Peter principle | Hacker News Reader

Peter principle

en.wikipedia.org

280 pointssteelbrain180 comments

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 levels of management, because they don't just say "yes boss", they will tend to point out the risks of flying blind, offer a better solution than what was recently clubbed at the board of directors meeting, and have ethical guardrails regarding what chemicals to put in the product, how to treat coworkers, etc. They are brilliant at their tasks, but have opinions that go beyond their designated area, they are expensive and demanding. And they usually end up getting the can, with or without a severance pay. And the incompetent, but "yes boss"-employee gets the promotion instead.

There you have it.

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 criticism and correct their understanding when new information ia given to them: they are not dogmatic jerks. Actually, all my managers were this kind of person, with crazy ideas and not affraid to disagree with anyone.

I also had one colleague who was brilliant and had strong opinions about the product, which were expensive and demanding, and was affected by a lay off wave. I think him being original, not "focusing on the core product", and a strong character had something to do with it, so of course it happens.

> 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.

> in order to steer the business in the direction they are convinced is the right one

It's also necessary to be able to accept that others have other opinions and that to make progress everybody needs to be pulling in the same direction. A decision must be made and most of the time it's not going to be exactly what you're convinced is the perfect direction. Yet, having said your piece and perhaps having influenced the direction, it's necessary to then support the final decision even if you don't precisely agree with it.

A large proportion of people with the qualities you describe are unable to do this, and therefore tend not to be highly regarded by management.

Of course if you consistently find yourself at odds with the eventual direction then you're better off being elsewhere.

The problem here being that if you are competent you’ll find it a strain to work in an environment that (often) does not listen to your advice, even if that means everyone is pulling in the same direction.

It’s nice for everyone else if they’re all contentedly pulling in the wrong direction, not so much for the one that sees that direction for what it is.

In that case how are you sure that you are correct and everyone else is wrong?

Experience. Can only suffer from imposter syndrome so many times before you start to see a pattern.

Of course, any given instance may be right or wrong, but the balance of probability has shifted.

It’s especially egregious when you have literal years of experience with a subject and some person without any of that makes, or gets people to make decisions their way instead.

And you may be right and you may be wrong. But you'll probably be happier if you go elsewhere.

The other side of the coin is the needlessly defiant people. These believe themselves to be those that "have an informed opinion and are confident enough to voice it", but in reality they just disagree with everything and everyone except themselves. From a third party's point of view they're easy to discern, however.

Oh those people disagree with themselves very often, that's how you can recognize them

Finding a reason to echo someone's own opinion back at them after a suitable time where they've forgotten they voiced it is a very effective test for disagreeableness, I've found. You don't need to chase them down about the contradiction. Just note it and take appropriate future actions.

It can even be a bit amusing, if they are insulting about it, to watch them vigorous call themselves stupid for expressing their previous opinions.

Agreed - and you will find not a single living person will pass this test over time. Therefore, it's a worthless, but deeply amusing, test. Human ignorance is so pervasive it even applies to people like you :)

I can tu quoque right back at you; can you conceive of a person who expresses some opinion (and this includes technical matters, things within the scope of your job, opinions you are being paid to have, not just random political things) only and solely because it is their real opinion? No, if you came at with me with my own opinion two weeks later, you would not find I have radically shifted very often, and even less often without realizing I've shifted, and virtually never insulting whoever held the opinion I held two weeks ago.

I don't base my opinions on whether or not I get to contradict someone else. Clearly some people do.

I find many of my previous positions to be stupid.

Right, as should we all. The key question is, when you're confronted with one of those opinions, do you defend it, deny it, or renounce it?

I'm probably one of these defiant people, so I want to speak in their defense.

I really just want to be heard. I want to be heard and have a response from someone who has comprehended my point of view and fully engaged with it, but that rarely happens.

At my last job I was defiant because the company was storing plain text passwords and PPI in the test database, and every developer had access to it (I'm certain there is a reader of this comment whose password I had access to along with a good amount of PPI). I said this should be fixed but nobody really engaged with what I was saying; we had important product enhancements to work on. So I got defiant and pushed really hard and burned some of my political capital, made myself appear a trouble maker in some people's minds, and in the end the PPI was removed from the test database. This caused the test environment to break and some tests needed to be fixed. They still store plain text passwords though, because that assumption was spread throughout the code. I would have continued pushing to do the work and stop using plain text passwords, but I was laid off.

If a company prioritizes profit over ethics you will find trouble makers who are justifiably defiant. Judge for yourself how many companies do that.

The bottom line is that you failed to achieve the goal you set out to achieve and got laid off.

How is that ”speak in their defense"? Can you think of an alternative approach that would have delivered the result over time without you loosing your job?

>I think him being original, not "focusing on the core product", and a strong character had something to do with it, so of course it happens.

You absolutely have people who are very competent but just not interested in what management (rightly or wrongly) thinks should be the current priorities. Sometimes things advance to the point where there's no longer a good fit. Not necessarily anyone's fault but it may be time to part ways.

Sounds great! Care to share the places you've seen this at?

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.

I've seen this happen. Start pushing off the work of the old job and doing the new job before the promotion.

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.

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. Might not work in every sector/size though.

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.

I'll add on to your point: moving up the IC ladder is often slow because it takes more to both become an expert in a field and to prove it to your leadership. Each step up the IC ladder is harder to actually obtain those skills, and harder to prove that you have obtained those skills to management.

On the flip side, the management ladder is more delivery focused (though not exclusively): are you getting your team to get their work done? It's somewhat easier to demonstrate success on the management side, and because you're leading a team, it's possible (though not necessarily true in most cases) for a manager to get promoted on the strength of their team and not their ability as a manager.

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 form: https://imgflip.com/i/8ks5kq.

> many more incompetent people who, due to Dunning-Kruger, don't recognize their own incompetence

You are right of course, I am myself a living proof of that, and I would not wish it on my worst enemy organization to give me a promotion. That said, this doesn't really explain why so many incompetent people end up being promoted, which Peter (I believe correctly) documented. His theory is admittedly a bit more elaborate than mine, but it obviously builds on an endearing naïveté regarding the nature of organizations, especially large and mature such.

How have you ever gotten the full story so many times to know that these people exist in such numbers? You'd have to hear their bad idea (apparently be intelligent enough to understand them completely) and then you'd also be there to hear them griping and blaming management and again finding their complaints uncompelling.

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 avoidable problems, and then I'm at fault for describing them as such after the fact.

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.

Amusing anecdote: On average, people think they are above average.

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

Not to mention that if someone isn't a psychologist they shouldn't be spouting off about the Dunning-Kruger effect anyway because arguably they don't have enough competence in that particular domain to be able to talk about it intelligently.

Hell, I have a PhD in psychology and I don't know enough about this effect to talk about it intelligently.

Isn't people who don't know enough about Dunning-Kruger confidently spouting off about it...sort of evidence of Dunning-Kruger?

I kid of course. Or do I?

I don’t think the takeaway from the Dunning-Kruger effect is "don’t invoke basic aspects of human nature on internet discussion forums unless you’re a trained academic psychologist"

> Competent people are a source of pain to higher levels of management, because they don't just say "yes boss"

Fits the MacLeod/Gervais pyramid of losers / clueless / sociopaths.

https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...

Hmm, that’s a great summary of what I meant when I recently told my coworker I couldn’t help him because I’d recently burned through all my political capital.

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.

At middle management levels that approach may be the way it works, because of the incentives.

But once you start presenting to board rooms and people who have zero skin in the game of office politics, but 100% skin in the game of the firm’s profits (and more broadly firm profits at large), you absolutely will not succeed unless you are delivering value through competence

I've definitely worked for people who violated that rule to the detriment of the company. They could _appear_ competent, but in my view, corroborated later by the view of the market, they were actually not.

It still works that way for anyone who values anything else above profit. If you believe ethics are more important than profit, the board won't like you.

Rational meritocracies do not exist in the present, have never existed in the past, and will never exist in the future. However, the idea that a meritocracy can or does exist is a useful tool for those with leverage over others. It justifies their decisions, which in reality simply boil down to a combination of their "gut" feeling and what they can get away with socially given their position in the hierarchy.

you seem very sure of your declarations here; im not sure you've looked too far beyond your bubble. i have worked within a rational meritocarcy for the past 15 years.

I agree, but I think it's even more subversive. Large corporations tend to develop internal fiefdoms with rules that aren't always aligned with the larger company's objectives. These fiefdoms develop unspoken rules, which competent people tend to question. "Why are we padding every task by 75%?" "Why are we saying X tasks are 'hard' and require additional staffing when we know they're easy?" These new unspoken rules misalign rewards.

Competent individuals often question practices like these and are either coerced into submission or shown the door. This leads to a gradual subversion of the corporate culture, transforming what was once agile, resourceful, and, importantly, truthful into a culture of internal lies and self-deception. "Everyone lies on this report, so you must too. Everyone exaggerates their evaluations, so you must as well. Everyone inflates sales predictions by many multiples; you must do the same." Rewards given under the de-facto misaligned system favors the incompetent. This further estranges competence from leveling.

Isn't this just another definition of the original principle. People rise to the level where their noise is just enough to not worry the people promoting them i.e. the lesser their noise is the more they will be promoted. What you are offering seems like an explanation rather than a new observation.

You're confusing competence with disagreeability.

> Competent people are a source of pain to higher levels of management, because they don't just say "yes boss"

This sounds more like they aren't competent at the kind of politicking and development of political capital required for middle management.

In other words, someone competent is promoted and which they are incompetent at because they lack the skills necessary for the new job - the Peter Principle.

This is true, but it's also subjective. The question of competence and correct behavior is subjective. There could be validity in the "yes boss" perspective. I say that despite having a very strong bias against the "yes boss" personality myself.

Ultimately both sides of this need to approach with humility and understand how little they can see and influence, and how all perception is subjective.

I want to agree because I see myself in this, particularly the conclusion of the career arc, but I try to remember that market conditions are beyond my control and aren't productive to dwell on.

I had a boss who cut his teeth at one of the largest AEC firms in the US. He frequently said, "the two most dangerous people are an incompetent that everyone gets along with and the highly competent that nobody gets along with. Both can destroy an organization." I knew who he had in mind on the former, which I thought was pretty callous. I realized that he saw me as the latter after I was fired.

I think we should not infer rules about business behavior from market forces because management in large organizations have enough insulation to develop their own hard to explain customs.

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 support or material support or training where they went on to deliver stellar service. So it was like finding the right guy (and it definitely was a guy back in those days) for the right job.

This is in contrast to continental armies with aristocratic baggage who found it difficult to fire flag grade commanders (looking at you, monty.)

But the political risk to his own career was enormous and the only way he got away with it was with the full support of FDR and his reputation earned partially as Pershing's Chief of Staff in WWI.

He is also the only person in the US Army to be considered for the rank of Field Marshall, mostly because FDR thought it would be funny to have Field Marshal Marshall.

Which is to say... you might be able to cheat the Peter Principal, but the amount of effort seems great and you would have to work very hard to sooth the egos of those demoted or reframe the demotion as a lateral xfer.

> He is also the only person in the US Army to be considered for the rank of Field Marshall, mostly because FDR thought it would be funny to have Field Marshal Marshall.

According to Wikipedia, he got an equivalent rank that was named "General of the Army" It was not called "Field Marshal" because having a "Marshal Marshall" was considered undignified (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field_marshal#United_States:)

_considered_ for the rank of field marshal. i did not imply he was promoted to field marshal. and even then, it was very likely just a joke.

well then you should have implied it because he was promoted to a rank equivalent to field marshall, 5 star general. (neither rank existed at the time, and when the rank was created, "field marshall" was eschewed as a name for it)

it would have been inaccurate to say George Marshall was promoted to Field Marshal, because he wasn't. He was promoted to General of the Army. It's sort of like saying someone who was promoted to Gunner in the Marines is a Chief Warrant Officer. The two are equivalent in rank, but very different roles in their organizations. And if you referred to a Navy Captain as a Colonel, people would look at you funny, even though the two are considered equivalent rank.

It's quite normal and ordinary to say and execute as if, for example, a "Group Captain" in a Commonwealth air force is the equivalent to a "Colonel" in the US Air Force. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_comparative_military_r...

The US doesn't have a Field Marshall rank; European forces do. The promotion of Gen Marshall to five star general was intended to make rational the lines and ranks of command, including between coordinated forces of allied nations.

it's not the name of the title that matters, it's the rank in the hierarchy.

The US doesn't have a Field Marshal grade, but before 1947, it could have been created by the president. I believe it requires an act of congress now. But there's little will to do it because of its association with aristocratic traditions in Europe. Which is why when FDR suggested it, it was interpreted as a joke.

I imagine that's where Joseph Heller got the idea for a character named Major Major Major Major:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_Major_Major_Major

It's interesting reading about WWII generals because they're so well-studied it's relatively easy to notice patterns about them. One is that there were a few different types based on what they were good at. Patton was a good tactician and (mostly) beloved by his men; Eisenhower was a logistician with little experience actually commanding but he got along with everyone; Nimitz was good at delegating (aka finding the right man for the job); etc. A lot of leadership stuff is universal, but then a lot of it is also dependent on what's needed for the job, and a person's skills and leadership patterns may not be exactly what's needed for the job. The Peter Principle is that if you do a good job you get promoted, as you get promoted it gets harder, eventually you reach a point where your skills aren't enough to overcome the next level of difficulty increase. Most people would probably be able to go a lot further if they were fit into the right positions to use their particular leadership pattern

> A lot of leadership stuff is universal, but then a lot of it is also dependent on what's needed for the job, and a person's skills and leadership patterns may not be exactly what's needed for the job.

Leadership is what's needed for leadership jobs. It's in the title. All leadership is the same: inspire the troops, block the bullshit, elevate the good shit. How you do that changes by rank.

> The Peter Principle is that if you do a good job you get promoted, as you get promoted it gets harder, eventually you reach a point where your skills aren't enough to overcome the next level of difficulty increase.

The Peter Principle isn't about difficulty, it's about skill set. As you climb the ranks you need a different skill set. The job isn't harder, the job is different.

> The Peter Principle isn't about difficulty, it's about skill set. As you climb the ranks you need a different skill set. The job isn't harder, the job is different.

This is a great observation and think it isn't very well described when talking about the Peter Principal. My Dad retired as a Colonel and required a LOT of political skills. He said he wasn't really interested in the politics of being a flag grade officer and thought he was too old to learn them. Me, on the other hand, never progressed past small unit command. And never even got to the point where politics were a major part of my job. In my unit we were all just trying to not get killed and find opportunities to use the logistics training we received.

> Leadership is what's needed for leadership jobs. It's in the title. All leadership is the same: inspire the troops, block the bullshit, elevate the good shit. How you do that changes by rank.

A big part of leadership, which might be covered under your 'block the bullshit' point, is fighting the higher level managerial battles, and only relying on your lower level staff for their specialized support.

If there is one thing I hate about some managers is throwing their employees to fight political battles with other managers, or high level Executives, while the manager hides in the bushes.

The manager's job is to fight those battles, and yet I've seen them hide from them a lot, while using their workers as shields.

> If there is one thing I hate about some managers is throwing their employees to fight political battles with other managers, or high level Executives, while the manager hides in the bushes.

The “never bring a knife to a gunfight” rule of management.

> So it was like finding the right guy (and it definitely was a guy back in those days) for the right job.

I almost spit out my coffee while reading HN. “Holy shit” I think to myself, “the second world war was a boys club!” My mind reels as a I pace the room and look at my Condoleezza Rice and RBG posters. “How many potential career women did WWII hold back? And in turn their daughters and granddaughters from the lack of example and inspiration that those women could set?” I now know that I have a new research project on my hands. The electric typewriter beckons.

Wehrmacht gave great support from the sides.

At the beginning of the war, American flag officers were humiliated by their much more experienced and skillful Wehrmacht counterparts. Lt. Gen Lloyd Fredendall and other fools just had to go or the war would end before it started. It was a natural evolution.

The only subpar American general who thrived in WWII was Gen. Douglas MacArthur. He came out of every mess he created with a hero's reputation. He could fix everything with a bombastic speech and infinite self-confidence.

So MacArthur had a "reality-distortion field" like Steve Jobs? Interesting.

I don't know if it's actually a quote someome that era said but it goes like "Best American general in WW2 is General Logistics"

> 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).

This is a interesting talk held on UC Berkeley about the culture of firing officers during WWII:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxZWxxZ2JGE

Thomas E. Ricks main hypothesis is that the US failures in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq can be attributed to the culture of firing under-performing disappearing.

It mirrors what I've seen in a lot of organizations as well, under-performing executives keeping their jobs when they shouldn't.

> He is also the only person in the US Army to be considered for the rank of Field Marshall, mostly because FDR thought it would be funny to have Field Marshal Marshall.

Considering that when the 5-star rank (General of the Army) to which he was promoted had three other people promoted to it at the same time, if he was considered for promotion to Field Marshal but they ended up choosing a different name for the rank, he probably wasn't the only one.

Related threads below. The 1974 video is fun: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39wzku9KIEM.

Peter Principle - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33855815 - Dec 2022 (5 comments)

The Peter Principle (1974) [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32627396 - Aug 2022 (39 comments)

The Peter Principle: Are you at your level of incompetence? (1974) [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32243969 - July 2022 (1 comment)

The Peter Principle - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24433059 - Sept 2020 (1 comment)

The Peter Principle Tested - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19797375 - May 2019 (47 comments)

The Peter Principle is a joke taken seriously. Is it true? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17845289 - Aug 2018 (108 comments)

The Peter Principle Revisited: A Computational Study (2009) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17301215 - June 2018 (50 comments)

The Peter Principle Isn't Just Real, It's Costly - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16972249 - May 2018 (48 comments)

The Peter Principle Revisited: A Computational Study [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2270053 - Feb 2011 (2 comments)

The Peter Principle Revisited: A Computational Study - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1121507 - Feb 2010 (1 comment)

It's very interesting with this perspective of internet popularity of the concept.

I remember the Wikipedia entry from a long time ago as much shorter than the current version, so went back in time.

In 2018, the article was much shorter: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Peter_principle&o...

But I really like the visualization in the 2018 version: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Peters_principle.svg.

And as I can learn from other HN comments below, there was indeed real studies conducted in 2018, so the comical/logical hypothesis has been further developed and empirical evidence is now also there.

Theres also a nice short movie in german (english subtitles included): - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGhTBqLkrZ4

The peters principle makes an assumption about the convexity of competency that I’ve never thought was great. Essentially someone could get promoted to their level of incompetence, when if they were promoted again they would actually get better at their job.

There is an implicit assumption that competence at job a is less than competence at a job b above job a, which isn’t necessarily true.

I don’t think there is that implicit assumption. My understanding of the principle is that a person would never get “promoted again”, because their incompetence at their level prevents it.

Essentially: if you’re good at a job, you get promoted out of it. If you’re not good at a job, you don’t get promoted out of it. So the end state for everyone is that they remain in jobs they are not good at.

That’s brilliant …

Or a brilliant restatement if the original peter principle (to gives props eleswwhere :-)

So we just stop promotions … I think ???

Where i work the only way to get a noticeable jump in salary is promotion. I call this "horizontal scaling" of salaries. I believe the "vertical scaling" of salaries would be a better fit. Some already have it in tariffs, most of the time there are tough limits to what you can earn as "simple developer/project manager/sales clerk".

So yes, probably promotions are not the right action often, but the other options need to be improved.

edit: i lacked the explanation of vertical scaling: rising salary in the job you are currently doing and building expertise and experience. Opposed to being horizontally moved to a whole different job where your expertise is probably worse.

So people that are good at their jobs should be kept on the brink of promotion for as long as possible?

Promotion should not be into a different job.

If you're doing the same job after your promotion it's not really a promotion, it's just a pay rise with extra steps.

That's not a good recipe for retention of quality people.

Or simply pay them more without a promotion. That's what bonuses are for.

I'm personally of the opinion that promotion and pay rises should be entirely separate discussions and it should be both possible and normal to get one without the other. In fact you should have to work your new position for at least 6 month after a promotion before you can discuss any pay rise.

Ideally you should evaluate if a person will be good in the new position, where they will be promoted. Don't know if that's always possible, or how easy it is.

Also, maybe if someone is bad at their job, they should be demoted or otherwise moved. It's another way to break the convergence to people unfit to their positions.

Though, I have seen on more than one occasion someone promoted again and again after reaching their level of incompetance. This seems to be more driven by the incompetance of the person/people doing the promoting to cover their tracks though. They can't be seen as incompetant themselves, so they move the original incompetant employee up the ladder again, but to the side so they're less able to cause problems, but still look good.

It's often misunderstood, IMO. It's not purely about hierarchies and eventually "advancing" until you aren't talented enough to do the job (because the higher jobs are harder).

Lots of the Scott Adams types misunderstand it this way, because they have a "40 rules of power" perspective. It works better as like a law of nature and physics. Perhaps even better as a mathematic or logical rule (don't know the exact name, axium? law?). Could even be considered a paradox of sorts.

Think of it like this: Assuming an organization promotes people that excel at their jobs, but not if they are incompetent. Draw a flowchart. If someone succeeds what happens? If they fail what happens? (not clear, but it isn't really mentioned if the incompetent ones are fired).

Either way it's a guarantee under this system that all will be promoted to incompetence. You could even compare it to an ideal system like circuits. Yeah the real world doesn't work exactly like this, but it kinda can.

So, it's not about the above job being more challenging per se. You might just not have the right stuff. You could even add being accepted by the team or boss, because you can't be successful otherwise (though I dislike this one).

Actually, I tend to think it's the drive to "advance" that's the problem, and unwillingness to just pay senior people more (though there's often good reasons there too).

Sometimes I wonder if Stalin had the right idea. Purge the leadership every so often to start with a clean slate. Of course this only works with bureaucracies and not things that require tons of experience. You also have to have somewhere for them to move on to if you don't want to murder them or ship them to Siberia.

Was this strategy very successful?

Successful in what regard? Stalin ended up dying of natural causes, Russia and Ukraine transformed from a backwards agrarian economy to a despotic industrial economy, the Soviet Army took a good chunk of Europe during WWII, the Soviet Union became a superpower, and during his rule it could be argued that the Soviet bureaucracy was incredibly efficient. I don't actually think we should take Stalin as a role-model for how to run a government (I was being tongue-in-cheek in my above comment) but it is amazing what you can accomplish when you have a total disregard for human rights, all of the levers of the State, a ruthless secret police, and an enormous amount of natural resources.

Why doesn't anyone consider things like demotion, lateral motion or promotion contingent on an evaluation of fit for the target role? Must we jump directly to "never promote anyone" or "Stalin-type purges"? Are there really so few options?

people have too much pride for demotion - risk to the company too

Doubt anyone will see this, but the answer is simple: This causes people problems.

Chances are the employee is dependent on pay. Their lifestyle has likely inflated based on the increased resources. Their ego as well.

It's almost easier to just say: "This isn't done". Too often the result is infighting, tension, and/or the person just leaves. You may see it in niche cases where people just want to focus on their homelife, or clearly bit off more than they could chew.

In our current culture it probably is much better to just impede advancement and let inflation and technical progress do the work.

I think we can both agree this is a problem. It's actually a far deeper issue than people realize. We have a primary education -> professional education -> professional advancement pipeline.

We judge people based on their track record going through this system, unabated. So excessive hang-ups and temporary failures are off the table. Otherwise, you're going to get spit out of the pipeline. A reject. Now there are many assumptions and your professional value will go down.

Also, this is an enormous problem for people with disabilities or obligations in the household.

If you have something else, they will not be trying so hard.

Generally, to make people try hard you need either punishments for not working or some benefits. Skinner proposed a little more complex classifications: positive/negative punishment/reinforcement[1]. Positive when you react by bringing punishment or reinforcement, negative if you remove them. So four different kinds of operant conditioning. His findings are not directly applicable to human subjects, but they are not completely irrelevant either.

So if you are trying to fix Stalin's system towards more humanism,... I have two ideas:

1. Negative punishment: make lives of highly ranked bureaucrats miserable, with the "promotion" as the only way to stop their misery.

2. Positive reinforcement: make a promotion for them to be a dream of their lives.

I'd try (1), with (2) conditionally on their performance. This way you could get an endless stream of applicants to pick from, and they really-really would do their best to move to the last part of their life, even if they turned out to be incompetents.

The only problem is how to distinguish short term and long term successes.

PS. Please don't get it too seriously, I was carried away by the idea of good Stalin.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punishment_(psychology)

People aren't static, nor are companies or roles within them. Treating every person as unchanging and treating the requirements of each level in the hierarchy as unchanging are just plain bad assumptions to make.

People grow. Companies change.

This book was meant as satire, and the fact that so many people take it as fact is honestly quite concerning.

From the wiki page:

"In 2018, professors Alan Benson, Danielle Li, and Kelly Shue analyzed sales workers' performance and promotion practices at 214 American businesses to test the veracity of the Peter principle. They found that these companies tended to promote employees to a management position based on their performance in their previous position, rather than based on managerial potential. Consistent with the Peter principle, the researchers found that high performing sales employees were likelier to be promoted, and that they were likelier to perform poorly as managers, leading to considerable costs to the businesses.[15][16][2]"

The Peter Principle might be downstream of the Monotonic Pay Scale, where it is expected that a person who manages others must be paid more than any of them. Conversely, no matter how good you are or how much money you are making the business, you will reach a point where your pay is effectively capped unless you transition to management.

The government suffers from this especially, despite an ostensibly very different incentive structure. The explosion in government contractors (by which I mean, individuals indirectly employed to do jobs in lieu of direct hires) seems to be driven in no small part by this problem.

> This book was meant as satire, and the fact that so many people take it as fact is honestly quite concerning.

The article says it was satire but it also says it was based on their real research. Also satire doesn’t necessarily mean something is meant to be untrue

Indeed, satire is meant to uncover hidden truths subversively.

Yep, many “just-so” stories have some aspect of truth. I feel like people citing the Peter principle as a cliche explanation for many things that are likely to be overdetermined probably correlates with intelligence, as it takes greater intelligence to consider more complicated models of career advancement.

That particular passage in the Wikipedia article on the eponymous book being satire is worded extremely poorly. Satire is a common format for making social commentary. The occurrence in organizations of Lawrence Peter's findings, now known as the Peter Principle, is the social commentary being communicated by the book. It is a phenomenon which had previously been established as occurring prior to the book in Lawrence Peter's research and was the entire basis for the eponymous book being written by Raymond Hull.

This is all fine for lower levels.

For executives, there are only a few paths:

- take over your boss’s job when they retire/get fired. (One can slowly go from individual contributor to vice president this way!)

- fit non-competence based corporate goals and have the polish to visibly demonstrate such (industry track record not required!). More about fluff than stuff…

- have strong corporate political alliances with higher leaders

None of this has anything to do with vision, ability, or merit.

If promotions are based on metrics (and they always are, even if the metric is "how much do I like this guy"), then you can either try to increase your score in that metric as much as possible, or you can game the metric as much as possible to make it look like your score in the metric is high. Most of the people at the executive level have been doing the latter so long that the former just isn't really considered at that level

This is all fine for lower levels

More likely the other way round; if there are more options at lower levels - as you imply - then there are more ways for the principle to be countered or defeated.

None of this has anything to do with vision, ability, or merit.

Unfortunately, if you take the principle seriously, that's pretty much exactly what it has to do with.

Hmm dunno, I have seen 1) people rising >2 levels above their level of incompetence, as well as 2) people staying <2 levels below their worth.

What’s definitely true is that actual level / title don’t match perfectly with “competence” which itself is a nebulous concept in many companies.

An argument for discrimination is that one then gets highly talented people from the discriminated-against class who stick upon their glass ceilings; I first heard this hypothesis as the British empire having been headed by English but run by Irish, Native, Scots, and Welsh administrators.

(alternative to avoid relying on discrimination: apply "up or out"?)

What about up or down?

If someone has reached their level of incompetence, bump them back to the previous level with their current pay. Apparently they were excellent at that previous level, and don't have room to grow right now. So put them to use at that previous level.

that's also found in the military, as a "brevet rank"

I believe that example 1) is addressed in the article as "percussive sublimation".

My own observations:

A) Some places, the only way to land a leadership position, is by simply outliving your competition in the firm. Some firms put way too much emphasis on seniority, and are afraid to not promote senior employees in a predictable fashion, in fear of them leaving.

These types of places also compensate purely based on your seniority and job title - which is why everyone wants to land such positions.

B) The Peter Principle is rampant in sales. Good salespeople get promoted to leadership positions, and are bogged down with tasks they do not enjoy, or want to do.

C) Places with a strong focus on "up or out" can also end up with a system where the Peter Principle is rife. Employees will do anything in their power to reach tenure, and once tenured, they might lose all motivation to perform their leadership duties - other than to work their subordinates to the bone, because they know there's a endless supply of them, and that all of them are equally motivated to reach promotion / tenure.

Sales? You just described engineering management, as well as many fields, probably.

A good scene in 30 Rock is when Tracy is told about the Peter Principle and responds "but my incompetence knows no bounds!"

It's astonishing how many people come to me with a Peter Principle story from their own work. It's also incredible just how many people from all walks of life experience that they are working with incompetents.

What I'd throw in there as well is competence noise. The people who are sitting with someone day-to-day can tell whether they are competent. But the person who decides who gets promoted is somehow blind to this.

>But the person who decides who gets promoted is somehow blind to this.

Sometimes yes, but I also observed that sometimes it was necessary to do, since no other suitable person showed up.

Also, I would add that what surprises me how slowly many people can improve.

Actually it's not universally true that people working closely together know who is competent and who is not. Because you yourself need to be competent to know if others are doing a good job or not. If you are surrounded by incompetent morons you as likely might be labeled as incompetent by them and since they are the majority you lose the battle. It doesn't even have to be done on purpose by the morons, they just don't know they are bad at what they are are doing and create a kind of a circlejerk re-assuring themselves

Yes!

Incompetent manager: "Hey uh can you pop open that firewall for me?"

Me: "That's against corporate policy. You'd need to follow procedure xyz."

Incompetent manager: "My good friend, J could open that firewall in 15 mins flat. J opened the firewall for me 4 times last week. He could show you how if you don't know what you are doing, its no problem."

Me: Facepalming "Didn't you hear what I just said?"

Of course the above happens in a meeting with a congregation of people.

Biggest constraint on this principle is that you can get promoted to a level where getting promoted again requires someone else quitting. That doesn't really imply anything about your competence.

Usually if you're blocked from advancing though, you'll move on to another company that needs someone in the higher role

> getting promoted again requires someone else quitting.

I can imagine this being true for 80% of high-mamager positions. But there's also a good portion of leadership positions that get created with new lines of business.

That is blue ocean thinking. Generally, it will give you more ownership about the outcome of your career.

The assumption here is that being good at a job is what 'earns' a promotion.

In fact, it can be the opposite; why risk promoting someone to a new role, when they are doing great at the current one?

What actually marks someone for promotion is clear potential for the target role, sometimes despite a not-so-good current performance, indeed sometimes because of it.

That's the "Dilbert Principal:" Promote incompetent employees to management to minimize their ability to harm productivity.

I've been promoted up to CTO as a former developer (CTO of some big companies now!) and I feel I'm a pretty mediocre CTO compared to my dev performance. I can attest to this principle :)

People can learn. So I've often wondered if the Peter Principle is more of a recognition that people stop learning as they get older. Seems like the data could fit either scenario. People rise until their job requires more skills than they have, or people rise until they stop learning (or learn to stop learning, or until their learning capacity is reduced.) There's this thing that is called "growing up". Does growing up entail not being naive and an end to accepting what you are told (i.e., learning)? "They" say that when you're over 30 you are "over the hill". Has anyone ever tried to measure that? Maybe it's not a physical change in the body, maybe it's a consequence of getting hurt and learning not to be naive and accepting less teaching, being less open. If you've watched children grow up you can see them becoming more reticent and adopting postures.

I think the Peter Principle actually doesn't apply to hyper competent people because we get the "You're too valuable in your current position" treatment and therefore aren't given the opportunity to rise at all.

By some interpretations, it sounds like it means that people who are incompetent used to be competent before they were promoted into their current position... But in fact, because the super-competent candidates are locked into their low positions, it ensures that the pool of candidates who are selected for promotion consists mostly of moderately incompetent people... Kind of like "I like this person and they are OK in their current position but maybe if we promoted them, we'll get that spark going..." But, surprise surprise, they never attain excellence.

I don't know that it's about being "hyper competent" so much as it's about being competent in a niche position that is incredibly hard to fill. I think after a while you could argue that that person is indeed "hyper competent", but the situation actually starts before that point.

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.

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.

I had an employee give me this book one morning. He wasn’t a direct report, he reported to his manager who reported to me. Anyway he came in my office one morning and gave me the book. I hadn’t heard of it so I smiled and thanked him for thinking of me. I had an interesting wave of thoughts reading it… I still don’t know if he thought I was incompetent or what, but, in any case, it was enlightening.

So you never asked him why he gave you the book?

He used to be a pastor and one of his followers had given it to him. I did ask him but his answer amounted to “passing it along I thought you’d be interested”. Of course I spent a long time wondering what his deeper message to me may have been. Perhaps I’ll never exactly know his intent but that’s ok for me. He quit and took a job at a shoe store , but stays in touch with me 5+ years later.

Since first hearing about the Peter principle, I've wondered whether it would work to just make all promotions probationary.

Most places I've worked require you to be operating at the level you're going to be promoted to before you get actually promoted.

But you can't e.g. prove your ability to manage without being given a team to manage...

Some big tech organizations basically do this without the pay. Essentially in some FAANG corps, you have to prove having worked at L+1 while still at L to get promoted to L+1.

In my biased / personal experience, the veracity of such a bar kinda deteriorates over time and the short average tenure makes most promo processes corrupt B.S. when folks are more incentivized to just quit and join somewhere else for more money.

Also, this process and your suggestion at a "probation" tends to motivate working harder for the window being measured, regardless of how actually adept or well equipped the person is at the level for which they're trying to illustrate competence.

The problem is the step function differences. Someone may be an exceptional individual contributor but a lousy manager even at a relatively low level. A manager of a small team may not be great at handling a big team that may need to be realigned.

Some of it's about a company having reasonable tracks for people depending upon their preferences. But people may also have preferences they're just not suited for.

> You have to prove having worked at L+1 while still at L to get promoted to L+1.

Yes, and this line of thinking has spread to many orgs. And as you point out people tend to just move elsewhere instead.

The length of the observation window is one thing, and more fundamentally employees are asked to work above their pay grade in hope for it to be noticed/recognized, which is never a fun thing to do.

Then comes the responsibility problem: If a dev want to become a manager, there's no way to let them deal with HR, write performance reviews and do 1 on 1s including private information as a trial. They need the actual role inked in their contract, have people treat them as a manager. They can't be doing it as a role playing exercice. A probation period could work, but I think it would be pretty awkward to have them step down after 3 months.

Even better, have time-limited temporary promotions, which automatically revert after 6 months or a year. Permanent promotions are generally only available to those who have done a temporary promotion in the past.

That gives the organisation a way to tell if you are ready for permanent promotion, but removes the humiliating experience of "not passing your probation".

This doesn't seem to work so great in practice. Same story for demotions and pay reductions. Not that they can't happen. It's just not the norm for understandable reasons.

Summary: "In a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence."

I know the book is satire, but I’ve never actually witnessed this concept at play. What I have witnessed, many times, are people who always were incompetent rising because they are good at the social and political aspects of the workplace.

You've never seen a great developer turn into an awful manager after a promotion and then stay at that level?

Most of the time no, they self select out of it and “go back to coding again”.

It sounds as if they are competent then.

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 suggestion to beat it is wild: random promotions. As I’ve gotten older and seen how titles/pay are tied closely to experience and age I’ve started to see that maybe it isn’t the worst idea. It does, however, absolutely murder the method of meritocracy.

https://freakonomics.com/podcast/why-are-there-so-many-bad-b...

link for the lazy

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 is a horrible way to judge if a person will be a good manager.

> 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.

I probably misunderstood it, but what I heard it as you can be a good manager even if you don't have knowledge on what you are managing.

I would hate random promotions. They might then actually promote me. Increasing salary is a different matter; please do that!

counter example, the peter principle is used to disguise the lack of a career path.

when I started my career I was working at a national news agency as "Business Development Web" this was from 1998 to 2004 and everything "internet / cyber data highway" was my job. from website to api-s to product design to design to code, frontend backend and project management and well product management (feeds, stream, ...) . seperation of work in the online space did not exist then.

as at one point i told them that i want to develop further and not relaunch the website next year again the hold me back 'cause of the fear of peter principle - ans that they need me cause there was nobody else who could ever do my job.

so i quit.

so i think the peter principle exists, yes. there are incompetent managers which were very competent in another position.

but applying the peter principle for decision making is harmful. for the individual and the organisation.

i would say the sum pf applying the peter principle in an organisational is more harmful to promote people and see of they will be valuable, even if some of them will suck eventually.

Isn’t that more a case of “if you want job security make yourself irreplaceable. If you want a promotion make yourself replaceable”

Which competes with the Gervais Principle: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...

This is a negative view on human growth. If you don't promote incompetent people, then you promote no one, and the job doesn't get done, and no one learns to do the job.

I’ve always found it a little naive. Sure, day 1 of a new job you are not going to be as good as you are 2 years later. Seems like a normal part of growth.

This is a great excuse to not pay you as much as you deserve because you haven't demonstrated competence at the next level yet

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39wzku9KIEM

I'm much more compelled by the "Gervais Principle" from 2009: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...

Basically, instead of people being promoted to incompetence; the IC level is thought of as "economic losers"; IE: the exploited. People who are exploited and throw a lot of effort in are considered "the clueless" and occupy most middle management, and the high leadership of every company is considered sociopathic.

It's a much more compelling ideology to me as it maps unfortunately well into real life; at least as described (maybe the particular chosen words for the classifications evoke the wrong assumptions though).

9 minute video: https://youtu.be/jJYa68AnECY?t=29

I'm surprised to find this so far down. The Gervais Principle is the cynical cousin of the Peter Principle, and even if it isn't actually accurate for some workplaces, it makes for a compelling read.

I am a living example of this principle! They should use me as an example in the textbook.

Can we apply this to Boeing?

So what does this imply if you’ve never received a promotion, ever?

Does that mean long time employees are incompetent?

The peter principle assumes that competence in one role automatically translates to less competence in a higher role. If you follow this logic and reverse it, then it would be safe to assume that Steve Jobs would have been one of the best data entry clerks ever employed by Apple.

I always understood that a person being competent in role A is being promoted because of being good paired with maybe personal or/and corporate development goals. Once in the new role, with likely higher pay, it is very unlikely to go back. Instead of going back the person will try to stay afloat in the new role. Some will rise to the challenge others not.

> The peter principle assumes that competence in one role automatically translates to less competence in a higher role.

No it doesn't. It just says that if you're good at your job, you'll get promoted. If you're not, you'll stay where you are. So you either are good at your job and can be promoted or you're bad at your job. You can be good at your current job and other forces outside of competence are preventing that advancement.

And so, there is no logic to reverse and make that assumption. Also, for your reversal, Steve Jobs would've needs to start as a data entry clerk. Reversing this doesn't mean any job below you is where you came from.

> No it doesn't. It just says that if you're good at your job, you'll get promoted.

Respectfully, that's exactly what it says. Why else would someone get promoted "until they reach a level at which they are no longer competent" if one's competence increases with a promotion? e.g. Some people are intuitively better at managing people than they are at programming.

And those people who are good at management will get promoted to directors. The ones who aren't remain incompetent managers.

And some will be better at being a director than they were as a manager.

But those aren't the ones who earn a promotion from manager. The people who are good at being manager earn those.

And some won't, so they'll remain directors

And those ones will become senior directors, and so on. The principle isn't that no one will ever be good at their job; it's that they won't stay in that job long-term if they are good.

It does not. To quote Wikipedia [0]:

> employees are promoted based on their success in previous jobs until they reach a level at which they are no longer competent, as skills in one job do not necessarily translate to another.

That does not translate to or imply that:

> The peter principle assumes that competence in one role automatically translates to less competence in a higher role.

It is saying you will keep getting promoted until you are incompetent. You can be more competent at a higher role without violating the Peter Principle. That would be another point at which you would be promoted working your way towards incompetence. The Peter Principle just says you were competent at each step in the ladder until you got to the point you weren't promoted anymore because you are incompetent at it.

You're then take another logical leap in saying that promotion to the next level means you are competent at every job on every career path that could get you to that level. The Peter Principle only talks about your own career path.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle

I quoted directly from the source you provided.

I was going to comment on this thread but realized I had reached my level of incompetence at explaining things to other people on the internet.

You'll never get promoted with that attitude.

I will have to be satisfied with being a foot-soldier in the online user generated content wars. Alas.

I do not see your verbiage on that page. Can you point me to it?

Edit: You seem to be referring to this quote of yours:

> Why else would someone get promoted "until they reach a level at which they are no longer competent" if one's competence increases with a promotion?

My response explained why your leaps in logic don't make sense. That line just means there's a point at which their skills won't apply. Not that every rung above results in reduced competence. You can be better and better and then worse and the Peter Principle would still be applicable.

The Peter Principle is just about the changing competencies as one rises and how one hits a wall.

You make valid points, and your interpretation is likely a more accurate interpretation of the Peter Principle.

The principle just requires that competence at job A doesn't guarantee competence at the job you are promoted to after A. You would get the same results if competence at a job were random.

Notably it also suggests people could be great at high level jobs but never reach them because they aren't good at the low level ones.

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