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Peter principle

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Re: Peter principle

#111

Post by nextworddev »

md_ wrote: post #88
stareatgoats wrote: post #58

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 level…

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…

Dunning-Kruger seems like an overused framework to explain just pure "lack of self-awareness due to immaturity / ego / lack of intelligence, etc."

Re: Peter principle

#112

Post by flkiwi »

stareatgoats wrote: post #74
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…

> 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.

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 VPs’ perspective they are themselves senior leaders, leading to all sorts of friction.

It’s a bizarre environment and I cannot believe how much time I’ve spent in it.

Re: Peter principle

#113

Post by flkiwi »

g4zj wrote: post #103
md_ wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 avoidabl…

This isn’t meant to respond directly to your statement because I’ve seen the same thing. BUT one fascinating thing I’ve learned is how scale plays into things. That $50 million project may be a Senior Director’s most important, career-making project … but less than a rounding error to their EVP.

Re: Peter principle

#114

Post by bedobi »

stareatgoats wrote: post #58

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 level…

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.

Re: Peter principle

#115

Post by mattgreenrocks »

hackton wrote: post #87
stareatgoats wrote: post #58

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 level…

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.…

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.

Re: Peter principle

#116

Post by mattgreenrocks »

random99292 wrote: post #56
mattgreenrocks wrote: post #9

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 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 i…

> 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.

Re: Peter principle

#117

Post by mattgreenrocks »

Worth noting: Charity Majors' blog on management and tech: https://charity.wtf/

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.

Re: Peter principle

#118

Post by marcosdumay »

pi-e-sigma wrote: post #78
hcks wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1/ it’s 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

Hence it's not rational for an employee who wants to get a promotion to be competent at their work.

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.

Re: Peter principle

#119

Post by noodle »

mattgreenrocks wrote: post #117

Worth noting: Charity Majors' blog on management and tech: https://charity.wtf/ 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 the…

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.

Re: Peter principle

#120

Post by marcosdumay »

OhMeadhbh wrote: post #25

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 sup…

> 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).

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