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on Gopher (inofficial)
URI Visit Hacker News on the Web
COMMENT PAGE FOR:
URI Peter principle
fsmv wrote 4 hours 20 min ago:
This is a great excuse to not pay you as much as you deserve because
you haven't demonstrated competence at the next level yet
lupire wrote 5 hours 34 min ago:
This is a negative view on human growth. If you don't promote
incompetent people, then you promote no one, and the job doesn't get
done, and no one learns to do the job.
shsbdncudx wrote 21 hours 45 min ago:
Iâve always found it a little naive. Sure, day 1 of a new job you are
not going to be as good as you are 2 years later. Seems like a normal
part of growth.
1-6 wrote 22 hours 2 min ago:
Does that mean long time employees are incompetent?
rapjr9 wrote 22 hours 19 min ago:
People can learn. So I've often wondered if the Peter Principle is
more of a recognition that people stop learning as they get older.
Seems like the data could fit either scenario. People rise until their
job requires more skills than they have, or people rise until they stop
learning (or learn to stop learning, or until their learning capacity
is reduced.) There's this thing that is called "growing up". Does
growing up entail not being naive and an end to accepting what you are
told (i.e., learning)? "They" say that when you're over 30 you are
"over the hill". Has anyone ever tried to measure that? Maybe it's
not a physical change in the body, maybe it's a consequence of getting
hurt and learning not to be naive and accepting less teaching, being
less open. If you've watched children grow up you can see them
becoming more reticent and adopting postures.
supportengineer wrote 1 day ago:
So what does this imply if youâve never received a promotion, ever?
mattgreenrocks wrote 1 day ago:
Worth noting: Charity Majors' blog on management and tech: [1] She says
several things I've always thought were taboo to even think, including
the fact that management shouldn't be viewed as a promotion, it's a
completely separate job and some people are better at it than others.
My limited experience: it's a separate job, it's a lot more things to
juggle and carry, and it mostly makes sense that they get paid more. I
have zero experience on director/c-level jobs, so I'm not going to
speculate there.
URI [1]: https://charity.wtf/
noodle wrote 1 day ago:
Fully agreed. IMO its a critical thing to provide engineers an IC
career path that enables advancement without requiring moving into a
manager type of job. Otherwise, you get people who are shitty
managers because they feel they have to do the job to continue to
grow, and that turns into a team/org-wide morale issue.
When promoting engineers into management positions, I'll always give
them a trial run first in some form to make sure they actually enjoy
the job, make sure their new team doesn't see any red flags, and to
give them a graceful path to go back to IC without some fanfare
company-wide promo announcement locking them into the role socially.
haolez wrote 1 day ago:
I've been promoted up to CTO as a former developer (CTO of some big
companies now!) and I feel I'm a pretty mediocre CTO compared to my dev
performance. I can attest to this principle :)
franze wrote 1 day ago:
counter example, the peter principle is used to disguise the lack of a
career path.
when I started my career I was working at a national news agency as
"Business Development Web" this was from 1998 to 2004 and everything
"internet / cyber data highway" was my job. from website to api-s to
product design to design to code, frontend backend and project
management and well product management (feeds, stream, ...) .
seperation of work in the online space did not exist then.
as at one point i told them that i want to develop further and not
relaunch the website next year again the hold me back 'cause of the
fear of peter principle - ans that they need me cause there was nobody
else who could ever do my job.
so i quit.
so i think the peter principle exists, yes. there are incompetent
managers which were very competent in another position.
but applying the peter principle for decision making is harmful. for
the individual and the organisation.
i would say the sum pf applying the peter principle in an
organisational is more harmful to promote people and see of they will
be valuable, even if some of them will suck eventually.
wodenokoto wrote 1 day ago:
Isnât that more a case of âif you want job security make yourself
irreplaceable. If you want a promotion make yourself replaceableâ
TrackerFF wrote 1 day ago:
My own observations:
A) Some places, the only way to land a leadership position, is by
simply outliving your competition in the firm. Some firms put way too
much emphasis on seniority, and are afraid to not promote senior
employees in a predictable fashion, in fear of them leaving.
These types of places also compensate purely based on your seniority
and job title - which is why everyone wants to land such positions.
B) The Peter Principle is rampant in sales. Good salespeople get
promoted to leadership positions, and are bogged down with tasks they
do not enjoy, or want to do.
C) Places with a strong focus on "up or out" can also end up with a
system where the Peter Principle is rife. Employees will do anything in
their power to reach tenure, and once tenured, they might lose all
motivation to perform their leadership duties - other than to work
their subordinates to the bone, because they know there's a endless
supply of them, and that all of them are equally motivated to reach
promotion / tenure.
P_I_Staker wrote 1 day ago:
Sales? You just described engineering management, as well as many
fields, probably.
486sx33 wrote 1 day ago:
I had an employee give me this book one morning. He wasnât a direct
report, he reported to his manager who reported to me. Anyway he came
in my office one morning and gave me the book. I hadnât heard of it
so I smiled and thanked him for thinking of me. I had an interesting
wave of thoughts reading it⦠I still donât know if he thought I was
incompetent or what, but, in any case, it was enlightening.
darkerside wrote 1 day ago:
So you never asked him why he gave you the book?
486sx33 wrote 21 hours 14 min ago:
He used to be a pastor and one of his followers had given it to
him. I did ask him but his answer amounted to âpassing it along I
thought youâd be interestedâ. Of course I spent a long time
wondering what his deeper message to me may have been. Perhaps
Iâll never exactly know his intent but thatâs ok for me. He
quit and took a job at a shoe store , but stays in touch with me 5+
years later.
nasir wrote 1 day ago:
Summary: "In a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of
incompetence."
amelius wrote 1 day ago:
Can we apply this to Boeing?
dijit wrote 1 day ago:
I'm much more compelled by the "Gervais Principle" from 2009: [1]
Basically, instead of people being promoted to incompetence; the IC
level is thought of as "economic losers"; IE: the exploited. People who
are exploited and throw a lot of effort in are considered "the
clueless" and occupy most middle management, and the high leadership of
every company is considered sociopathic.
It's a much more compelling ideology to me as it maps unfortunately
well into real life; at least as described (maybe the particular chosen
words for the classifications evoke the wrong assumptions though).
9 minute video:
URI [1]: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or...
URI [2]: https://youtu.be/jJYa68AnECY?t=29
creamyhorror wrote 1 day ago:
I'm surprised to find this so far down. The Gervais Principle is the
cynical cousin of the Peter Principle, and even if it isn't actually
accurate for some workplaces, it makes for a compelling read.
m0llusk wrote 1 day ago:
Which competes with the Gervais Principle:
URI [1]: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or...
stareatgoats wrote 1 day ago:
The "Peter principle" rests on the assumption that organizations are
rational meritocracies, and will reward people that are competent at
their given task. And those organizations may (still) exist, but they
are not the norm, at least not in my experience.
I propose another, more important, principle as an explanation for the
obvious incompetence of many managers:
Competent people are a source of pain to higher levels of management,
because they don't just say "yes boss", they will tend to point out the
risks of flying blind, offer a better solution than what was recently
clubbed at the board of directors meeting, and have ethical guardrails
regarding what chemicals to put in the product, how to treat coworkers,
etc. They are brilliant at their tasks, but have opinions that go
beyond their designated area, they are expensive and demanding. And
they usually end up getting the can, with or without a severance pay.
And the incompetent, but "yes boss"-employee gets the promotion
instead.
There you have it.
onthecanposting wrote 23 hours 20 min ago:
I want to agree because I see myself in this, particularly the
conclusion of the career arc, but I try to remember that market
conditions are beyond my control and aren't productive to dwell on.
I had a boss who cut his teeth at one of the largest AEC firms in the
US. He frequently said, "the two most dangerous people are an
incompetent that everyone gets along with and the highly competent
that nobody gets along with. Both can destroy an organization." I
knew who he had in mind on the former, which I thought was pretty
callous. I realized that he saw me as the latter after I was fired.
I think we should not infer rules about business behavior from market
forces because management in large organizations have enough
insulation to develop their own hard to explain customs.
asveikau wrote 1 day ago:
This is true, but it's also subjective. The question of competence
and correct behavior is subjective. There could be validity in the
"yes boss" perspective. I say that despite having a very strong bias
against the "yes boss" personality myself.
Ultimately both sides of this need to approach with humility and
understand how little they can see and influence, and how all
perception is subjective.
Aloisius wrote 1 day ago:
> Competent people are a source of pain to higher levels of
management, because they don't just say "yes boss"
This sounds more like they aren't competent at the kind of
politicking and development of political capital required for middle
management.
In other words, someone competent is promoted and which they are
incompetent at because they lack the skills necessary for the new job
- the Peter Principle.
zachmu wrote 1 day ago:
You're confusing competence with disagreeability.
nchallak wrote 1 day ago:
Isn't this just another definition of the original principle. People
rise to the level where their noise is just enough to not worry the
people promoting them i.e. the lesser their noise is the more they
will be promoted. What you are offering seems like an explanation
rather than a new observation.
dudeinhawaii wrote 1 day ago:
I agree, but I think it's even more subversive. Large corporations
tend to develop internal fiefdoms with rules that aren't always
aligned with the larger company's objectives. These fiefdoms develop
unspoken rules, which competent people tend to question. "Why are we
padding every task by 75%?" "Why are we saying X tasks are 'hard' and
require additional staffing when we know they're easy?" These new
unspoken rules misalign rewards.
Competent individuals often question practices like these and are
either coerced into submission or shown the door. This leads to a
gradual subversion of the corporate culture, transforming what was
once agile, resourceful, and, importantly, truthful into a culture of
internal lies and self-deception. "Everyone lies on this report, so
you must too. Everyone exaggerates their evaluations, so you must as
well. Everyone inflates sales predictions by many multiples; you must
do the same." Rewards given under the de-facto misaligned system
favors the incompetent. This further estranges competence from
leveling.
n1b wrote 1 day ago:
Rational meritocracies do not exist in the present, have never
existed in the past, and will never exist in the future. However, the
idea that a meritocracy can or does exist is a useful tool for those
with leverage over others. It justifies their decisions, which in
reality simply boil down to a combination of their "gut" feeling and
what they can get away with socially given their position in the
hierarchy.
theatomheart wrote 8 min ago:
you seem very sure of your declarations here; im not sure you've
looked too far beyond your bubble. i have worked within a rational
meritocarcy for the past 15 years.
hammock wrote 1 day ago:
At middle management levels that approach may be the way it works,
because of the incentives.
But once you start presenting to board rooms and people who have zero
skin in the game of office politics, but 100% skin in the game of the
firmâs profits (and more broadly firm profits at large), you
absolutely will not succeed unless you are delivering value through
competence
Buttons840 wrote 1 day ago:
It still works that way for anyone who values anything else above
profit. If you believe ethics are more important than profit, the
board won't like you.
lamontcg wrote 1 day ago:
I've definitely worked for people who violated that rule to the
detriment of the company. They could _appear_ competent, but in my
view, corroborated later by the view of the market, they were
actually not.
bedobi wrote 1 day ago:
the stares at goats principle has been in effect most of my career...
and this is not me saying "I'm so smart" - I'm really not. I do care
about doing the basics well. But that's asking too much of a lot of
organizations.
Aeolun wrote 1 day ago:
Hmm, thatâs a great summary of what I meant when I recently told my
coworker I couldnât help him because Iâd recently burned through
all my political capital.
alecco wrote 1 day ago:
> Competent people are a source of pain to higher levels of
management, because they don't just say "yes boss"
Fits the MacLeod/Gervais pyramid of losers / clueless / sociopaths.
URI [1]: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...
md_ wrote 1 day ago:
At the risk of seeming like an asshole:
I think for every highly competent person who just lacks a bit of
social graces and is unfairly punished by a defensive bureaucracy, I
have encountered many more incompetent people who, due to
Dunning-Kruger, don't recognize their own incompetence, and instead
ascribe the rejection of their (mediocre) ideas to the unfair
defensiveness of the bureaucracy above them.
Or, in meme form: [1] .
URI [1]: https://imgflip.com/i/8ks5kq
nextworddev wrote 1 day ago:
Dunning-Kruger seems like an overused framework to explain just
pure "lack of self-awareness due to immaturity / ego / lack of
intelligence, etc."
godshatter wrote 1 day ago:
Not to mention that if someone isn't a psychologist they
shouldn't be spouting off about the Dunning-Kruger effect anyway
because arguably they don't have enough competence in that
particular domain to be able to talk about it intelligently.
md_ wrote 8 hours 18 min ago:
Isn't people who don't know enough about Dunning-Kruger
confidently spouting off about it...sort of evidence of
Dunning-Kruger?
I kid of course. Or do I?
disgruntledphd2 wrote 23 hours 25 min ago:
Hell, I have a PhD in psychology and I don't know enough about
this effect to talk about it intelligently.
peteradio wrote 1 day ago:
How have you ever gotten the full story so many times to know that
these people exist in such numbers? You'd have to hear their bad
idea (apparently be intelligent enough to understand them
completely) and then you'd also be there to hear them griping and
blaming management and again finding their complaints uncompelling.
md_ wrote 1 day ago:
Hmm, let me put it this way:
I have often run into people who seem to think management is
stupid for not accepting their idea, which they then explain--and
which I also think is a bad idea.
Maybe I'm also just dumb, though!
g4zj wrote 1 day ago:
> highly competent person who just lacks a bit of social graces
I consider myself one of these people (let's say above average
competency). I don't think management is stupid for not
accepting my ideas. I begin to have an issue when they
disregard the concerns my idea was meant to address. Too often,
it feels as though they choose the path which leads us straight
into what I think are clearly foreseeable and avoidable
problems, and then I'm at fault for describing them as such
after the fact.
rrr_oh_man wrote 18 hours 19 min ago:
Amusing anecdote: On average, people think they are above
average.
flkiwi wrote 1 day ago:
This isnât meant to respond directly to your statement
because Iâve seen the same thing. BUT one fascinating thing
Iâve learned is how scale plays into things. That $50
million project may be a Senior Directorâs most important,
career-making project ⦠but less than a rounding error to
their EVP.
stareatgoats wrote 1 day ago:
> many more incompetent people who, due to Dunning-Kruger, don't
recognize their own incompetence
You are right of course, I am myself a living proof of that, and I
would not wish it on my worst enemy organization to give me a
promotion. That said, this doesn't really explain why so many
incompetent people end up being promoted, which Peter (I believe
correctly) documented. His theory is admittedly a bit more
elaborate than mine, but it obviously builds on an endearing
naïveté regarding the nature of organizations, especially large
and mature such.
hackton wrote 1 day ago:
My experience is that people being good at the job tend to be
promoted to managerial positions, but being good at certain tasks
does not make you necessarily good at managing people, even if they
just do these very tasks.
I also have been in companies with two career paths: managerial and
technical, both respected and rewarded, to the point you can be paid
much higher than your boss if you are senior and performing. Might
not work in every sector/size though.
mattgreenrocks wrote 1 day ago:
IMO, most orgs believe more in scaling via adding people vs scaling
via tech.
This doesn't discredit what you say. It does, however, explain why
it's much easier to move up on the management ladder vs the IC
ladder.
gmane wrote 1 day ago:
I'll add on to your point: moving up the IC ladder is often slow
because it takes more to both become an expert in a field and to
prove it to your leadership. Each step up the IC ladder is harder
to actually obtain those skills, and harder to prove that you
have obtained those skills to management.
On the flip side, the management ladder is more delivery focused
(though not exclusively): are you getting your team to get their
work done? It's somewhat easier to demonstrate success on the
management side, and because you're leading a team, it's possible
(though not necessarily true in most cases) for a manager to get
promoted on the strength of their team and not their ability as a
manager.
hcks wrote 1 day ago:
1/ itâs not rational to promote someone competent at their tasks
2/ there are either ways to reward than promote to a higher level in
the management pyramid
pi-e-sigma wrote 1 day ago:
Hence it's not rational for an employee who wants to get a
promotion to be competent at their work.
marcosdumay wrote 1 day ago:
And that's why the GP's #2 is so important.
Organizations where it exists tend to work much better than the
ones where it doesn't.
peteradio wrote 1 day ago:
I've seen this happen. Start pushing off the work of the old job
and doing the new job before the promotion.
aftoprokrustes wrote 1 day ago:
This is, fortunately, not my experience. In all of my jobs, the most
highly regarded people, including by management, were/are those who
have an informed opinion and are confident enough to voice it, and
potentially take responsibilities outside of their job description in
order to steer the business in the direction they are convinced is
the right one. Note that this handful persons I am referring to
_also_ accept criticism and correct their understanding when new
information ia given to them: they are not dogmatic jerks. Actually,
all my managers were this kind of person, with crazy ideas and not
affraid to disagree with anyone.
I also had one colleague who was brilliant and had strong opinions
about the product, which were expensive and demanding, and was
affected by a lay off wave. I think him being original, not "focusing
on the core product", and a strong character had something to do with
it, so of course it happens.
yosefk wrote 1 day ago:
Sounds great! Care to share the places you've seen this at?
ghaff wrote 1 day ago:
>I think him being original, not "focusing on the core product",
and a strong character had something to do with it, so of course it
happens.
You absolutely have people who are very competent but just not
interested in what management (rightly or wrongly) thinks should be
the current priorities. Sometimes things advance to the point where
there's no longer a good fit. Not necessarily anyone's fault but it
may be time to part ways.
rokkamokka wrote 1 day ago:
The other side of the coin is the needlessly defiant people. These
believe themselves to be those that "have an informed opinion and
are confident enough to voice it", but in reality they just
disagree with everything and everyone except themselves. From a
third party's point of view they're easy to discern, however.
Buttons840 wrote 1 day ago:
I'm probably one of these defiant people, so I want to speak in
their defense.
I really just want to be heard. I want to be heard and have a
response from someone who has comprehended my point of view and
fully engaged with it, but that rarely happens.
At my last job I was defiant because the company was storing
plain text passwords and PPI in the test database, and every
developer had access to it (I'm certain there is a reader of this
comment whose password I had access to along with a good amount
of PPI). I said this should be fixed but nobody really engaged
with what I was saying; we had important product enhancements to
work on. So I got defiant and pushed really hard and burned some
of my political capital, made myself appear a trouble maker in
some people's minds, and in the end the PPI was removed from the
test database. This caused the test environment to break and some
tests needed to be fixed. They still store plain text passwords
though, because that assumption was spread throughout the code. I
would have continued pushing to do the work and stop using plain
text passwords, but I was laid off.
If a company prioritizes profit over ethics you will find trouble
makers who are justifiably defiant. Judge for yourself how many
companies do that.
sorokod wrote 21 hours 14 min ago:
The bottom line is that you failed to achieve the goal you set
out to achieve and got laid off.
How is that âspeak in their defense"?
Can you think of an alternative approach that would have
delivered the result over time without you loosing your job?
ttoinou wrote 1 day ago:
Oh those people disagree with themselves very often, that's how
you can recognize them
jerf wrote 1 day ago:
Finding a reason to echo someone's own opinion back at them
after a suitable time where they've forgotten they voiced it is
a very effective test for disagreeableness, I've found. You
don't need to chase them down about the contradiction. Just
note it and take appropriate future actions.
It can even be a bit amusing, if they are insulting about it,
to watch them vigorous call themselves stupid for expressing
their previous opinions.
qup wrote 1 day ago:
I find many of my previous positions to be stupid.
CamperBob2 wrote 1 day ago:
Right, as should we all. The key question is, when you're
confronted with one of those opinions, do you defend it,
deny it, or renounce it?
n1b wrote 1 day ago:
Agreed - and you will find not a single living person will
pass this test over time. Therefore, it's a worthless, but
deeply amusing, test. Human ignorance is so pervasive it even
applies to people like you :)
jerf wrote 23 hours 33 min ago:
I can tu quoque right back at you; can you conceive of a
person who expresses some opinion (and this includes
technical matters, things within the scope of your job,
opinions you are being paid to have, not just random
political things) only and solely because it is their real
opinion? No, if you came at with me with my own opinion two
weeks later, you would not find I have radically shifted
very often, and even less often without realizing I've
shifted, and virtually never insulting whoever held the
opinion I held two weeks ago.
I don't base my opinions on whether or not I get to
contradict someone else. Clearly some people do.
rlpb wrote 1 day ago:
> in order to steer the business in the direction they are
convinced is the right one
It's also necessary to be able to accept that others have other
opinions and that to make progress everybody needs to be pulling in
the same direction. A decision must be made and most of the time
it's not going to be exactly what you're convinced is the perfect
direction. Yet, having said your piece and perhaps having
influenced the direction, it's necessary to then support the final
decision even if you don't precisely agree with it.
A large proportion of people with the qualities you describe are
unable to do this, and therefore tend not to be highly regarded by
management.
Of course if you consistently find yourself at odds with the
eventual direction then you're better off being elsewhere.
Aeolun wrote 1 day ago:
The problem here being that if you are competent youâll find it
a strain to work in an environment that (often) does not listen
to your advice, even if that means everyone is pulling in the
same direction.
Itâs nice for everyone else if theyâre all contentedly
pulling in the wrong direction, not so much for the one that sees
that direction for what it is.
ghaff wrote 1 day ago:
And you may be right and you may be wrong. But you'll probably
be happier if you go elsewhere.
Eisenstein wrote 1 day ago:
In that case how are you sure that you are correct and everyone
else is wrong?
stareatgoats wrote 1 day ago:
> This is, fortunately, not my experience.
I'm happy for you. I have also had such workplaces, healthy and
dynamic organizations. Are they in the majority, or somewhere in
the middle in a normal distribution? Not sure, but my guess is not.
flkiwi wrote 1 day ago:
My experience in very large organizations is that, other than
CEOs who can go either way, the very top levels are extremely
bright, surprisingly well-adjusted people. Tensions arise
because, from the perspective of the senior leaders, VPs and
below are indistinguishable from the most junior employees, while
from the VPsâ perspective they are themselves senior leaders,
leading to all sorts of friction.
Itâs a bizarre environment and I cannot believe how much time
Iâve spent in it.
zmmmmm wrote 1 day ago:
I am a living example of this principle! They should use me as an
example in the textbook.
jongjong wrote 1 day ago:
I think the Peter Principle actually doesn't apply to hyper competent
people because we get the "You're too valuable in your current
position" treatment and therefore aren't given the opportunity to rise
at all.
By some interpretations, it sounds like it means that people who are
incompetent used to be competent before they were promoted into their
current position... But in fact, because the super-competent candidates
are locked into their low positions, it ensures that the pool of
candidates who are selected for promotion consists mostly of moderately
incompetent people... Kind of like "I like this person and they are OK
in their current position but maybe if we promoted them, we'll get that
spark going..." But, surprise surprise, they never attain excellence.
wccrawford wrote 1 day ago:
I don't know that it's about being "hyper competent" so much as it's
about being competent in a niche position that is incredibly hard to
fill. I think after a while you could argue that that person is
indeed "hyper competent", but the situation actually starts before
that point.
lordnacho wrote 1 day ago:
It's astonishing how many people come to me with a Peter Principle
story from their own work. It's also incredible just how many people
from all walks of life experience that they are working with
incompetents.
What I'd throw in there as well is competence noise. The people who are
sitting with someone day-to-day can tell whether they are competent.
But the person who decides who gets promoted is somehow blind to this.
pi-e-sigma wrote 1 day ago:
Actually it's not universally true that people working closely
together know who is competent and who is not. Because you yourself
need to be competent to know if others are doing a good job or not.
If you are surrounded by incompetent morons you as likely might be
labeled as incompetent by them and since they are the majority you
lose the battle. It doesn't even have to be done on purpose by the
morons, they just don't know they are bad at what they are are doing
and create a kind of a circlejerk re-assuring themselves
peteradio wrote 1 day ago:
Yes!
Incompetent manager: "Hey uh can you pop open that firewall for
me?"
Me: "That's against corporate policy. You'd need to follow
procedure xyz."
Incompetent manager: "My good friend, J could open that firewall in
15 mins flat. J opened the firewall for me 4 times last week. He
could show you how if you don't know what you are doing, its no
problem."
Me: Facepalming "Didn't you hear what I just said?"
Of course the above happens in a meeting with a congregation of
people.
greyman wrote 1 day ago:
>But the person who decides who gets promoted is somehow blind to
this.
Sometimes yes, but I also observed that sometimes it was necessary to
do, since no other suitable person showed up.
Also, I would add that what surprises me how slowly many people can
improve.
Waterluvian wrote 1 day ago:
I know the book is satire, but Iâve never actually witnessed this
concept at play. What I have witnessed, many times, are people who
always were incompetent rising because they are good at the social and
political aspects of the workplace.
hackable_sand wrote 8 hours 23 min ago:
It sounds as if they are competent then.
ipaddr wrote 1 day ago:
You've never seen a great developer turn into an awful manager after
a promotion and then stay at that level?
datascienced wrote 1 day ago:
Most of the time no, they self select out of it and âgo back to
coding againâ.
amackera wrote 1 day ago:
People aren't static, nor are companies or roles within them. Treating
every person as unchanging and treating the requirements of each level
in the hierarchy as unchanging are just plain bad assumptions to make.
People grow. Companies change.
This book was meant as satire, and the fact that so many people take it
as fact is honestly quite concerning.
TeaBrain wrote 16 hours 56 min ago:
That particular passage in the Wikipedia article on the eponymous
book being satire is worded extremely poorly. Satire is a common
format for making social commentary. The occurrence in organizations
of Lawrence Peter's findings, now known as the Peter Principle, is
the social commentary being communicated by the book. It is a
phenomenon which had previously been established as occurring prior
to the book in Lawrence Peter's research and was the entire basis for
the eponymous book being written by Raymond Hull.
bowsamic wrote 1 day ago:
> This book was meant as satire, and the fact that so many people
take it as fact is honestly quite concerning.
The article says it was satire but it also says it was based on their
real research. Also satire doesnât necessarily mean something is
meant to be untrue
2devnull wrote 21 hours 2 min ago:
Yep, many âjust-soâ stories have some aspect of truth. I feel
like people citing the Peter principle as a cliche explanation for
many things that are likely to be overdetermined probably
correlates with intelligence, as it takes greater intelligence to
consider more complicated models of career advancement.
kitd wrote 1 day ago:
Indeed, satire is meant to uncover hidden truths subversively.
gpuhacker wrote 1 day ago:
From the wiki page:
"In 2018, professors Alan Benson, Danielle Li, and Kelly Shue
analyzed sales workers' performance and promotion practices at 214
American businesses to test the veracity of the Peter principle. They
found that these companies tended to promote employees to a
management position based on their performance in their previous
position, rather than based on managerial potential. Consistent with
the Peter principle, the researchers found that high performing sales
employees were likelier to be promoted, and that they were likelier
to perform poorly as managers, leading to considerable costs to the
businesses.[15][16][2]"
kbolino wrote 1 day ago:
The Peter Principle might be downstream of the Monotonic Pay Scale,
where it is expected that a person who manages others must be paid
more than any of them. Conversely, no matter how good you are or
how much money you are making the business, you will reach a point
where your pay is effectively capped unless you transition to
management.
The government suffers from this especially, despite an ostensibly
very different incentive structure. The explosion in government
contractors (by which I mean, individuals indirectly employed to do
jobs in lieu of direct hires) seems to be driven in no small part
by this problem.
jensenbox wrote 1 day ago:
URI [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39wzku9KIEM
dang wrote 1 day ago:
Related threads below. The 1974 video is fun: [1] .
Peter Principle - [2] - Dec 2022 (5 comments)
The Peter Principle (1974) [video] - [3] - Aug 2022 (39 comments)
The Peter Principle: Are you at your level of incompetence? (1974)
[video] - [4] - July 2022 (1 comment)
The Peter Principle - [5] - Sept 2020 (1 comment)
The Peter Principle Tested - [6] - May 2019 (47 comments)
The Peter Principle is a joke taken seriously. Is it true? - [7] - Aug
2018 (108 comments)
The Peter Principle Revisited: A Computational Study (2009) - [8] -
June 2018 (50 comments)
The Peter Principle Isn't Just Real, It's Costly - [9] - May 2018 (48
comments)
The Peter Principle Revisited: A Computational Study [pdf] - [10] - Feb
2011 (2 comments)
The Peter Principle Revisited: A Computational Study - [11] - Feb 2010
(1 comment)
URI [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39wzku9KIEM
URI [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33855815
URI [3]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32627396
URI [4]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32243969
URI [5]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24433059
URI [6]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19797375
URI [7]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17845289
URI [8]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17301215
URI [9]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16972249
URI [10]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2270053
URI [11]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1121507
biercarsten wrote 1 day ago:
Theres also a nice short movie in german (english subtitles
included): -
URI [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGhTBqLkrZ4
smilingsun wrote 1 day ago:
It's very interesting with this perspective of internet popularity of
the concept.
I remember the Wikipedia entry from a long time ago as much shorter
than the current version, so went back in time.
In 2018, the article was much shorter: [1] But I really like the
visualization in the 2018 version: [2] .
And as I can learn from other HN comments below, there was indeed
real studies conducted in 2018, so the comical/logical hypothesis has
been further developed and empirical evidence is now also there.
URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Peter_principle&o...
URI [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Peters_principle.svg
spott wrote 1 day ago:
The peters principle makes an assumption about the convexity of
competency that Iâve never thought was great. Essentially someone
could get promoted to their level of incompetence, when if they were
promoted again they would actually get better at their job.
There is an implicit assumption that competence at job a is less than
competence at a job b above job a, which isnât necessarily true.
P_I_Staker wrote 1 day ago:
It's often misunderstood, IMO. It's not purely about hierarchies and
eventually "advancing" until you aren't talented enough to do the job
(because the higher jobs are harder).
Lots of the Scott Adams types misunderstand it this way, because they
have a "40 rules of power" perspective. It works better as like a law
of nature and physics. Perhaps even better as a mathematic or logical
rule (don't know the exact name, axium? law?). Could even be
considered a paradox of sorts.
Think of it like this: Assuming an organization promotes people that
excel at their jobs, but not if they are incompetent. Draw a
flowchart. If someone succeeds what happens? If they fail what
happens? (not clear, but it isn't really mentioned if the incompetent
ones are fired).
Either way it's a guarantee under this system that all will be
promoted to incompetence. You could even compare it to an ideal
system like circuits. Yeah the real world doesn't work exactly like
this, but it kinda can.
So, it's not about the above job being more challenging per se. You
might just not have the right stuff. You could even add being
accepted by the team or boss, because you can't be successful
otherwise (though I dislike this one).
Actually, I tend to think it's the drive to "advance" that's the
problem, and unwillingness to just pay senior people more (though
there's often good reasons there too).
Eisenstein wrote 1 day ago:
Sometimes I wonder if Stalin had the right idea. Purge the
leadership every so often to start with a clean slate. Of course
this only works with bureaucracies and not things that require tons
of experience. You also have to have somewhere for them to move on
to if you don't want to murder them or ship them to Siberia.
ordu wrote 1 day ago:
If you have something else, they will not be trying so hard.
Generally, to make people try hard you need either punishments
for not working or some benefits. Skinner proposed a little more
complex classifications: positive/negative
punishment/reinforcement[1]. Positive when you react by bringing
punishment or reinforcement, negative if you remove them. So four
different kinds of operant conditioning. His findings are not
directly applicable to human subjects, but they are not
completely irrelevant either.
So if you are trying to fix Stalin's system towards more
humanism,... I have two ideas:
1. Negative punishment: make lives of highly ranked bureaucrats
miserable, with the "promotion" as the only way to stop their
misery.
2. Positive reinforcement: make a promotion for them to be a
dream of their lives.
I'd try (1), with (2) conditionally on their performance. This
way you could get an endless stream of applicants to pick from,
and they really-really would do their best to move to the last
part of their life, even if they turned out to be incompetents.
The only problem is how to distinguish short term and long term
successes.
PS. Please don't get it too seriously, I was carried away by the
idea of good Stalin.
URI [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punishment_(psychology)
lucianbr wrote 1 day ago:
Why doesn't anyone consider things like demotion, lateral motion
or promotion contingent on an evaluation of fit for the target
role? Must we jump directly to "never promote anyone" or
"Stalin-type purges"? Are there really so few options?
google234123 wrote 22 hours 40 min ago:
people have too much pride for demotion - risk to the company
too
P_I_Staker wrote 1 day ago:
Was this strategy very successful?
Eisenstein wrote 1 day ago:
Successful in what regard? Stalin ended up dying of natural
causes, Russia and Ukraine transformed from a backwards
agrarian economy to a despotic industrial economy, the Soviet
Army took a good chunk of Europe during WWII, the Soviet Union
became a superpower, and during his rule it could be argued
that the Soviet bureaucracy was incredibly efficient. I don't
actually think we should take Stalin as a role-model for how to
run a government (I was being tongue-in-cheek in my above
comment) but it is amazing what you can accomplish when you
have a total disregard for human rights, all of the levers of
the State, a ruthless secret police, and an enormous amount of
natural resources.
abadpoli wrote 1 day ago:
I donât think there is that implicit assumption. My understanding
of the principle is that a person would never get âpromoted
againâ, because their incompetence at their level prevents it.
Essentially: if youâre good at a job, you get promoted out of it.
If youâre not good at a job, you donât get promoted out of it. So
the end state for everyone is that they remain in jobs they are not
good at.
scaryclam wrote 1 day ago:
Though, I have seen on more than one occasion someone promoted
again and again after reaching their level of incompetance. This
seems to be more driven by the incompetance of the person/people
doing the promoting to cover their tracks though. They can't be
seen as incompetant themselves, so they move the original
incompetant employee up the ladder again, but to the side so
they're less able to cause problems, but still look good.
mare5x wrote 1 day ago:
So people that are good at their jobs should be kept on the brink
of promotion for as long as possible?
lucianbr wrote 1 day ago:
Ideally you should evaluate if a person will be good in the new
position, where they will be promoted. Don't know if that's
always possible, or how easy it is.
Also, maybe if someone is bad at their job, they should be
demoted or otherwise moved. It's another way to break the
convergence to people unfit to their positions.
BeetleB wrote 1 day ago:
Or simply pay them more without a promotion. That's what bonuses
are for.
dagw wrote 1 day ago:
I'm personally of the opinion that promotion and pay rises
should be entirely separate discussions and it should be both
possible and normal to get one without the other. In fact you
should have to work your new position for at least 6 month
after a promotion before you can discuss any pay rise.
eschneider wrote 1 day ago:
That's not a good recipe for retention of quality people.
marcosdumay wrote 1 day ago:
Promotion should not be into a different job.
dagw wrote 1 day ago:
If you're doing the same job after your promotion it's not
really a promotion, it's just a pay rise with extra steps.
lifeisstillgood wrote 1 day ago:
Thatâs brilliant â¦
Or a brilliant restatement if the original peter principle (to
gives props eleswwhere :-)
So we just stop promotions ⦠I think ???
the_cramer wrote 1 day ago:
Where i work the only way to get a noticeable jump in salary is
promotion. I call this "horizontal scaling" of salaries.
I believe the "vertical scaling" of salaries would be a better
fit. Some already have it in tariffs, most of the time there are
tough limits to what you can earn as "simple developer/project
manager/sales clerk".
So yes, probably promotions are not the right action often, but
the other options need to be improved.
edit: i lacked the explanation of vertical scaling:
rising salary in the job you are currently doing and building
expertise and experience. Opposed to being horizontally moved to
a whole different job where your expertise is probably worse.
OhMeadhbh wrote 1 day ago:
George Marshall who was, among other things, Chief of Staff of the Army
during WWII was lauded for his policy of yanking commanding generals if
they didn't adapt to new positions quickly. But he lessened the stigma
of being relieved by transferring them to other commands, still at flag
rank. Several commanders early in '42 were removed from commanding
infantry divisions, but were given commands of units in combat support
or material support or training where they went on to deliver stellar
service. So it was like finding the right guy (and it definitely was a
guy back in those days) for the right job.
This is in contrast to continental armies with aristocratic baggage who
found it difficult to fire flag grade commanders (looking at you,
monty.)
But the political risk to his own career was enormous and the only way
he got away with it was with the full support of FDR and his reputation
earned partially as Pershing's Chief of Staff in WWI.
He is also the only person in the US Army to be considered for the rank
of Field Marshall, mostly because FDR thought it would be funny to have
Field Marshal Marshall.
Which is to say... you might be able to cheat the Peter Principal, but
the amount of effort seems great and you would have to work very hard
to sooth the egos of those demoted or reframe the demotion as a lateral
xfer.
dragonwriter wrote 1 day ago:
> He is also the only person in the US Army to be considered for the
rank of Field Marshall, mostly because FDR thought it would be funny
to have Field Marshal Marshall.
Considering that when the 5-star rank (General of the Army) to which
he was promoted had three other people promoted to it at the same
time, if he was considered for promotion to Field Marshal but they
ended up choosing a different name for the rank, he probably wasn't
the only one.
sofrimiento wrote 1 day ago:
This is a interesting talk held on UC Berkeley about the culture of
firing officers during WWII: [1] Thomas E. Ricks main hypothesis is
that the US failures in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq can be
attributed to the culture of firing under-performing disappearing.
It mirrors what I've seen in a lot of organizations as well,
under-performing executives keeping their jobs when they shouldn't.
URI [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxZWxxZ2JGE
marcosdumay wrote 1 day ago:
> but the amount of effort seems great
You "just" have to consider moves through the managing pyramid and
promotions to be independent concepts.
I mean, this is basic stuff that you can read on any management book.
(Y careers, and the like.) And if you try it on the real world, every
single person will think you are crazy and fight you (except for the
competent ICs inside the organization).
nabla9 wrote 1 day ago:
Wehrmacht gave great support from the sides.
At the beginning of the war, American flag officers were humiliated
by their much more experienced and skillful Wehrmacht counterparts.
Lt. Gen Lloyd Fredendall and other fools just had to go or the war
would end before it started. It was a natural evolution.
The only subpar American general who thrived in WWII was Gen.
Douglas MacArthur. He came out of every mess he created with a hero's
reputation. He could fix everything with a bombastic speech and
infinite self-confidence.
mcmoor wrote 11 hours 54 min ago:
I don't know if it's actually a quote someome that era said but it
goes like "Best American general in WW2 is General Logistics"
QuercusMax wrote 22 hours 0 min ago:
So MacArthur had a "reality-distortion field" like Steve Jobs?
Interesting.
keybored wrote 1 day ago:
> So it was like finding the right guy (and it definitely was a guy
back in those days) for the right job.
I almost spit out my coffee while reading HN. âHoly shitâ I think
to myself, âthe second world war was a boys club!â My mind reels
as a I pace the room and look at my Condoleezza Rice and RBG posters.
âHow many potential career women did WWII hold back? And in turn
their daughters and granddaughters from the lack of example and
inspiration that those women could set?â I now know that I have a
new research project on my hands. The electric typewriter beckons.
ranger207 wrote 1 day ago:
It's interesting reading about WWII generals because they're so
well-studied it's relatively easy to notice patterns about them. One
is that there were a few different types based on what they were good
at. Patton was a good tactician and (mostly) beloved by his men;
Eisenhower was a logistician with little experience actually
commanding but he got along with everyone; Nimitz was good at
delegating (aka finding the right man for the job); etc. A lot of
leadership stuff is universal, but then a lot of it is also dependent
on what's needed for the job, and a person's skills and leadership
patterns may not be exactly what's needed for the job. The Peter
Principle is that if you do a good job you get promoted, as you get
promoted it gets harder, eventually you reach a point where your
skills aren't enough to overcome the next level of difficulty
increase. Most people would probably be able to go a lot further if
they were fit into the right positions to use their particular
leadership pattern
throwaway458864 wrote 1 day ago:
> A lot of leadership stuff is universal, but then a lot of it is
also dependent on what's needed for the job, and a person's skills
and leadership patterns may not be exactly what's needed for the
job.
Leadership is what's needed for leadership jobs. It's in the title.
All leadership is the same: inspire the troops, block the bullshit,
elevate the good shit. How you do that changes by rank.
> The Peter Principle is that if you do a good job you get
promoted, as you get promoted it gets harder, eventually you reach
a point where your skills aren't enough to overcome the next level
of difficulty increase.
The Peter Principle isn't about difficulty, it's about skill set.
As you climb the ranks you need a different skill set. The job
isn't harder, the job is different.
maxrecursion wrote 1 day ago:
> Leadership is what's needed for leadership jobs. It's in the
title. All leadership is the same: inspire the troops, block the
bullshit, elevate the good shit. How you do that changes by rank.
A big part of leadership, which might be covered under your
'block the bullshit' point, is fighting the higher level
managerial battles, and only relying on your lower level staff
for their specialized support.
If there is one thing I hate about some managers is throwing
their employees to fight political battles with other managers,
or high level Executives, while the manager hides in the bushes.
The manager's job is to fight those battles, and yet I've seen
them hide from them a lot, while using their workers as shields.
roughly wrote 1 day ago:
> If there is one thing I hate about some managers is throwing
their employees to fight political battles with other managers,
or high level Executives, while the manager hides in the
bushes.
The ânever bring a knife to a gunfightâ rule of management.
OhMeadhbh wrote 1 day ago:
> The Peter Principle isn't about difficulty, it's about skill
set. As you climb the ranks you need a different skill set. The
job isn't harder, the job is different.
This is a great observation and think it isn't very well
described when talking about the Peter Principal. My Dad retired
as a Colonel and required a LOT of political skills. He said he
wasn't really interested in the politics of being a flag grade
officer and thought he was too old to learn them. Me, on the
other hand, never progressed past small unit command. And never
even got to the point where politics were a major part of my job.
In my unit we were all just trying to not get killed and find
opportunities to use the logistics training we received.
tivert wrote 1 day ago:
> He is also the only person in the US Army to be considered for the
rank of Field Marshall, mostly because FDR thought it would be funny
to have Field Marshal Marshall.
According to Wikipedia, he got an equivalent rank that was named
"General of the Army" It was not called "Field Marshal" because
having a "Marshal Marshall" was considered undignified ( [1] :)
URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field_marshal#United_States
bdw5204 wrote 1 day ago:
I imagine that's where Joseph Heller got the idea for a character
named Major Major Major Major:
URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_Major_Major_Major
OhMeadhbh wrote 1 day ago:
_considered_ for the rank of field marshal. i did not imply he was
promoted to field marshal. and even then, it was very likely just
a joke.
fsckboy wrote 1 day ago:
well then you should have implied it because he was promoted to a
rank equivalent to field marshall, 5 star general. (neither rank
existed at the time, and when the rank was created, "field
marshall" was eschewed as a name for it)
OhMeadhbh wrote 1 day ago:
it would have been inaccurate to say George Marshall was
promoted to Field Marshal, because he wasn't. He was promoted
to General of the Army. It's sort of like saying someone who
was promoted to Gunner in the Marines is a Chief Warrant
Officer. The two are equivalent in rank, but very different
roles in their organizations. And if you referred to a Navy
Captain as a Colonel, people would look at you funny, even
though the two are considered equivalent rank.
fsckboy wrote 21 hours 43 min ago:
It's quite normal and ordinary to say and execute as if, for
example, a "Group Captain" in a Commonwealth air force is the
equivalent to a "Colonel" in the US Air Force. [1] The US
doesn't have a Field Marshall rank; European forces do. The
promotion of Gen Marshall to five star general was intended
to make rational the lines and ranks of command, including
between coordinated forces of allied nations.
it's not the name of the title that matters, it's the rank in
the hierarchy.
URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_comparative_mi...
OhMeadhbh wrote 16 hours 25 min ago:
The US doesn't have a Field Marshal grade, but before 1947,
it could have been created by the president. I believe it
requires an act of congress now. But there's little will
to do it because of its association with aristocratic
traditions in Europe. Which is why when FDR suggested it,
it was interpreted as a joke.
BobbyTables2 wrote 1 day ago:
This is all fine for lower levels.
For executives, there are only a few paths:
- take over your bossâs job when they retire/get fired. (One can
slowly go from individual contributor to vice president this way!)
- fit non-competence based corporate goals and have the polish to
visibly demonstrate such (industry track record not required!). More
about fluff than stuffâ¦
- have strong corporate political alliances with higher leaders
None of this has anything to do with vision, ability, or merit.
mellosouls wrote 1 day ago:
This is all fine for lower levels
More likely the other way round; if there are more options at lower
levels - as you imply - then there are more ways for the principle to
be countered or defeated.
None of this has anything to do with vision, ability, or merit.
Unfortunately, if you take the principle seriously, that's pretty
much exactly what it has to do with.
ranger207 wrote 1 day ago:
If promotions are based on metrics (and they always are, even if the
metric is "how much do I like this guy"), then you can either try to
increase your score in that metric as much as possible, or you can
game the metric as much as possible to make it look like your score
in the metric is high. Most of the people at the executive level have
been doing the latter so long that the former just isn't really
considered at that level
jacknews wrote 1 day ago:
The assumption here is that being good at a job is what 'earns' a
promotion.
In fact, it can be the opposite; why risk promoting someone to a new
role, when they are doing great at the current one?
What actually marks someone for promotion is clear potential for the
target role, sometimes despite a not-so-good current performance,
indeed sometimes because of it.
CobrastanJorji wrote 1 day ago:
That's the "Dilbert Principal:" Promote incompetent employees to
management to minimize their ability to harm productivity.
everly wrote 1 day ago:
A good scene in 30 Rock is when Tracy is told about the Peter Principle
and responds "but my incompetence knows no bounds!"
wrp wrote 1 day ago:
Since first hearing about the Peter principle, I've wondered whether it
would work to just make all promotions probationary.
P_I_Staker wrote 1 day ago:
This doesn't seem to work so great in practice. Same story for
demotions and pay reductions. Not that they can't happen. It's just
not the norm for understandable reasons.
helpfulmandrill wrote 1 day ago:
Even better, have time-limited temporary promotions, which
automatically revert after 6 months or a year. Permanent promotions
are generally only available to those who have done a temporary
promotion in the past.
That gives the organisation a way to tell if you are ready for
permanent promotion, but removes the humiliating experience of "not
passing your probation".
Willish42 wrote 1 day ago:
Some big tech organizations basically do this without the pay.
Essentially in some FAANG corps, you have to prove having worked at
L+1 while still at L to get promoted to L+1.
In my biased / personal experience, the veracity of such a bar kinda
deteriorates over time and the short average tenure makes most promo
processes corrupt B.S. when folks are more incentivized to just quit
and join somewhere else for more money.
Also, this process and your suggestion at a "probation" tends to
motivate working harder for the window being measured, regardless of
how actually adept or well equipped the person is at the level for
which they're trying to illustrate competence.
makeitdouble wrote 1 day ago:
> You have to prove having worked at L+1 while still at L to get
promoted to L+1.
Yes, and this line of thinking has spread to many orgs. And as you
point out people tend to just move elsewhere instead.
The length of the observation window is one thing, and more
fundamentally employees are asked to work above their pay grade in
hope for it to be noticed/recognized, which is never a fun thing to
do.
Then comes the responsibility problem: If a dev want to become a
manager, there's no way to let them deal with HR, write performance
reviews and do 1 on 1s including private information as a trial.
They need the actual role inked in their contract, have people
treat them as a manager. They can't be doing it as a role playing
exercice. A probation period could work, but I think it would be
pretty awkward to have them step down after 3 months.
ghaff wrote 1 day ago:
The problem is the step function differences. Someone may be an
exceptional individual contributor but a lousy manager even at a
relatively low level. A manager of a small team may not be great at
handling a big team that may need to be realigned.
Some of it's about a company having reasonable tracks for people
depending upon their preferences. But people may also have
preferences they're just not suited for.
influx wrote 1 day ago:
Most places I've worked require you to be operating at the level
you're going to be promoted to before you get actually promoted.
helpfulmandrill wrote 1 day ago:
But you can't e.g. prove your ability to manage without being given
a team to manage...
mattgreenrocks wrote 1 day ago:
Thereâs a Freakonomics podcast about this topic thatâs worth a
listen.
It helped me work through what it felt like to be in this position.
Iâd class myself as a reluctant staff eng at this point who has no
wish to progress further at this time.
Most interesting part of the podcast is how it talks about how
companies know this happens but let it happen anyways because itâs
the least of all evils on their eyes.
One suggestion to beat it is wild: random promotions. As Iâve gotten
older and seen how titles/pay are tied closely to experience and age
Iâve started to see that maybe it isnât the worst idea. It does,
however, absolutely murder the method of meritocracy.
datascienced wrote 1 day ago:
I would hate random promotions. They might then actually promote me.
Increasing salary is a different matter; please do that!
random99292 wrote 1 day ago:
I just listened to the episode and I am not sure I buy their premise
why bad managers exists. There are many reason why someone get
promoted into a managerial position, but saying it's because they
were good at their current job seems simplistic and a broad
generalization.
I am also skeptical of their claim about sales numbers and how
effective their managerial skills are. Correlation is not causation,
and averages is a horrible way to judge if a person will be a good
manager.
mattgreenrocks wrote 1 day ago:
> I am also skeptical of their claim about sales numbers and how
effective their managerial skills are.
That's exactly the issue: there's no causal link. They could be
good at both; indeed, this is what the org is banking on. But it's
just as likely you're good at sales and not as good at management.
random99292 wrote 23 hours 56 min ago:
I probably misunderstood it, but what I heard it as you can be a
good manager even if you don't have knowledge on what you are
managing.
Willish42 wrote 1 day ago:
[1] link for the lazy
URI [1]: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/why-are-there-so-many-bad-b...
habitue wrote 1 day ago:
Biggest constraint on this principle is that you can get promoted to a
level where getting promoted again requires someone else quitting. That
doesn't really imply anything about your competence.
Usually if you're blocked from advancing though, you'll move on to
another company that needs someone in the higher role
kovezd wrote 1 day ago:
> getting promoted again requires someone else quitting.
I can imagine this being true for 80% of high-mamager positions. But
there's also a good portion of leadership positions that get created
with new lines of business.
That is blue ocean thinking. Generally, it will give you more
ownership about the outcome of your career.
Jimmc414 wrote 1 day ago:
The peter principle assumes that competence in one role automatically
translates to less competence in a higher role. If you follow this
logic and reverse it, then it would be safe to assume that Steve Jobs
would have been one of the best data entry clerks ever employed by
Apple.
rocqua wrote 1 day ago:
The principle just requires that competence at job A doesn't
guarantee competence at the job you are promoted to after A.
You would get the same results if competence at a job were random.
Notably it also suggests people could be great at high level jobs but
never reach them because they aren't good at the low level ones.
jmholla wrote 1 day ago:
> The peter principle assumes that competence in one role
automatically translates to less competence in a higher role.
No it doesn't. It just says that if you're good at your job, you'll
get promoted. If you're not, you'll stay where you are. So you either
are good at your job and can be promoted or you're bad at your job.
You can be good at your current job and other forces outside of
competence are preventing that advancement.
And so, there is no logic to reverse and make that assumption. Also,
for your reversal, Steve Jobs would've needs to start as a data entry
clerk. Reversing this doesn't mean any job below you is where you
came from.
Jimmc414 wrote 1 day ago:
> No it doesn't. It just says that if you're good at your job,
you'll get promoted.
Respectfully, that's exactly what it says. Why else would someone
get promoted "until they reach a level at which they are no longer
competent" if one's competence increases with a promotion? e.g.
Some people are intuitively better at managing people than they are
at programming.
jmholla wrote 1 day ago:
It does not. To quote Wikipedia [0]:
> employees are promoted based on their success in previous jobs
until they reach a level at which they are no longer competent,
as skills in one job do not necessarily translate to another.
That does not translate to or imply that:
> The peter principle assumes that competence in one role
automatically translates to less competence in a higher role.
It is saying you will keep getting promoted until you are
incompetent. You can be more competent at a higher role without
violating the Peter Principle. That would be another point at
which you would be promoted working your way towards
incompetence. The Peter Principle just says you were competent at
each step in the ladder until you got to the point you weren't
promoted anymore because you are incompetent at it.
You're then take another logical leap in saying that promotion to
the next level means you are competent at every job on every
career path that could get you to that level. The Peter Principle
only talks about your own career path.
[0]:
URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle
Jimmc414 wrote 1 day ago:
I quoted directly from the source you provided.
jmholla wrote 1 day ago:
I do not see your verbiage on that page. Can you point me to
it?
Edit: You seem to be referring to this quote of yours:
> Why else would someone get promoted "until they reach a
level at which they are no longer competent" if one's
competence increases with a promotion?
My response explained why your leaps in logic don't make
sense. That line just means there's a point at which their
skills won't apply. Not that every rung above results in
reduced competence. You can be better and better and then
worse and the Peter Principle would still be applicable.
The Peter Principle is just about the changing competencies
as one rises and how one hits a wall.
Jimmc414 wrote 1 day ago:
You make valid points, and your interpretation is likely a
more accurate interpretation of the Peter Principle.
OhMeadhbh wrote 1 day ago:
I was going to comment on this thread but realized I had
reached my level of incompetence at explaining things to
other people on the internet.
fourthark wrote 1 day ago:
You'll never get promoted with that attitude.
OhMeadhbh wrote 1 day ago:
I will have to be satisfied with being a foot-soldier in
the online user generated content wars. Alas.
TheCoelacanth wrote 1 day ago:
And those people who are good at management will get promoted to
directors. The ones who aren't remain incompetent managers.
Jimmc414 wrote 1 day ago:
And some will be better at being a director than they were as a
manager.
TheCoelacanth wrote 1 day ago:
And those ones will become senior directors, and so on. The
principle isn't that no one will ever be good at their job;
it's that they won't stay in that job long-term if they are
good.
scaredginger wrote 1 day ago:
And some won't, so they'll remain directors
Scarblac wrote 1 day ago:
But those aren't the ones who earn a promotion from manager.
The people who are good at being manager earn those.
seb1204 wrote 1 day ago:
I always understood that a person being competent in role A is being
promoted because of being good paired with maybe personal or/and
corporate development goals. Once in the new role, with likely higher
pay, it is very unlikely to go back. Instead of going back the person
will try to stay afloat in the new role. Some will rise to the
challenge others not.
nextworddev wrote 1 day ago:
Hmm dunno, I have seen 1) people rising >2 levels above their level of
incompetence, as well as 2) people staying <2 levels below their worth.
Whatâs definitely true is that actual level / title donât match
perfectly with âcompetenceâ which itself is a nebulous concept in
many companies.
sorokod wrote 1 day ago:
I believe that example 1) is addressed in the article as "percussive
sublimation".
082349872349872 wrote 1 day ago:
An argument for discrimination is that one then gets highly talented
people from the discriminated-against class who stick upon their
glass ceilings; I first heard this hypothesis as the British empire
having been headed by English but run by Irish, Native, Scots, and
Welsh administrators.
(alternative to avoid relying on discrimination: apply "up or out"?)
rocqua wrote 1 day ago:
What about up or down?
If someone has reached their level of incompetence, bump them back
to the previous level with their current pay. Apparently they were
excellent at that previous level, and don't have room to grow right
now. So put them to use at that previous level.
082349872349872 wrote 1 day ago:
that's also found in the military, as a "brevet rank"
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