As a skeptic, the title begs the question: do incompetent managers actually get promoted? How do we know this?
Why do incompetent managers get promoted?
61–70 of 144 posts
Re: Why do incompetent managers get promoted?
#62I saw many people getting promoted for being loyal and on very good terms with the leaders.
Re: Why do incompetent managers get promoted?
#63Read The Gervais Principle . https://www.ribbonfarm.com/the-gervais-principle/
Read it the last time it was mentioned here. It makes me sad and a little paranoid
Re: Why do incompetent managers get promoted?
#64This article definitely resonates with my experience of 20 years in the engineering and research and development.
Bad organizations tend to promote based upon faulty metrics and, commonly, people are promoted to their natural level of incompetence or are promoted a single level when the best organizational fit may be a 2-3 or three level promotion. e.g. from principal engineer to director of new product development.
Good organizations work hard to figure out peoples strengths and what they enjoy, and then play people in their natural positions (as best as possible).
Someone else wrote in this post that they got promoted from an engineering position to managing a small team and they hate it and don't feel like they are doing a great job. I can relate... a good engineer might not make a good team manager. You need a lot of strengths to team/people manager that a lot of engineers don't even want to have: attention to other people's details, high emotional IQ, enjoy Gantt charts, well organized, to name a few.
... but that same engineer discussed above might make a great director or CTO (or consultant to the CTO, etc.) where they are applying their technical knowledge to investigate technology, plan strategically, and chose technical directions that have immense impact on on the company's future.
I have heard many a "CTO/chief scientist type" describe how much they hate detailed project planning and paying attention to all the little details people are supposed to be working on. But I know good managers who love that stuff.
Re: Why do incompetent managers get promoted?
#65I 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…
> delivering new revenue AKA growing the company. This seems like an accomplishment that is very worthy of reward/promotion based on the requirements of ownership (shareholders) and senior management.
Delivering new revenue today is extremely easy and too often overrated.
Delivering new revenue today, without negatively affecting future revenue, is what drives a business to be successfull.
Re: Why do incompetent managers get promoted?
#66I 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 described what happens at dysfunctional organizations... and most organizations are some degree of dysfunctional.
You are almost agreeing with the article, from the way I read the article and your edit.
Re: Why do incompetent managers get promoted?
#67I wonder how many people who reference "The Peter Principle" have actually read it? It's short-- maybe 100 pages long-- and IMO not particularly good. It's essentially just a pile of brief vignettes about incompetent people being promoted, many of which feel like they were largely made up for the book. "There once was a guy named bob. He was bad at his job and got promoted. So there." ---- it is not quite that bad bu…
I've read the book. It's a funny and insightful idea that could be expressed in one page. The author cleverly turned it into a book and made some money.
You don't have to read the book, but like so many "laws", there's a kernel of truth that's worth knowing.
Re: Why do incompetent managers get promoted?
#68This is why McKinsey, others have “Up or out” policy. In theory, it can prevent all this bs. In practice, hopefully it prevents a lot of it
Re: Why do incompetent managers get promoted?
#69I 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…
Getting chosen to work on high visibility features and creating new products seems contrary to what most people qualify as “incompetent”.
Now all you are describing feels more like a Product Owner’s job than a manager.
But even putting that aside, employees also want a manager that makes their group look good, takes high visibility jobs and is good at politics. Having a successful manager greatly helps to get promoted, even if that manager tries to take all the credit. Also nowadays peer reviewing is pretty standard, it’s a lot more credible to present oneself as a good manager of a good team.
Re: Why do incompetent managers get promoted?
#70I 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…
This raises a question in my mind -- do any of these traits actually make the company more successful? Or more generally, are traits that are undesirable to subordinates, yet desirable to higher management, actually good for the company, and are traits that the subordinates value actually detrimental to the company? The reason I ask is that it would seem that natural selection would take over, and if a management sty…
I would define "incompetent managers" in exactly that way. They lack the knowledge and skills which their role requires and which are needed to make the decisions which are best for the company. Or course that can lead to companies going bankrupt and otherwise performing worse than they would have.