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Peter principle

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Re: Peter principle

#101

Post by ttoinou »

rokkamokka wrote: post #81
aftoprokrustes wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

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.

Oh those people disagree with themselves very often, that's how you can recognize them

Re: Peter principle

#102

Post by peteradio »

pi-e-sigma wrote: post #86
lordnacho wrote: post #51

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…

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 do…

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.

Re: Peter principle

#103

Post by g4zj »

md_ wrote: post #100
peteradio wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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!

> 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.

Re: Peter principle

#104

Post by P_I_Staker »

TrackerFF wrote: post #72

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.…

Sales? You just described engineering management, as well as many fields, probably.

Re: Peter principle

#105

Post by P_I_Staker »

wrp wrote: post #16

Since first hearing about the Peter principle, I've wondered whether it would work to just make all promotions probationary.

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.

Re: Peter principle

#106

Post by OhMeadhbh »

throwaway458864 wrote: post #50
ranger207 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 r…

> 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…

> 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.

Re: Peter principle

#107

Post by mare5x »

abadpoli wrote: post #45
spott wrote: post #28

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.

So people that are good at their jobs should be kept on the brink of promotion for as long as possible?

Re: Peter principle

#108

Post by OhMeadhbh »

fourthark wrote: post #46
OhMeadhbh wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You'll never get promoted with that attitude.

I will have to be satisfied with being a foot-soldier in the online user generated content wars. Alas.

Re: Peter principle

#109

Post by Eisenstein »

P_I_Staker wrote: post #93
spott wrote: post #28

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.

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,…

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.

Re: Peter principle

#110

Post by haolez »

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 :)
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