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People typically end up in management via promotion. But they are not promoted because they would be good managers - they are promoted because they were good in

People typically end up in management via promotion. But they are not promoted because they would be good managers - they are promoted because they were good individual contributors. The folks who might make good managers (because they have better people skills, not necessarily better technical skills), often struggle as mediocre individual contributors, and never get promoted.

jacobquick 13y ago
On the other hand companies that think this way trip themselves up by letting people fail upward: "they can't do the job as an individual we'll let them manage everyone else into the ground."
- dhimes 13y ago
  It's called the Peter Principle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Principle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Principle
  - jacobquick 13y ago
    Well no in this scenario the person has been promoted two steps past his level of incompetence.
_delirium 13y ago
Upper management in recent years doesn't tend to work that way: the time when an assembly-line worker got promoted up the ranks to Ford CEO is long gone. Instead there's a separate class of professional managers who hop jobs between companies, starting from VP-level jobs at smaller companies and moving up towards C-level jobs at larger companies. Same with universities, where the President is no longer usually just a senior professor. This has corresponded somewhat with the divergence in individual/management salaries, I believe, as it's a completely different class of people rotating between firms, not just a promotion up the ranks. The advantage of that system is that people are indeed professional managers, not e.g. engineers who got promoted to management. But there are also downsides...
aschambers 13y ago
That is exactly the case. And managers are the main reason that people leave companies as well. This video talks about this challenge: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CM0RO3qnLMg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CM0RO3qnLMg

jacobquick 13y ago

On the other hand companies that think this way trip themselves up by letting people fail upward: "they can't do the job as an individual we'll let them manage everyone else into the ground."

dhimes 13y ago
It's called the Peter Principle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Principle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Principle
- jacobquick 13y ago
  Well no in this scenario the person has been promoted two steps past his level of incompetence.

_delirium 13y ago

Upper management in recent years doesn't tend to work that way: the time when an assembly-line worker got promoted up the ranks to Ford CEO is long gone. Instead there's a separate class of professional managers who hop jobs between companies, starting from VP-level jobs at smaller companies and moving up towards C-level jobs at larger companies. Same with universities, where the President is no longer usually just a senior professor. This has corresponded somewhat with the divergence in individual/management salaries, I believe, as it's a completely different class of people rotating between firms, not just a promotion up the ranks. The advantage of that system is that people are indeed professional managers, not e.g. engineers who got promoted to management. But there are also downsides...

aschambers 13y ago

That is exactly the case. And managers are the main reason that people leave companies as well. This video talks about this challenge: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CM0RO3qnLMg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CM0RO3qnLMg