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Comments (86)

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  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.
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  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.
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  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”.
• poopingatwork
  It's easier to remember that in some organizations, it's about what you can do.In others, it's about who you know.But when it comes to internal promotions: it's a mix of both, and promoting people who are likely to boost your own career is an obvious choice.When someone incompetent is promoted, people below them see their incompetence. However, the people above the promoter only see the promoter's incompetence.
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  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?
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  moktonar
  I find the logic behind the principle itself buggy as it assumes that people will not improve in what they do. Even if one gets promoted close to his or her level of incompetence, it doesn’t mean that he can’t become more knowledgeable while making experience. That by the way is almost always the case, unless you reach your hard limit (eg QI or something), then you should not get further promoted (in theory). That reality is different and the system is somewhat “rigged”, that’s completely a different pair of sleeves.
• donatj
  In my mid twenties, almost twenty years ago, I was a very good developer. I was promoted into a management position. It was offered, I thought I wanted it. I did not. I was terrible at it, I wanted to spend my time building, not sitting in client meetings and managing other peoples interpersonal problems.A year in I got the only negative review of my career, and knew I couldn't keep doing this. I was so stressed I developed trigeminal neuralgia. I had to leave. A friend was looking for developers and I jumped at the opportunity. It was technically a demotion but probably one of the best choices I've made in my life.All these years later, I'd love to take a second crack at it. I am a lot more capable and mature and I think I could handle it better now. Combine that with not really enjoying the work now that everything is AI driven and it might be time to give it another shot.
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  stephenlf
  > What we call imposter syndrome was originally termed imposter phenomena, a term that makes plain that it is something that can be observed, not merely felt. The transformation into a syndrome shifted the experience of being impostered by a patriarchal, white supremacist society into a medicalized disorder, something for which the impostered person must be treated. That’s a neat trick: to shift the locus of treatment to the mistreated person, rather than the system that caused her harm. But perhaps there’s even another, more diabolical move here.I have no idea what this is saying. What does “being impostered” mean? As far as I know, “Imposter Syndrome” is all about personal insecurities. It’s not something imposed.
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  schnika
  I have been promoted as an EM/Team Lead three times now. Every time I felt like an imposter to myself and the org and quit shortly after. I just stay IC now. No matter what others see in me. I learned that as an IC with 20% of management is my personal sweet spot. No more getting petered:)
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  rmah
  After a few decades of working in a variety of positions, I've come to the conclusion that the "Peter Principle" is cute, pithy aphorism but not reflective of reality. The crux is that "competence" and promotion is not a one dimensional ladder where each promotion requires you to simply be more competent than in your previous position. While this is sometimes true, just as often, promotion means that you need to exercise different skills. Which you may or may not be able to do well (or learn rapidly enough).For example, getting promoted to "senior developer" may mean higher expectations than just "developer". But you may also be expected to architect parts of systems, mentor more junior staff, provide guidance etc. Even more starkly, if you get promoted to something like "team lead" or a more managerial/executive level position, your need to be focus more on prioritization, managing people, etc. Very different skills than writing code.Further down, the author wrote:"The transformation into a syndrome shifted the experience of being impostered by a patriarchal, white supremacist society into a medicalized disorder, something for which the impostered person must be treated. That’s a neat trick: to shift the locus of treatment to the mistreated person, rather than the system that caused her harm."At which point, I have to admit, I said "WTF?" in my head. One could just as easily say the transformation into "syndrome" is rooted in a society that has shifted from focusing on actions and accountability to one that focuses ever more on inner-feelings as what is important.
• 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.
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  euroderf
  An important element of the Peter Principle (the book) is that if you know that you have reached your upper competence limit in the organisation, you might have to take measures to prevent further promotion. Or in some cases (incompetence level achieved!) you might even have to engineer a way to drop back to your old job.The book mentions the case of the guy who "accidentally" parked his car in the big boss's spot once a month or so, to forestall promotion.
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  thenoblesunfish
  I have to admit that while this principle makes intuitive sense, it seems to be assume that promotion and competence are so simply related. A few people are the "rock stars", but for most, in organizations I've been in, it seems like being promoted (or winning grants or otherwise getting power and money) is so competitive that it becomes its own sub-job requiring a lot of your bandwidth, thus probably reducing your competence.
• amboo7
  A->A, B->C is also known as the Fibonacci law of hiring: 1st class people hire 1st class people (but may also hire 2nd class people), 2nd class people hire 3rd class people, etc.
• mft_
  Amusingly, the one example I’ve ever seen of someone quickly realising they’d been promoted into a role they weren’t capable of or suited to and choosing to leave it quickly as a result… was called Peter.
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  karol
  After that people sink or swim. It depends whether they can learn enough to or their innate learning capacity has reached a limit.
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  jrm4
  Nice, I give the following advice often, namely:Very often, the cause of imposter syndrome is that there is, in fact, an imposter. It just ain't YOU.
• wolfi1
  still think, that Dilbert's Principle is more true the situation, most people have no competence whatsoever
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  gherkinnn
  Smells awfully like the Gervais Principle to me, where the petering manager is part of the clueless class.
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  kstenerud
  This feels to me like a stretch. Christian Gläßel and Adam Scharpf studied data from the Argentinian army and compared it with historical accounts of dictatorships and coups, tracing differences between henchmen, coup plotters, and other members of the officer corps. These are situations where your physical survival often depends on what you do.That's very different from company environments.The Peter Principle is also unfortunately an overly simplistic model. Yes, some people can get promoted to a level where they technically can't cope anymore, but ability is rarely the measure by which people advance (except at the lowest grades where your political power is almost nil).
• dav_Oz
  > What we call imposter syndrome was originally termed imposter phenomena, a term that makes plain that it is something that can be observed, not merely felt. The transformation into a syndrome shifted the experience of being impostered by a patriarchal, white supremacist society into a medicalized disorder, something for which the impostered person must be treated. That’s a neat trick: to shift the locus of treatment to the mistreated person, rather than the system that caused her harm. But perhaps there’s even another, more diabolical move here. What if the popularity of imposter syndrome is, in part, a means of obscuring the actual imposters in our midst? What are we missing when we look inward instead of around?This seemed always baffling if someone openly "confessed" suffering from the imposter syndrome.It is like calling yourself a "skeptic" and taking joy in dismantling other people's beliefs, yet reacting with extreme sensitivity the moment your own convictions are touched upon. Or if you were really paranoid, you would be unsure of everything (even of your paranoid state) so you wouldn't just confidently drop that label in conversation doing so usually serves as a polite excuse for being a "control freak" which in turn serves as an excuse for something else and so on.In a broader sense this touches upon a deeper cultural issues around appearances and self-identification. In (a lot of) different cultures one rarely talks about an internal state in an abstract, systematic almost clinical manner instead a wide breadth of colorful almost childlike language is used to describe rising and ebbing feelings while at the same time one's actions are observed very diligently and somehow quietly tallied over time.Under those circumstances, you can bluff, obfuscate or outright lie and it matters very little so long as your actions are deemed good conversely if you present yourself as genuine, "authentic," and vulnerable while your actual deeds are horrible: out you go. So overall there is less "flexibility" and more "accountability".
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  stephbook
  I don't think mixing the Peter principle with the advancement offered through unethical work offers more insights than both alone.Really feels shoehorned in.
• mentalgear
  > Imposters cloak themselves in a fog of obfuscation and busyness, so that the people around them can never say for sure what it is they are doing, or how well (or not) they are doing it.Indeed, the more transparent a system is, the better it works toward its goals, since issues can be identified and fixed quickly. Of course, the nodes within the system that profit from obfuscation are determined to avoid real transparency across the network, as it would easily upend their parasitic game.If we apply this to the global economy and society, we can see how billionaires, monopolistic companies, and other rent-seeking nodes wrap themselves in layers of obfuscation: PR, propaganda, media relations, politics, NDAs, patents. They then use those obscured resources to maintain and expand their illegitimate resources further through methods like lobbying, politics, tax loopholes, specialized laws.Therefore, transparency is fundamental for any operating system to stay healthy, distribute power evenly, and avoid succumbing to the exploitation of a few power-aggregating parasitic nodes.
• nkapias
  Beyond the content, I'm pleasantly surprised to find this website design easier to read than most others.
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  torben-friis
  I always thought that the peter principle is very flawed, in that it assumes an increasing level of competence required per job, and people whose qualities are static.About the first, being manager is not inherently a more difficult job than being a senior IC. It's just a wildly different skillset.About the second, reaching a position you can't do does not at all mean you'll never be able to do it. We learn.The right insight there is that the switch to management as a necessary step to grow is horribly handled. But "leader as a profession" sucks as well, managers fundamentally ignorant of the kind of work they're managing.I think what we need is a more fluid relationship between work and learning. We assume a college->work pipeline, when maybe we should have career stages at which we go back to further learning.
• jongjong
  My view of imposter syndrome is that it is often used as a cover used by actual imposters to self-soothe.It's core to the functioning of our current system which promotes and rewards based on things other than merit. It's only natural that people who got stuff they didn't deserve would feel like imposters. The narrative of 'imposter syndrome' helps to persuade them that they aren't, that their feeling is normal and shared by 'all successful people'... Which is not entirely true but to the extent that it is true within certain groups of people, it is revealing. It does seem like there are large groups of imposters within our society who live in a parallel reality.This idea is interesting to think about from an AI lense as well because AI can help hide incompetence a lot better.
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  aetherspawn
  The word illegal used a lot, but really, how pervasive is people doing illegal stuff at work? Surely not very.
• lowbloodsugar
  No shit.
• jknoepfler
  I am henceforth going to refer to toxic technobabble projects (e.g. "AI-all-the-things") as "Peter Projects."It does help me understand why we've seen a wave of slimy shills rise up from the corporate detritus to lead impossible/meaningless projects that their co-workers despise.
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  rusk
  Apropos of nothing
• arjie
  [flagged]