Motivation at work. More than money?

A process is taking place in Computas these days. It is the annual company negotiation of salary. The process is an interesting one where we have a comitee of members in the worker-union (Tekna) and non-union-members, agreeing on our demand regarding this years increase in pay.
These people sits down and discuss the economy of the company and bring a broad perspective of worker-opinions to the table. When the comitee have reached a proposal, it is presented to the workers in the company and if no one objects, the leader of the group delivers this to the company leadership. The delivered document is then the official demand from the workers. This is where the process gets interesting.

During a month the discussion goes back and forth on what is acceptable and various arguments are put on the table. Some may claim that salary is what keeps them motivated and other may claim the opposite. I tend to think that money is really not what is motivating me at work but as Susan Heathfield so elegantly tells us, it always include money.

The salary I get goes to paying my bills and it enables me to live the life I have today. With this said it is apparent that I need more than just to enable me to vile my life outside working hours to keep me motivated. Buying a flat in Oslo will not keep me motivated at work for a long time. It will of course enable me to have a better life in the sense that I will have my own space and thus hopefully have a better economy than now when renting a flat. It would feel much better to pay for my own flat rather than paying for somebody else' flat.

I am insinuating that salary is a cornerstone in work-motivation, but its role is an enabler. This meaning it has to be there to be able to motivate on other areas (as I've mentioned in earlier posts).

And yes I am very curious on how much this years pay increase will be.

To be agile or not to be agile, is that the question?

What is really agile? Are we really agile or has it become a hype?

These were questions that was brought up on todays xp.meetup without coming to any conclusion, but nonetheless a fruitful discussion inspired me to write this post.

One of the issues mentioned was related to technology and how agile you can get. Many agrees that technology influence our way to work and thus how agile we are in our work. And it was in this context that J2EE was mentioned as something that really held you back from working agile. This might be well and true, but isn't the question really "How agile can you get" and at the same time deliver what the customer want with the agreed quality?

Many projects today deal with legacy technology and different aspects of the past that impose restraints on our solutions. Would it not be possible to say that one is agile in the way they are dealing with this legacy technology? Be it test driven development (TDD) with or without behaviour driven development (BDD). The world is full of legacy..