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Comment by MatthewPhillips | Hacker News Reader

Not promoting someone because they're too good at their current job is a mistake bad companies make.

There's a difference between not promoting someone from lead code monkey, and not promoting someone from head of industrial design at Apple. The latter is a valid landing point for the rest of your life.

"Code monkey", really? I guess Jeff Dean, for example, feels pretty good as a top code monkey at Google.

That's exactly the point I'm making.

We all make that judgment individually. We all have different aspirations. You can't hold someone back because theyre too good at their job. You can let them stay where they are, if that's what they want. Otherwise you have to eventually make the tough decision to either promote your talent, or let them go.

On the contrary, I think it's a management innovation that tech companies have figured out how to keep good technical people in their areas of core competency by giving them the things they would really want out of a promotion, whether that be compensation, autonomy, etc.

The article notes that Ive is worth $128 million and has tremendous autonomy within the company. I.e. he gets compensated extremely well and has a ton of power but still gets to do the work he is obviously very good at. Why would he want to become CEO where he'd spend all his time answering to shareholders and analysts? Just to move up one step on the org chart?

Where you really get the promotion problem is when your corporate structure is too inflexible to give adequate compensation and authority to your best technical people. That does not seem to be a problem here.

I want to preface this by saying that I'm not implying there is any problem with the Ive/Apple situation, I'm merely arguing against the idea that you can stop an ambitious person from climbing as far as they want to climb.

You can never compensate a person what they would make if you actually promoted them. I.e., you can't pay your CEO less than or equal to your Chief Engineer. If I'm wrong on this feel free to speak up and/or down vote me.

I think you're making some assumptions here that are not necessarily correct, 1) that by being CEO you don't get to do the fun stuff, we only have to look at Apple's own former CEO to know that's not the case, and 2) that a person at this level is going to reflect on the choice and not think they would be good at the higher position. I'm no John Ive, but even my little ego has never allowed me to think I won't be equally good at some higher position than my current one.

Head of design at Apple -> CEO of Apple is not a promotion, however. It's a career change.

The opposite could also be a mistake: What if you promote that person to a position it is not qualified for? (I think the Peter Principle was already mentioned around here.)

Of course, you shouldn't promote someone as a lifetime achievement award. But at the same time if you hold someone back that has higher aspirations you will lose them.

We don’t know anything about Ive’s aspirations.

Promoting someone who is good at their job into a job they are not a good fit for is a much more common mistake.

Peopleware points this out as a reason to maintain distinct hierarchies for product development and software engineering.

And I do, too. :)

Promoting someone to a job they're less good at because they're really good at their current job is also a mistake bad companies make.

Keeping high performers in a role where they can perform highly, but giving them status, titles, and compensation in line with their importance to the company is the solution to both problems. This is why great engineering companies have career paths for engineers that don't necessarily extend into management. Hell, that's why Ive has a "Senior Vice President" title in the first place.

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