Its a motivation to maintain employment, but not to put in your best effort. The cat’s out of the bag now that, generally speaking, your boss doesn’t care enough about you to differentiate how he treats you vs. any of your peers, so its only a chump who would continually give more than a token amount of effort or loyalty to that relationship. Job-hopping is more well rewarded anyway.
Not wanting to starve is also a great motivator. Now that you’re struggling either way the motivation goes away.
“But that makes people work just hard enough that they don’t get fired”
Not starving is the motivation.
Its a motivation to maintain employment, but not to put in your best effort. The cat’s out of the bag now that, generally speaking, your boss doesn’t care enough about you to differentiate how he treats you vs. any of your peers, so its only a chump who would continually give more than a token amount of effort or loyalty to that relationship. Job-hopping is more well rewarded anyway.
Was