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Comment by abadpoli | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

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