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I've made my peace with The Peter Principle. People can surprise you and can "rise to the occasion" — or in the case of employment, rise to the difficulties of
by JKCalhoun 2y ago
I've made my peace with The Peter Principle. People can surprise you and can "rise to the occasion" — or in the case of employment, rise to the difficulties of the tasks or jobs you give them.
Not everyone can, but to deny someone that opportunity is perhaps ... cruel?
So we err on over-promotion — realizing our mistake only when it is too late. And I'm fine with that.
- amelius 2y agoSo you are OK with incompetent people occupying positions they should not have?
- frank_nitti 2y agoIf we had a crystal ball to know beforehand, then of course not. How can we know if someone will be incompetent in a role they have never been given the opportunity? If an excellent contributor/leader wants to take on more responsibility, or are forced to because it’s the only way to get a nontrivial salary increase, it seems like that decision leaves middle management with the ultimatum: promote or lose the excellent team member. I’m not the commenter you replied to, just my take. In some tech orgs they are barely starting to expand from Sr Engineer for ICs, many of previous cohorts were forced into management or hit a dead-end on comp
- wizardforhire 2y agoI am. Because by this logic no one save for a select few should ever be employed. Personally I’d rather live in a world where people are doing the best they can and given room to fail then a rigid bureaucratic hegemony of ultra efficiency.
- wbl 2y agoYou don't need to be the best to be worth it. The ok ER doc still saves lives.
- JKCalhoun 2y agoI'm presuming that "promoted to their level of incompetency" is phrased that way because it is humorous — but puts too fine a point on the incompetent part.
- stronglikedan 2y agoa lot of people are perfectly fine with it nowadays in the name of "equity", unfortunately
- OskarS 2y agoYeah, me too. Nobody is born being a great manager. The only way to learn is to actually become a manager and actually do the job. And you can tell if someone has potential. Like, a good manager needs to be a good communicator, well-organized and a good leader. These are skills you can notice if a person has before promoting them. Similarly going further up the hierarchy.
- perilunar 2y agoSo what do we do when we realise it was a mistake to promote someone? Presumably they were competent at their previous level, so we need a way to demote someone without it being seen as shameful or embarrassing.