The Peter Principle: FReeper Experiences

Investopedia ^ | 07-12-2019 | Adam Hayes

[Hieronymus]

Thanks for pointing that out—I’d skimmed through it but was glad I went back.

[Mr. K]

It’s for that reason alone I stayed in software engineering - although I was offered management many times.

I would suck at it. I just tell them give me a little raise and tell the new guy to rely on me for advice, or I’ll leave.

Often decided to leave, but called back when they fired the incompetent they hired. Usually at a significantly higher rate.

[Hieronymus]

Check out the Pope.

[Paisan]

It’s been proven to be about as true as gravity.

I agree. It is one of the few books that one can read over and over.

I spent 43 years in a large organization and saw every aspect of the Peter Principal in play.

I followed the Peter Parry, whereby an individual realizes he has reached his level of complete competence and utilizes clever ploys to guarantee that he will NOT be promoted.

Bottom Line: The nay-sayers MUST READ THIS BOOK !

[Joe 6-pack]

In my industry, I’ve actually seen this work in reverse, where somebody who is very competent as a manager and leader of people doing the technical work may find themselves in the field where they have to handle a case and for some reason, they’re just not that good at it.

[elcid1970]

You must have read the sequel “The Peter Prescription”.

Many good tactics in there to remain at one’s level of competence.

[ConservativeMind]

This is precisely the problem at my corporation, a very large one.

[Paisan]

“The Peter Prescription”.

I believe that I have it, and did read it.

I probably purchased 10 copies of The Peter Principal during my tenure, and gave them to sympathetic individuals at my company. All of them became adherents to the inescapable tenets contained therein.

It ain’t Push, it’s Pull...

I think I gave away my last copy.

Gotta go to Amazon...

[RoosterRedux]

Management in any large company is a beatch. And, on top of that, leadership at the top has to develop the right general atmosphere.

Positions open up and people who are either unqualified or later turn out to be unable to handle them get moved up into positions wherein they are unable to function produtively.

Large organizations and hierarchies by their very natures are unwieldy and even corrupt (take note that religious organizations are not immune despite the best of intentions).

The solution (the ONLY solution) is competition.

Where one company or organization screws up, another fills the void. When an entire industry consists of companies which cannot operate effectively, new ventures are formed who compete among themselves and the old guard.

An economy that is healthiest in light of the self-destructive nature of organizations is the one (or the several) in which new ventures are most easily started and for whom "smart" venture capital is most easily formed.

[Roccus]

This is why I’ve studiously avoided management.

Likewise. I turned down offers of management positions three times in my career.

[Nateman]

Hubert Hoover is a good example of this . He was an excellent engineer but an awful president. In his defense his replacement, FDR , was even worse. An excellent con man who damaged the country immensely with his push towards socialism.

[susannah59]

I’ve tried management. I was competent at it but don’t enjoy it. I have no interest in trying it again.

[bgill]

I had two government bosses who were real peters. Both minorities. One was a Yankee who spoke Ebonics. You could tell if he’d dictated a report - straight jive talk. I constantly had to explain what simple common American words meant.

The other one was a muzzy straight out of the ME who hated women, left handed folk, etc. And had an IQ of maybe 80 on a good day. I ended up quiting due to that monster.

[upchuck]

:)

[BitWielder1]

What is the name of the principle that all the dull-witted, scaredy-cats band together in organizations against innovation and excellence?

Marketing.

[T.B. Yoits]

One would be lucky to have a boss who had been competent at an earlier level in their “upward” progression.

The Peter Principle has long been surpassed by the Dilbert Principle where companies promote incompetent employees to management to get them out of the workflow.

I've worked in inverted companies where the professionals at the bottom refused to go into management. It got so imbalanced at one company where I had three friends with Masters degrees reporting to a Manager who had an expected Bachelor's Degree date on his resume. As expected, that situation wasn't going to last. The look on the Director's face was priceless when he'd meet with one of them to discuss opportunities only to have them say “sorry but I've already accepted an offer at another company”.

I saw companies offering tuition assistance not just because they wanted “to help” or for their workers to know more but because too many employees were getting advanced training and degrees on their own and then walking out the door. With tuition assistance, the managers know if someone’s planning to leave because the individual stops receiving the tuition a year before they depart in order to avoid having to pay it back.

[Oatka]

This is why I’ve studiously avoided management.

Was a pretty good computer programmer/systems analyst and was promoted to asst DP manager, then had to temporarily fill in for six months when the manager got seriously ill. I couldn't believe the petty crap the upper management sent down and longed for my old job. Then when I hit 40, I was under pressure to move on up ("STILL a programmer at 40?" Ewww.)

My relief came when I became a contractor - same/better pay and none of the B/S. At my first contracting job I came home and told the Mrs there was "something different" but I couldn't put my finger on it. Then one day I heard two mid-managers squabbling in a minor turf war and it hit me - I don't have to worry about that crap - I'm a hired gun and if you're not happy with me, let me go. I had that mental chip on my shoulder ever after. Retired now, and never regretted the path I took.

[Yaelle]

So.... This isn’t about sex at all?

[minnesota_bound]

I read "The Peter Principle" back when I started working full time. Later I read "The Dilbert Principle: A Cubicle's-Eye View of Bosses, Meetings, Management Fads & Other Workplace Afflictions".

I seen many of the things explained in the books in the companies I have worked at.

I currently am in an office where many competent people were fired by the new big boss soon after he was hired and who merged a dept with ours whose manager does not know anything about the other dept. He told the rest of us we could not talk to them. He likes procedure so you gotta email them instead of walking 10ft and getting a quick answer.....

He is in all day meetings which you know accomplish little. The new big boss renamed many depts and email links and moved things to the "cloud" where the files we need are now hard to find. Looks like he did stuff but only rearranged the deck chairs. I expect he will move on to another company in a few years after disrupting things.

He had to hire a supervisor from our office whose main function looks to be bad mouthing our east coast counterparts and anyone in our office when they step out on break. He is like a yippie dog.

[Textide]

Ha, disappointed?