to make progress in their careers? Don't we all want growth? Was this person really so comfortable in their role they couldn't be bothered anymore?
I had to remind myself I don't work with assumptions if they can be avoided; some further probing and they revealed to me their reason - each time in their past they'd accepted a promotion they felt a surge of positive emotions always followed by a fall; a career-induced dope hit, if you will. The pride of a shiny new title, the nitro-boost to compensation, the sense of importance inherited with new charge - they all faded. Some rather quickly. And they weren't keen on doing that again - they were happy where they were.
Psychology knows this phenomenon as the Hedonic Adaptation - the human tendency to quickly return to a stable emotional level despite positive or negative events. Hedonic adaptation occurs in different ways, typically involving changes in values and objectives, focus, and perceptions; several cognitive changes combined with neurochemical changes, working together to desensitize the brain's hedonic pathways over-simulated by the event that triggered the change. Like an Agent Smith to your Neo.
A great read on this topic is the essay "Hedonic Relativism and Planning the Good Society" [1971 - Brickman and Campbell] where they coin the term "Hedonic Treadmill". The more money / progress / life changes a person makes, the more their desires and expectations tend to rise, resulting in no permanent gain in happiness. A treadmill that makes you sweat and takes you nowhere, all while deceiving you into believing you're going places.
What my engineer was trying to tell me was they weren't willing to get on the [hedonic] treadmill again - they'd had enough of it. And to me, that was a reason as sound as any other.
Are you on a hedonic treadmill too?
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I enjoy the intersection of engineering and cognitive science in my people, product, and engineering leadership. Would you like to work at Volvo Cars?
I'm hiring a senior software engineer - https://lnkd.in/djxQsecv
But what about developers for IBM mainframe based legacy system ? That’s my plattform 😊