Job Satisfaction: It's Highly Overrated

Computerworld - Few managers are genuinely surprised when the results of an employee satisfaction survey are revealed. You really don't need the science of statistics to know that people aren't entirely pleased with every aspect of their work lives.
Given the state of our industry over the past few years, most IT managers are facing at least some degree of worker disaffection. In fact, plenty of the managers themselves are similarly discontent, as Computerworld's Job Satisfaction Survey also shows.
But once faced with a dissatisfied IT workforce, what should you do? Hide in your office? Fire the most disgruntled people? Pretend it isn't happening?
Before making any decisions, let's ask an important question: How important is job satisfaction anyway?
Of course, good leaders want their people to be reasonably happy, but how important is it, really, that they be satisfied? This may sound a bit callous, but I've never been particularly captivated by the idea of managers making job satisfaction a high-priority goal. I have a few reasons for my skepticism:
1. I'm not sure it's possible to satisfy people. Complete satisfaction just isn't part of the human condition. We are a restless and ambitious species.
2. I'm not sure it's desirable to satisfy people. Satisfaction doesn't guarantee productivity. In fact, it probably does just the opposite. Nor does satisfaction spark creativity. There's a reason why the old saying goes, "Necessity is the mother of invention," rather than, "Abundance is the mother of invention." I've also never heard people suggest that big paychecks and job security were the source of their group's outstanding performance.
3. The range of things we measure to gauge job satisfaction distracts from what's really important and distorts the true state of our organizations. I've observed that there are a few things that are critical for technical people's happiness: cool work, fair pay, good relationships and a reasonable belief that the future holds more of the same. Most of the things we measure are important only if these primary things are missing, in which case there's already a problem.
So, what should you do about a dissatisfied workforce? From the rants above, you might think that my answer would be that you should do nothing, but that's not exactly the case. It's not that workers' dissatisfaction is unimportant, but alleviating it shouldn't be your primary focus.
I suggest that you look instead at their motivation, which I believe has much more of a direct impact on what they can achieve than their satisfaction does and is also much