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Why do incompetent managers get promoted?

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Re: Why do incompetent managers get promoted?

#11

Post by francisofascii »

> In practice people gravitate to, hire and promote individuals they like to be around, not people who demand accountability....especially when the ship is smooth sailing.

> However, when a company needs to grow or is in a crisis, CEOs or the Board would often hire highly competent and pushy executives, to crack the whip and fix the boat. Accountability and performance become important attributes.

This is super interesting. But I can't seem to grasp actually choosing to promote the more likable person over the more competent, unless the competent person was downright unlikable.

Re: Why do incompetent managers get promoted?

#12

Post by snegu »

eppp wrote: post #6

How many times do people who are good at their jobs get promoted just because there isnt anywhere else to go? You cant make any more money at the level you are without switching companies so you get stuck going into management. I got promoted to being a manager of a small group just because there wasn't anyone else to do it and I am completely incompetent as a manager of people. I don't enjoy it and didn't ask for it…

I'm in the exact same boat as you. I'm currently interviewing for individual contributor roles and trying to accept the fact that I'm going to have to take a pay cut. I think it will be worth it, though, to feel like I'm doing something worthwhile again.

Re: Why do incompetent managers get promoted?

#13

Post by Tainnor »

It really depends a lot on the company, both its size and culture, but at least in some companies I think incompetents get promoted because ultimately many execs have an inflated sense of ego and like to promote yes-men instead of people with a more critical mind.

Re: Why do incompetent managers get promoted?

#15

Post by ansq »

My incompetent manager got promoted because higher level people on the team left.

It's a viable career strategy. It's hard to hire, so if you stick around you'll have more responsibility fall into your lap.

The other thing I notice is that he's great at kissing butt.

As an aside, my advice to people stuck under a crappy manager is to get out ASAP. You can even switch teams and be under the same skip manager.

Re: Why do incompetent managers get promoted?

#16

Post by Onanymous »

mdorazio wrote: post #10

I don’t agree with anything in this article. Incompetent managers get promoted because the things they are competent at are not the things their employees want them to be competent at. There is a dichotomy between traits that get people promoted at large companies and traits that make a good manager from the perspective of subordinates. Those traits only sometimes overlap. Thus the whole argument is predicated on a f…

>here is a dichotomy between traits that get people promoted at large companies and traits that make a good manager

This is exactly what the article says

Re: Why do incompetent managers get promoted?

#17

Post by zepto »

mdorazio wrote: post #10

I don’t agree with anything in this article. Incompetent managers get promoted because the things they are competent at are not the things their employees want them to be competent at. There is a dichotomy between traits that get people promoted at large companies and traits that make a good manager from the perspective of subordinates. Those traits only sometimes overlap. Thus the whole argument is predicated on a f…

Your definition is meaningless - you define competent as ‘whatever gets you promoted’.

Re: Why do incompetent managers get promoted?

#18

Post by JamesBarney »

> ...I’m not sure if every post will end up being occupied by an incompetent manager, but I do think that when a lot of managers realized they’ve hit their peak or comfort level, they then start to focus on playing politics instead of delivering results to hold on to their position.

I have an alternative theory.

When you're a single contributor you have total control over your productivity and success, but very little impact on your the company's success. Then when you're promoted your control decreases, but impact rises. As you move up the ladder you are constantly trading control for impact.

Eventually you end up as CEO and these numbers converge with a large impact relative to a single contributor but little control over the success of a company. Little enough control that its sometimes hard to distinguish from noise. But your affect on perceived success drops off at a slower rate than actual success. This means to get promoted at higher levels it is more impactful to focus on perceived success over absolute success, and people who are better at this will have more luck getting promoted at high levels. Basically it's a lot easier to convince the board of AT&T that you're doing a 3% better job than to actually get the company to perform 3% better.

This would explain why most non-founder CEO's are so polished.

Re: Why do incompetent managers get promoted?

#19

Post by TuringNYC »

eppp wrote: post #6

How many times do people who are good at their jobs get promoted just because there isnt anywhere else to go? You cant make any more money at the level you are without switching companies so you get stuck going into management. I got promoted to being a manager of a small group just because there wasn't anyone else to do it and I am completely incompetent as a manager of people. I don't enjoy it and didn't ask for it…

It is even worse. For companies without SME tracks, SMEs find themselves getting almost no raises or comp despite contributing to more and more revenue and/or important/complex work. Then you see stupid things happen, like they find need for and hire 2 or 3 people just so they can justify a 5% raise. Then they find need for and hire more people to justify another 10% raise.

Suddenly you have a company with many FTEs doing almost no meaningful work, existing just to justify tiny increases in the manager's comp. This is really an HR issue -- ultimately they set a set of rules and people play by those rules.

Forward thinking companies I've seen have SME IC tracks where you can grow comp by contributing to more and more influential projects w/o forcing a management track.

Re: Why do incompetent managers get promoted?

#20

Post by petermcneeley »

mdorazio wrote: post #10

I don’t agree with anything in this article. Incompetent managers get promoted because the things they are competent at are not the things their employees want them to be competent at. There is a dichotomy between traits that get people promoted at large companies and traits that make a good manager from the perspective of subordinates. Those traits only sometimes overlap. Thus the whole argument is predicated on a f…

You have managed to say a complete truism by simply redefining the word.

Edit:

"politics, self-promotion, networking, choosing the right (high-visibility) things to work on, taking credit, delivering new revenue and/or new marketable shiny products/services, having the right senior leadership mentors/wing-people." Are these your definitions of competence?

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