How to Demotivate Your Development Team?

04 Apr 2025 #coding

Guaranteed results in 10 simple steps:

#1. Ignore ideas and suggestions. If anyone comes with an idea or suggestion, ignore it. And if anyone raises a concern, say it’s fine and it used to be worse.

#2. Take credit for someone else’s idea. If anyone comes with an idea and you don’t want to ignore it, say “oh, that was what I told you we should do.”

#3. Don’t share any vision or project goals. Just keep your team closing JIRA tickets. Tickets and more tickets.

#4. When someone asks for a salary review, say “come back in a few months.” And then, tell them to come back again. And on and on.

#5. Once a task or project is finished, publicly praise someone else’s work.

#6. Give your team boring and repetitive work. The more boring and repetitive, the better. Make them dig holes. Then make them fill those holes.

#7. Make them work on projects no one will use. Did your team work on a project for six months? Archive it, deprioritize it, or make sure nobody uses it.

#8. Your team worked hard, but why share what the users think? That’s not their business, right? Don’t share any feedback. Just keep them finishing tickets. See #3.

#9. Use the word “resource” to refer to them and treat them accordingly. Your team members are machines you can replace anytime.

#10. Lay off people and tell the ones who stay “nothing is happening.” And if they ask about it, tell them they should be grateful for still having a job.

Follow these steps and you’ll have team members who will leave you at their first chance.