Re: (OT) Motivating the Unmotivated Programmer

[hsmyers]

I'm not sure this is advice for 'motivation', but I would suggest before any other suggestion, that someone take the time to make sure that all of the assumptions everyone else seems to have are correct. In short, someone needs to actually talk to this guy and point out the problems at hand. It may actually be the case that he is blissfully un-aware of the side effects he is leaving in his wake. The 'Assumption Game' is one of the things that always comes to play in management situations like this, how not, it's human nature. For whatever reason, most solutions are predicated on assumption. That the assumptions may be correct doesn't make the method any less poorly researched! Since the situation is second hand for you and third hand for the rest of us, you should get back to your source and at least eliminate this problem from the mix before going further.

–hsm

"Never try to teach a pig to sing…it wastes your time and it annoys the pig."