Hacker News Reader

Comment by debo_ | Hacker News Reader

My favorite part of this article:

> A 2009 study by Italian researchers offered a more radical approach to the Peter Principle problem. It found that companies may be better served by leaving things to chance and promoting people "at random."

The study they linked: https://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S02195259185...

View on HN

Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if it worked. I also wouldn't be surprised if it led to better outcomes if that's how we chose political representatives. The way we do it now just seems to select for the most corrupt, greedy and manipulative, who are constantly pushing the boundaries of what they can get away with personally and professionally.

This process is known as Sortition.

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

Goodness you read my mind. (Or rather, I should have read on first before commenting!)

Yes. The type of people who seek out political office are least fit for it, and should be deliberately excluded. We should use sortition, not elections. And if we are going to have elections, we should have limited fixed terms — career politicians are the worst.

Japan, with its rigid schedule for promotions, effectively does this. Westerners often laugh at Japanese companies privileging seniority over demonstrated ability, but maybe they're on to something.

Measuring ability is a lot more tricky and has more to do at times with your ability to manipulate optics. I'd understand it as more reliable and a gradual way to increase scope and responsibility. You'd only want to go faster if you want to chase money and promotions at a pace that is faster than normal, which may not be realistic in this market (or in normal market conditions generally).

> Measuring ability is a lot more tricky and has more to do ~~at times~~ with your ability to manipulate optics.

fixed it

Another way would be to narrow down to the top 2 candidates and then decide by a literal coin toss if they are equally worthy of the position.

Another relevant aspect of Japanese management is the enforcement of consensus decision-making, which blunts the influence of the highly competent and incompetent.

> Westerners often laugh at Japanese companies privileging seniority over demonstrated ability

Unions in west have traditionally been built around seniority as well.

Yes, but union seniority is about getting paid more to do the same (or less) work; not about being promoted into different jobs.

I recently suggested a similar approach to politics, in order to address the problem that the people who WANT to be leaders are often the most unsuitable (power-hungry corrupt sociopaths).

By electring a random person, the probability of this happening is minimized.

As a co-worker pointed out, the ancient Greeks had something like thats in place: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition

Reply on news.ycombinator.com