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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

#41

Post by ghostbrainalpha »

justherefortart wrote: post #5
wool_gather wrote: post #4

The corollary to the Peter Principle, I think, has always been that it's caused by bad management. Taking "is good at IC duties" as the measure for "should lead a team of ICs" is sloppy. You are not considering the person/what they're good at. You're just using an easy shortcut to reward them for their performance. One problem is high-contributing ICs who think they should get promotions to manager. For whatever reas…

My favorite thing is seeing people I wouldn't hire to be a low level IT tech as CIO/IT Director because they're a "network guy". So not only do they end up not understanding 90%+ of IT's functions in any real sense, they are typically not even trained on how to manage. I work with one such moron at my current job. The entire company goes around the fool, yet they keep him. Why? The acting CEO is likely embezzling and…

I have the problem of being the "moron" at your work. I wanted to just be a web developer. It's the only thing I'm good at, and I'm not even really great. Just functional.

But people start to ask you for IT related things because you are the "tech" guy. If your honest and say you need to hire someone to do that specific task, often people are ok with that.

I follow this simple guide when hiring someone to do something I don't understand.

1. Explain to me how you would solve problem X, in as many steps as possible. I make them walk me through it, and ask for more and more detail. Usually spending about an hour.

2. If they have no problems getting into the details, then we set a roadmap and schedule and I check in periodically to make sure we are staying close to it. If they can't stick to their own plan... I move on.

3. If they could give me enough detail to start with, and too much of it was, I'll have to do research or figure it out when we get there, I don't hire them.

4. This results with me having a solid bank of IT people I can outsource problems too, and in tern executives depend on ME to deliver actual results.

That doesn't sound awful, but it actually is. I get to spend extremely little time doing something I could potentially be great at, WEB DEVELOPMENT. And I know the people that work for me, think I'm an idiot and don't understand why they don't have my job.

I try to ask questions and get domain knowledge as I go, but unless you are a genius or spend many years, its just too hard to know everything. And I can't pretend that I'm an expert at managing people, because I'm not. I just do those 4 steps, and then try to be friendly. That's it.

I feel like I'm stuck managing a team of people, when I would rather be an intern for a master developer.

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

#43

Post by AnimalMuppet »

ghostbrainalpha wrote: post #41
justherefortart wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favorite thing is seeing people I wouldn't hire to be a low level IT tech as CIO/IT Director because they're a "network guy". So not only do they end up not understanding 90%+ of IT's functions in any real sense, they are typically not even trained on how to manage. I work with one such moron at my current job. The entire company goes around the fool, yet they keep him. Why? The acting CEO is likely embezzling and…

I have the problem of being the "moron" at your work. I wanted to just be a web developer. It's the only thing I'm good at, and I'm not even really great. Just functional. But people start to ask you for IT related things because you are the "tech" guy. If your honest and say you need to hire someone to do that specific task, often people are ok with that. I follow this simple guide when hiring someone to do somethin…

The ability to hire contractors who can actually do the work... that's a formidable asset to the company. You're not the moron. You're not the incompetent. You are actually very valuable.

The problem is, you're being very valuable doing something that you don't actually want to do. You may not feel that it is emotionally rewarding. You may just want to do what you like. That's fine; I'm not trying to argue with that. But don't feel like an incompetent or a failure at what you're doing. You're not.

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

#44

Post by s2g »

It's real, but I'm not a fan of the application in tech.

You have junior people who are evaluated according to arbitrary metrics. So they try to put in a process and get a bunch of people to give feedback. So now you have these people getting evaluated according to arbitrary metrics in an overwrought process. You have overhead and barriers and all sorts of politics in place just to prevent a junior engineer getting promoted to mid level with slightly less experience. The impact to the company of doing that is negligible. The impact to the employee can be negative, but if they don't make that level fairly quickly they get fired anyway.

I'd say the impact of that person giving up and quitting and getting the next level at another company is worse. Now you have lost someone you put years of effort into.

I've seen this first hand. Surveys showing that a majority of engineers don't know what it takes to get to the next level, don't believe they can make the next level on their current team, frustration with promotion processes. Orgs arbitrarily deciding to ignore new guidelines because they think they are too easy. All because of a lack of transparency and a broken process, developed as a result of the dreaded peter principle.

No different than shitty interviews powered by false negatives because "it's too costly to hire someone bad".

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

#45

Post by s2g »

geocar wrote: post #18
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...

I'm pretty convinced half of that is ability to handle arbitrary bullshit, and the rest is just an IQ test with a different name.

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

#46

Post by s2g »

wool_gather wrote: post #4

The corollary to the Peter Principle, I think, has always been that it's caused by bad management. Taking "is good at IC duties" as the measure for "should lead a team of ICs" is sloppy. You are not considering the person/what they're good at. You're just using an easy shortcut to reward them for their performance. One problem is high-contributing ICs who think they should get promotions to manager. For whatever reas…

There really can't be, since people leadership becomes more and more required as you go up.

But if you can handle the amount needed, you can still rise. Just seems to be a lot slower and harder to rise as an IC.

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

#47

Post by s2g »

justherefortart wrote: post #34
jessaustin wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow if accounting/finance can't find that level of embezzlement the CIO is the least of their problems.

Accounting is in on it. Everything they do here is cooking the books. They give the auditors doctored spreadsheets for everything. It's pretty funny to me. I don't give a shit because I'm just riding this out until I have to get something else or I get a few more clients for my startup. Oh, everyone's 401k got stolen by a friend of the CEO's kid. So that was nice.

No whistleblowing?

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

#48

Post by citrin_ru »

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…

If Google knows that success in programming competitions is negatively correlated with job performance, then why Google organizes codejam and invites participants with good results to a job interview? Also as mentioned above Google interview questions looks like problems from programmings competitions.

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

#49

Post by wool_gather »

da_chicken wrote: post #39
wool_gather wrote: post #4

The corollary to the Peter Principle, I think, has always been that it's caused by bad management. Taking "is good at IC duties" as the measure for "should lead a team of ICs" is sloppy. You are not considering the person/what they're good at. You're just using an easy shortcut to reward them for their performance. One problem is high-contributing ICs who think they should get promotions to manager. For whatever reas…

> Taking "is good at IC duties" as the measure for "should lead a team of ICs" is sloppy. Yeah, but the flip side is that "has an MBA" is equally sloppy. Anybody who's ever had a paper manager that "doesn't know their ass from a hole in the ground" knows that while hiring an MBA might get you someone who is good enough at managing people, if they have no understanding of the core business -- or worse, no capacity to…

Oh, absolutely agreed. My ideal world has people moved (not necessarily "promoted") to manager because people up the chain know that they'll be good at it, and not for any other reason.

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

#50

Post by wool_gather »

stan_programmer wrote: post #23
rhapsodic wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Individual contributor Thanks. First I've heard that one.

I just have a hard time with this term. It feels.. disconnected... I don't know. It reminds me of George Carlin's bit on "Shell Shock"/"Post Traumatic Stress Disorder". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuEQixrBKCc

You're not wrong. I admit, it's a term from the euphemistic cogs-in-the-machine language of management. But I've found no way to entirely avoid adapting to "their" culture.
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