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The Peter Principle Isn't Just Real, It's Costly

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Re: The Peter Principle Isn't Just Real, It's Costly

#11

Post by erikbern »

This is probably just a variant of Berkson's paradox, similar to Google's observation that success in programming competitions is negatively correlated with job performance: http://www.catonmat.net/blog/programming-competitions-work-p...

The mechanism would work this way: sales people exhibit multiple features, and they are promoted based on some combination of those. If a sales person has outstanding other credentials, they might be promoted despite poor sales percentile. Those other credentials might actually be better predictors of managerial experience. Conversely, many of the top sales people might have been promoted on the grounds that they were good sales people, without exhibiting any other skills.

Note that there might still be a positive correlations between sales skills and managerial skills, but due to how the promotions are selected, you end up observing a negative correlation in the promoted group.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkson%27s_paradox

Re: The Peter Principle Isn't Just Real, It's Costly

#12

Post by kokey »

I think in some countries, cultures and industries there's some kind of legacy class system where only people of the managerial class can share in the spoils of the company, so the only way to reward a competent and skilled employee with an income above a certain level is to make them a manager, while it's also assumed that's what the employee is also striving for. I see this in various engineering industries in developing countries, where in the same country no one thinks that a specialist surgeon can only be rewarded by being given the job of hospital manager.

Re: The Peter Principle Isn't Just Real, It's Costly

#16

Post by seren »

rhapsodic wrote: post #13

>Taking "is good at IC duties" as the measure for "should lead a team of ICs" is sloppy. What's an "IC"?

Individual Contributor, i.e. most of the value you are creating for the company depends on your individual work, by opposition to a manager, which rely on a team.

Re: The Peter Principle Isn't Just Real, It's Costly

#17

Post by Clubber »

kokey wrote: post #12

I think in some countries, cultures and industries there's some kind of legacy class system where only people of the managerial class can share in the spoils of the company, so the only way to reward a competent and skilled employee with an income above a certain level is to make them a manager, while it's also assumed that's what the employee is also striving for. I see this in various engineering industries in deve…

That certainly fits what I see. Managers are a separate class in larger companies, similar to officers vs. enlisted in the military.

Re: The Peter Principle Isn't Just Real, It's Costly

#18

Post by geocar »

erikbern wrote: post #11

This is probably just a variant of Berkson's paradox, similar to Google's observation that success in programming competitions is negatively correlated with job performance: http://www.catonmat.net/blog/programming-competitions-work-p... The mechanism would work this way: sales people exhibit multiple features, and they are promoted based on some combination of those. If a sales person has outstanding other credentia…

> similar to Google's observation that success in programming competitions is negatively correlated with job performance

I find it very interesting that Google then interviews with programming challenges...

Re: The Peter Principle Isn't Just Real, It's Costly

#19

Post by regularfry »

I can't read the actual paper, but from this summary it sounds like people who have just started doing one job aren't as immediately effective as people who've shown they're experienced and effective over time at a completely different job. That doesn't sound like a very controversial finding, nor does it tell you very much about their long-term prospects.
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