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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.
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 thi…
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.
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.
The peters principle makes an assumption about the convexity of competency that I’ve 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 isn’t necessarily true.
I don’t think there is that implicit assumption. My understanding of the principle is that a person would never get “promoted again”, because their incompetence at their level prevents it. Essentially: if you’re good at a job, you get promoted out of it. If you’re not good at a job, you don’t get promoted out of it. So the end state for everyone is that they remain in jobs they are not good at.
Or a brilliant restatement if the original peter principle (to gives props eleswwhere :-)
So we just stop promotions … I think ???
There’s a Freakonomics podcast about this topic that’s worth a listen. It helped me work through what it felt like to be in this position. I’d 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 it’s the least of all evils on their eyes. One sug…
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.
Related threads below. The 1974 video is fun: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39wzku9KIEM . Peter Principle - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33855815 - Dec 2022 (5 comments) The Peter Principle (1974) [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32627396 - Aug 2022 (39 comments) The Peter Principle: Are you at your level of incompetence? (1974) [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32243969 - July 20…
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: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Peter_principle&o...
But I really like the visualization in the 2018 version: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Peters_principle.svg.
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.
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.
Related threads below. The 1974 video is fun: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39wzku9KIEM . Peter Principle - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33855815 - Dec 2022 (5 comments) The Peter Principle (1974) [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32627396 - Aug 2022 (39 comments) The Peter Principle: Are you at your level of incompetence? (1974) [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32243969 - July 20…
There’s a Freakonomics podcast about this topic that’s worth a listen. It helped me work through what it felt like to be in this position. I’d 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 it’s the least of all evils on their eyes. One sug…
