The Peter Principle Tested
marginalrevolution.com
marginalrevolution.com
It’s one lens through which to analyse office dynamics. It’s like looking through one window into a cluttered room. Through that window you might see aspects of the room that you couldn’t see through other windows. And for that reason it feels insightful. But it’s not the only window, and there is a lot more in the room than what you can see from this perspective.
But then I don't get to enjoy the project, because I'm not participating in creating it. I'm the host of the party, or I'm a reveler, but I can't be both.
The handful of former bosses who foster the sorts of things I look for are no longer project managers. I now joke about winning the lottery so I have enough money to do one of my hobbies for a living, or write software for one. What I know about running a software project has come at the expense of knowing how to sell a software project.
Basically, if I think something would be funny to me, I do it. Then to see him describe it as "sociopath humor" was a little jarring.
They make it possible to make good money as an individual contributor without climbing the management ladder.
>For example, technical organisations, like Microsoft and IBM have long used split career ladders, allowing their engineers to advance as individual contributors or managers. These practices recognize workers for succeeding in one area without transferring them to another.
I think there is an interesting component here, though. There are no C-level individual contributors, really. At the head of an organization, is a manager/leader. The skill of management really is rewarded/recognized in organizations more readily. I think that makes sense, since the coordination of individual contributors is the most difficult problem to solve.
OTOH, I'd say casually that most of the best leaders are those that were also excellent individual contributors. To really be the top of the management ladder, I think the empathy of personal experience is the more important than most managers give it credit for.
Even the top level technical track folks who are nominally IC's wind up doing some leadership. This makes sense; there's fundamentally a limit on how much you can accomplish all by yourself. Somewhere along the road, your visions will require the work of more people than only yourself.
You can be a technical leader without being a manager, so it's not all bad.
Very high-level IC roles are possible that are roughly equivalent to VP or SVP management roles. However, these are often extremely few in number compared to high-level management roles. They often come with a title like Technical Fellow or just Fellow. In a large company, there might be 100 VPs for every 1 Fellow.
A mid-level manager is also often afforded more organizational perks than a mid-level IC. For instance, while private offices in general are in short supply across the entire industry, a mid-level manager is much likelier to have one than any IC is regardless of title.
Then again, this also applies to different kinds of management. There are many different kinds and styles of management, which are differently suited to different situations. My wife and I often talk about her managing the "A students" versus the "B students" versus the "C and D students." Note that this is relative. If an organization is pushing into new and difficult terrain, some completely independent A students might become more like B students in the new context. Some "C and D students" might start to thrive in a far messier context. Think of the change of context between training camp, versus combat deployment in Band of Brothers and Hacksaw Ridge. In both of those shows/movies, the people who thrived and contributed the most in one context were very different than in the other context.
As a details person that answer is easy for me: I touch the parts that I don't ever want to break in production, the parts that mid level people tend to shy away from anyway. But not everyone has my temperament and being overly optimistic can result in treading on toes....
Maybe rather than assuming that people come out of the womb "competent" or "incompetent" at a certain level, we could consider providing more training and support both before and after they are promoted into significantly higher roles.
I think we all agree with you in this regard. However, that's not what The Peter Principle is about. It agrees that most people can handle their promotions, even if it takes time. It is an observation on occasions where people _stop_ getting promotions.
The point being made is that people stop getting promoted once they are put in a position they are not capable of performing well. If they _are_ capable of performing well, they will likely be promoted again, and later again, until promoted to a role not fit for their skillset. So it is not so much a commentary on competence as it is on circumstance, but circumstance that many systems are designed to allow or even encourage.
Even though producers are in a management-like role, they are generally considered on the same tier as other workers (engineers, designers, artists). Their pay grade skews lower than engineering, higher than art and design.
There are still highly-paid product leads and corporate officers all over gaming. But, I wonder if something like the producer role is present elsewhere in the software industry (I've only worked in gaming). Or, if it should be...
That's a project manager, as opposed to like, 'people managers.' PMs are the unfortunate dotted line in org charts, with zero power but massive responsibilities -- shipping on time and under budget!
Paying them more money (in the form of a higher fixed salary) gives them less skin in the game; skin in the game is what is value at risk; because of declining marginal utility, the more is given unconditionally, the less is at risk, ceteris paribus.
Of course, if we are talking about earning massive bonuses from hidden/delayed risks, that’s a different matter.
B) there's a few ways for this to be only technically true: i. salary versus equity compensation can be different yet still higher ii. 'often' can mean a variety of different things, such as 'occurring more times than I can count on my hands', rather than say 'more than 50 percent of managers'.
Sales -> Management is a unique story though. Sales people are often competitive with each other. It would be interesting to know if any managers add value to the sales process or if the value add is more or less random. (i.e. simply not predicted by prior sales or other metrics).