When Incompetent Leaders Get Promoted Again — by Sabotaging Everyone Above Them
Petered (what happens after the Peter Principle)
The Peter Principle says people rise until they hit their level of incompetence. Christian Gläßel and Adam Scharpf argue that's not a stable resting point: unable to advance or meet expectations, a "career-pressured" person may take on high-risk, morally dubious tasks — or sabotage superiors with false allegations and leaked secrets — to create openings above and climb further. The result: someone promoted past their competence, sensing a threat to their livelihood, becomes a threat to everyone else.
In other words, someone promoted up to their level of incompetence, sensing a threat to their own livelihood, becomes a threat to everyone else.
- jmarlow47
I feel like I've been "Petered". Years of promotions for hard work, retention, and being genuinely valued over my peers; something which is not hard to do as a tech employee in non-tech big corpo.
Anyone have experience escaping this? Is the enlightened take to accept no interesting company will match your title, because ultimately it does exceed your capabilities, and focus on working somewhere that actually interests you with lower "status" and compensation?
- bloomingeek
<“A-people hire A-people, B-people hire C-people”>
I didn't go into management because I didn't think circumstances were stable enough. I did see four co-workers go up the ladder, with disastrous results. Two of them I tried to warn, the other two would have been a waste of time to warn. By the time I retired, two had been fired, one drank himself into a coma, then passed away. The fourth is still working, but became so hated, the company keeps moving him to different posts. All four of these cases were promoted by management personnel who were "people persons", but were terrible decision makers.
There's an old saying, "Ain't nothing to it, if you're born to it." I know it's too simplistic, but it's based on a lot of reality.
- JSR_FDED
After they’ve been promoted to their level of incompetence, they lean in very hard on relationships to survive.
Organizations where they get away with this are miserable to work for, and their influence ensures nothing merit-related ever happens again. Literally the source of the famous expression “A-people hire A-people, B-people hire C-people”.
- carschno
I think the Peter Principle addresses a good point, but misses a critical one: the hierarchy itself. Obviously, a manager requires different skills than an engineer, so why should a good engineer be a good manager? This holds the other way round: a good manager is not particularly likely to be a good engineer.
Both is fine, these are just different jobs. However, the problem is that the manager is 'above' the engineer in the generally accepted hierarchy. Consequently, engineers are pressured to become managers for the development. As long as this hierarchy exists, the problem will exist.
- Ambolia
Aren't most companies combating this by not allowing people to progress much inside a company for like the last 30 years? For my whole work life growth inside any company has been pretty much a joke and the only growth is by jumping around to a new company.