The Peter Principle Tested

https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/05/the-peter-principle-tested.html

by drkimball • 7 years ago

94 47 7 years ago

zelias• 7 years ago

Every time I see this brought up I'm reminded of The Office. Mostly due to this incredibly in depth analysis: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...

dunk010• 7 years ago

That's a brilliant series of articles. Everyone should read it.

bitL2• 7 years ago

It's totally depressing/demotivating.

bhouston• 7 years ago

I do not buy the reasoning in the article. But maybe it applies to industries where people are lower performers than what I am used to.

Tycho4• 7 years ago

Obvious solution is just give people more money for doing the same thing.

rhizome• 7 years ago

I think people would probably prefer that as well, rather than the accepted standard of companies offering only cost-of-living raises unless you hustle your way to a new title (or company).

jldugger3• 7 years ago

Apparently no management ever wants to be paid less than their employees.

AnIdiotOnTheNet• 7 years ago

Which is ridiculous. I'm sure there are plenty of people who could be effective managers and would gladly do it for less than the people they manage, if it weren't for the fact that they would have to be hired by other managers for whom neither of these qualities are actually desirable.

friedegg• 7 years ago

Not a corporation, but that is the structure for most major athletes and actors. Managers can make significant money, but if they're not taking advantage of their client, then it's usually less, sometimes significantly less.

k__• 7 years ago

Maybe remove manager positions and replace them with something less top-down-like?

shawndumas2• 7 years ago

at Google managers often have a lower salary than the people that directly report to them.

WillPostForFood• 7 years ago

I see it all the time: sales people making monster salaries, far more than management. It is effective at retaining and keeping sales people. Unfortunately it introduces a different set of distortions because the short term value of making the next deal can derail long term health and goals.

stronglikedan• 7 years ago

Playing devil's advocate - it's because they are ultimately more responsible for anything their employees do, than are the employees themselves, so the manager has the most to lose when things go awry.

stcredzero3• 7 years ago

When I was attending grad school, the star professor was this guy who had defected from communist Hungary. He had an office twice as big as the department head's office, and I suspect he might even have been paid as much or more. The guy was awesome, though. I don't think anyone begrudged him any of that.

visz• 7 years ago

Not really true. Tom Brady makes $20m/year and his manager makes $10m/year. Both are arguably the best in their position and it would be hard to gauge which adds more to the overall team success.

zach_garwood• 7 years ago

And that sort of gets at the heart of the problem: We think of managers has having "employees" instead of having "teammates." Authority shouldn't come (solely) from hierarchy, it should come from being good at what you do. If the only reason people do what you say is because you're higher up the hierarchy than they are, then you're just not a good manager.

lordnacho• 7 years ago

Some of the big tech companies already have a solution to this problem (good performers might not be good managers):

They make it possible to make good money as an individual contributor without climbing the management ladder.

abakker• 7 years ago

That is almost word for word mentioned in the article:

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.

ip26• 7 years ago

There are no C-level individual contributors, really. At the head of an organization, is a manager/leader.

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.

shostack• 7 years ago

Can you be an effective C-level as an IC? Or by definition of the role does that preclude it?

nilkn• 7 years ago

I can confirm that, at least in my career so far, the management and technical tracks have never been completely equivalent -- even when great effort was spent trying to make them so.

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.

the_watcher• 7 years ago

The problem: while there is absolutely a need for very senior level ICs, there is simply less of one than there is for managers, so despite parallel career tracks existing, advancement often substantially more available via a management track.

bitL2• 7 years ago

But the ratio is like 10-100:1 for individual contributor vs manager, so the competition for a few spots on the IC ladder is much tougher than on the management ladder. That's why so many FANG employees are frustrated without any progress inside as they compete against some of the best engineers, but management is more leaky as assessing quality is not so clearly measurable/comparable.

stcredzero3• 7 years ago

There are different types of leadership, which get confused or conflated when talking about promotions and organizations. There are people who lead by being exemplars. Such people might contribute greatly to the organization, yet have minimal management skills.

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.

hinkley2• 7 years ago

I've had to be careful even in a lead position to make sure the other team members have plenty of breathing room to work on things that are useful and that they enjoy. Being a project contributor and a source of authority work at cross purposes. It's not impossible but it's a drag on your faculties to maintain it.

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....

projectramo• 7 years ago

There are many reasons not to continue to be promoted (limited spots at the top being the primary reason).

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).

jsdalton• 7 years ago

The Peter Principle has always struck me as an unnecessarily pessimistic way of looking at the world. Why should we find it surprising that when workers are promoted into a role with a greater -- and often vastly different -- responsibilities than what they have experience with, they are not immediately competent? This is especially true when the skills required are non trivial.

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.

ysavir• 7 years ago

Why should we find it surprising that when workers are promoted into a role with a greater -- and often vastly different -- responsibilities than what they have experience with, they are not immediately competent?

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.

bigred100• 7 years ago

I haven’t read the Peter principle book, but the popular idea I see around is simply the contrapositive of something most people think is a good thing: if you’re good at what you’re doing, you’ll usually get promoted to the next “level up”.

itsdrewmiller• 7 years ago

This was discussed last year when the working paper was published:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16972249

The Peter Principle Tested

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