# The Peter Principle: People Rise to their Level of Incompetence



## butterknucket (Feb 5, 2006)

Discuss


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## laristotle (Aug 29, 2019)

'hey boss, are you trying to grow a goatee, or did your boss forget to wipe his ass'.


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## butterknucket (Feb 5, 2006)




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## butterknucket (Feb 5, 2006)




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## FatStrat2 (Apr 7, 2021)

If work has taught me anything, it's that the entire department you work for can never rise above the incompetence of its leader.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

One of the reasons why the Peter Principle continues to be valid is that the people who appoint/promote the individual in question do not wish to be blamed for promoting someone who demonstrates why their knowledge about personnel and job requirements is sorely lacking. So the ladder of success ends at the point where the hiring manager/s still look like they know what they're doing.

I've had the pleasure/torture of surveying tens of thousands of managers and non-managerial employees and reading over their free-form comments about hiring practices, as well as engaging in extensive analysis of their quantitative "checkmark" data. A great many have only a vague idea of what they need (if a hiring manager), or what the manager was looking for (if a job candidate). I suspect that's a secret most managers would rather keep hidden. Doesn't mean they're stupid. They just don't have the gift of prophecy, or engage in detailed job analysis.


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## Mooh (Mar 7, 2007)

In my now sorely out of date experience in union side labour relations (broader public sector municipalities, hospitals, nursing homes, etc) I encountered those managers all too often, and they were very often the sole source of grievance issues. Where I encountered good management there were few grievances, good relationships, and my favourite style of reaching agreements to make problems go away…basically one of us would ask the other, “What do we have to do to make this problem go away?” Compromise, adhere to the collective agreement, and other obvious solutions. Sometimes we had to be creative. Obvious solutions don’t come naturally to the Peter Principled. Creative solutions don’t come to them at all. They’re either too stupid, too uneducated, too stubborn, too afraid to look weak, too much the empire builder, too much all of the above.


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## bw66 (Dec 17, 2009)

I'm more inclined to buy into "The Dilbert Principle" which takes it one step further:



> The *Dilbert principle* is a concept in management developed by Scott Adams, creator of the comic strip _Dilbert_, which states that companies tend to systematically promote incompetent employees to management to get them out of the workflow. The Dilbert principle is inspired by the Peter principle, which holds that employees are promoted based on success in their current position until they reach their "level of incompetence" and are no longer promoted. Under the Dilbert principle, employees who were never competent are promoted to management to limit the damage they can do.








Dilbert principle - Wikipedia







en.wikipedia.org





I read it years ago and it was entirely consistent with my experience of upper management when I got a backstage view of hundreds of companies while working on corporate events as an audio-visual tech.


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## butterknucket (Feb 5, 2006)

Mooh said:


> In my now sorely out of date experience in union side labour relations (broader public sector municipalities, hospitals, nursing homes, etc) I encountered those managers all too often, and they were very often the sole source of grievance issues. Where I encountered good management there were few grievances, good relationships, and my favourite style of reaching agreements to make problems go away…basically one of us would ask the other, “What do we have to do to make this problem go away?” Compromise, adhere to the collective agreement, and other obvious solutions. Sometimes we had to be creative. Obvious solutions don’t come naturally to the Peter Principled. Creative solutions don’t come to them at all. They’re either too stupid, too uneducated, too stubborn, too afraid to look weak, too much the empire builder, too much all of the above.


Yep, all too often I've encountered major problems which could have been prevented if better hiring/promotion decisions were made.


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## Budda (May 29, 2007)

The dilbert principle may explain something in my workplace lol.

So who was the unlucky Peter that brought this on?


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## butterknucket (Feb 5, 2006)

bw66 said:


> I'm more inclined to buy into "The Dilbert Principle" which takes it one step further:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


My dad has had that book in his home office for years. I should borrow it from him.


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## butterknucket (Feb 5, 2006)

Budda said:


> The dilbert principle may explain something in my workplace lol.
> 
> So who was the unlucky Peter that brought this on?


Far too many for me. 

A lof of them are full blown drinking stories.


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## Budda (May 29, 2007)

butterknucket said:


> Far too many for me.
> 
> A lof of them are full blown drinking stories.


I mean the Peter this was named after. Unless they mean petering out..


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## Diablo (Dec 20, 2007)

I’ve only ever worked in the private sector. I’ve only seen someone moved up as a way to neutralize them only near the top levels….usually a promotion that _sounds_ great, but has no reports or significant influence, to transition them out when nearing retirement. Or some newly created role where they will most likely fail, to justify packaging them out. Never seen such a promotion at the middle levels…they just get fired.

otherwise, I think the promotions are in earnest but the criteria is flawed (nepotism, or they just “look the part” and are expected to fit in well with current management). Hiring externally for promotable positions is a big problem as well. Companies love to feel like they poached someone from a competitor, much more than promoting someone from within. In some places, you will always be seen for what you are, not what you could be.

also, life isn’t fair. Some people are awesome at interviewing and taking credit for things personally….much better than their actual abilities or achievements suggest. I knew ppl in university that were better at taking tests than their actual knowledge as well. They always knew what questions would be on the exams and studied just those areas, really thoroughly, while disregarding the rest.

I’ve always been pretty modest, sharing credit with my team etc. While companies claim they value that sort of teamwork, IME it’s empty words…bragging and grubbing credit for saving the world singlehandedly, would have gotten me further. But I dont enjoy that sort of office politics. Personal karma is more important to me than business karma.
my own additional paranoid suspicion….being a white guy with a foreign sounding/hard to pronounce name is the worst of both worlds. Too white to benefit from diversity initiatIves, not white enough to fit in with the typical management Anglo Saxon / Franco boys club. Except in IT, which imo is a more ethnically progressive dept in most companies.


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## Paul M (Mar 27, 2015)

Budda said:


> I mean the Peter this was named after. Unless they mean petering out..


Dr. Laurence J. Peter. He described the concept, and co-authored the book. It was originally meant to be satire, but it turned out to be all too true.


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## SWLABR (Nov 7, 2017)

I've seen very talented people get promoted and moved into their perfect skillset job where they flourish and succeed. I've also seen lunatics who should have been fired get shuffled to cause "less damage" over here... no, there... oops, back over here. 

Depends on the company, and how much _Old Boys Club_ mentality is prevalent.


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## Paul Running (Apr 12, 2020)




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## Paul Running (Apr 12, 2020)

I worked for a boss and his philosophy was if the bench tech is destroying equipment due to incompetence, get him out of there and move him into management.


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## laristotle (Aug 29, 2019)

The most qualified will not be promoted if the upper manager considers them a threat to their position.


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## YaReMi (Mar 9, 2006)

Paul M said:


> Dr. Laurence J. Peter. He described the concept, and co-authored the book. It was originally meant to be satire, but it turned out to be all too true.


Absurdity is the only reality (Frank Zappa)


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

For me, the Peter and Dilbert Principles stem from the same basis: the desire of management to look like they know what they're doing. If you fire someone not at an entry-level position because of incompetence, it implies poor judgment on the part of whoever hired them in the first place. If you move the incompetent to a higher-level position where they can't do any harm, the move leaves the reputation of those who hired the incompetent intact.

I hate to be so down on managers, but there is a lot that finds its roots in managers' desire to maintain their self-esteem and reputation amongst peers and those they report to. That tendency is by NO means unique to managers. It's a tendency we *all* share. But it has "interesting" and occasionally destructive implications for organizations.


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## SWLABR (Nov 7, 2017)

As a manager, I have hired/fired a lot of people. Well, I haven't fired _that_ many.. 

Try as we (myself/recruiters/HR) may, some dopes make it into our workforce. They interview well, and their C/V doesn't scream "run away" so I've hired them. I have never though, let anyone get past their probation if there are signs of doubt. Once I see they are unqualified for what we've asked of them, and beyond the Training piece, I cut them loose. Seemingly similar work experience, interviews, and training does not always align. 

On the flip side, I have taken "chances" on folks who did not really have the exact skill set I was looking for, but they interviewed well, and I hired them. Not all of those hunches paid off, but a lot did. Enough for me to keep at it in hopes of finding the hidden gem.


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## crann (May 10, 2014)

To me this boils down to this: no one knows what they're doing. Some people care enough to figure it out while others try and fly under the radar as long as they can.


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## mawmow (Nov 14, 2017)

I once stumbled on the pocket book in a flea market and yeah bought it.
The most interesting part is the way to get those unfortunate people on the side rail.
I remember I was ashamed or delighted as I could add some names there.
For example, promoting an incompetent production manager, relative of the founder and president, as vice-president of corporative relations : his secretary would book meetings...
away from the office, say on golf courses, where the guy would not harm the company.
I also once met a guy who did ask to return to his former job station.


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## ishtar (May 16, 2021)

Laurence Peter's book was on the book shelf in my childhood home.

I have always anticipated my own achievements of incompetence. Not that I am good at prediction.

A few years ago, I mentioned the Peter principle to a colleague.
This morning, he texted me a link to a podcast episode that deals, in part, with the Principle.

Could be worth a listen. Entertaining.









Hamlet Was Wrong - Revisionist History


The delicate science of hiring nihilism, examined in five deeply-personal case studies.




pca.st


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## Ship of fools (Nov 17, 2007)

Paul Running said:


> View attachment 371733


Hey wait a minute now, but its true I have seen folks hired in the hospital system with no experience what's so ever in health care. And they come in thinking that they know actually something that those below don't know. And in some cases totally fuck up things to the point that they have to be moved from that hospital into another one that doesn't know them from jack shit.
And then of course we have those that should have retired many moons ago and that refuse to come into the next century of knowledge.
Oh well what can we do when you all live in a zoo but join into the madness and except the upper crust position.


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## cheezyridr (Jun 8, 2009)

mawmow said:


> I also once met a guy who did ask to return to his former job station.


i did it once. i went from shop fabricator to draftsman. i absolutely hated it. i asked the shop manager if i could come back. he said he would love to get me back in there, he was really busy. so i went to the drafting manager, and asked to go back to the shop. he wouldn't allow it...

so i openly surfed the most disgusting porn i could find on the internet at the time. i left it open on my screen and went to lunch, had a smoke break, went to the bathroom, etc. i sent some of the nastiest images you can imagine, to the printer, and left them there. i didn't draw a single line for a month. that's how long it took them to fire me. i went to another company for a few months, at $2/hr more. then i came back to my old job for $2 more


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## tomee2 (Feb 27, 2017)

Interesting examples put out there. At times I feel like the incompetent one that has risen too high, but then people praise me and let me manage more people or take on bigger projects, so maybe I'm not that guy... yet. And at times I'm waiting for the "big failure" that'll take me down to where I " think" I should be.


We do have a few people at work that were certainly "promoted" out of managing other people. 

I'll have to find the book one day for sure.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

cheezyridr said:


> i did it once. i went from shop fabricator to draftsman. i absolutely hated it. i asked the shop manager if i could come back. he said he would love to get me back in there, he was really busy. so i went to the drafting manager, and asked to go back to the shop. he wouldn't allow it...
> 
> so i openly surfed the most disgusting porn i could find on the internet at the time. i left it open on my screen and went to lunch, had a smoke break, went to the bathroom, etc. i sent some of the nastiest images you can imagine, to the printer, and left them there. i didn't draw a single line for a month. that's how long it took them to fire me. i went to another company for a few months, at $2/hr more. then i came back to my old job for $2 more


Um....interesting "bargaining strategy".


SWLABR said:


> As a manager, I have hired/fired a lot of people. Well, I haven't fired _that_ many..
> 
> Try as we (myself/recruiters/HR) may, some dopes make it into our workforce. They interview well, and their C/V doesn't scream "run away" so I've hired them. I have never though, let anyone get past their probation if there are signs of doubt. Once I see they are unqualified for what we've asked of them, and beyond the Training piece, I cut them loose. Seemingly similar work experience, interviews, and training does not always align.
> 
> On the flip side, I have taken "chances" on folks who did not really have the exact skill set I was looking for, but they interviewed well, and I hired them. Not all of those hunches paid off, but a lot did. Enough for me to keep at it in hopes of finding the hidden gem.


In the private sector, there is "employment at will". People make bad hiring decisions, but can remedy the situation by firing. In the public sector, which is generally MUCH more unionized, hiring managers are keen to avoid what a colleague who worked for DHS, stateside, described to me as "the 30 year mistake" (a bad hire that you can't get rid of). The result is that the public sector often builds in lengthy onerous multi-step application/hiring processes.

My son the structural engineer acquainted me with the dictum of civil engineering that "doctors can bury their mistakes, but engineers have to live with them". Doctors and the private sector share that in common, while engineers and the public sector share the enduring regret of having to face their mistakes.

As I understand it, the Peter Principle was not so much a declaration of the stupidity or incompetence of management. Rather, when it is clear that an employee has reached their maximum level of competence, conceivably by struggling in their current position, they're not going to be promoted any higher.

Malcolm Gladwell had a terrific piece nearly 20 years back, on the fall of Enron and Worldcomm from an HR perspective ( The Talent Myth ). At the time, McKinsey & Co. were waving the flag for what they termed "the war for talent". A big part of the war was hiring "the best and the brightest", lest your competitors hire them first, and promoting them up the wazoo, so that they decide to stay with your company. As Gladwell notes, these companies were promoting these recent grads they had recruited from hotshot business programs something like every 4 months. That meant these MBA geniuses could come up with some brainstorm to dump on a work unit they barely knew, and then be promoted to a different role/unit without ever having to pick up the pieces of a bad idea.


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## SWLABR (Nov 7, 2017)

Anyone can be fired. Unionized or not. It comes down to how much homework are you (as a manger) willing to do to build a case against them, without a) picking on them while b) continuing to keep the “good employees” held to the same standards. In my personal experience, the good ones know the bad ones need to go. They know what you’ve got planned, or catch on quickly. You either “coach them out the door” or turn them for the better. I’ve done both. Ultimately, good employees do not want to pull dead weight. The other option of course, is how much are you willing to spend to get rid of someone? If the initial upfront cost outweighs the 30yr nightmare, it’s worth it 
“Nothing will kill a great employee faster than watching you tolerate a bad one”.

But, as said, this relates more to the promotion to the point of incompetence. I’ve seen it. Hell, I was almost in it. I have not been in my present role long. Within a year of starting, my boss abruptly left. Head Office immediately looked to me. I wisely turned it down. Not that I don’t want it someday, but this would have been way too soon. In his job, you have to, have to, have to know your business numbers inside and out. I was too new to grasp them that deeply. I know I would have done a disservice to myself and the company


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## cheezyridr (Jun 8, 2009)

mhammer said:


> Um....interesting "bargaining strategy".


there was no bargaining. i was told no, flatly. the drafting dept manager said he needed me, and wasn't letting me go. 
i don't remember why anymore, but for some reason, i couldn't quit. i needed them to fire me. 




mhammer said:


> That meant these MBA geniuses could come up with some brainstorm to dump on a work unit they barely knew, and then be promoted to a different role/unit without ever having to pick up the pieces of a bad idea.


this sounds alot like gov't to me


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

cheezyridr said:


> this sounds alot like gov't to me


Maybe, but the reality is that it was the beloved private sector that so many place their faith and retirement savings in.
Stupidity is like dandelions - it can grow pretty much anywhere.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

SWLABR said:


> Anyone can be fired. Unionized or not. It comes down to how much homework are you (as a manger) willing to do to build a case against them, without a) picking on them while b) continuing to keep the “good employees” held to the same standards. In my personal experience, the good ones know the bad ones need to go. They know what you’ve got planned, or catch on quickly. You either “coach them out the door” or turn them for the better. I’ve done both. Ultimately, good employees do not want to pull dead weight. The other option of course, is how much are you willing to spend to get rid of someone? *If the initial upfront cost outweighs the 30yr nightmare, it’s worth it*
> “Nothing will kill a great employee faster than watching you tolerate a bad one”.
> 
> But, as said, this relates more to the promotion to the point of incompetence. I’ve seen it. Hell, I was almost in it. I have not been in my present role long. Within a year of starting, my boss abruptly left. Head Office immediately looked to me. I wisely turned it down. Not that I don’t want it someday, but this would have been way too soon. In his job, you have to, have to, have to know your business numbers inside and out. I was too new to grasp them that deeply. I know I would have done a disservice to myself and the company


First, good on ya for recognizing your own strengths and weak spots better than your employer did, and taking appropriate action. I was being "groomed" for a management track, but let the path lie fallow. For me, a job has to be *about* something, and managing is not "about" anything. I figured the best thing I could do for the nation was to stay the hell out of the way, apart from coaching people who DID have managerial responsibilities..

Second, my colleagues in the assessment-and-selection industry try, often in vain, to persuade employers that investing in thorough screening and assessment up front (which can include hiring someone to do a rigorous and comprehensive job analysis to identify what a job truly requires), pays for itself by avoiding the disruption of bad hires, the down-time and cost of firing someone and engaging in the search and hiring process yet again. The tech-term for the approach to this bigger-picture thinking is "utility analysis".

The difficulty with much utility analysis, though, is that it assumes one is hiring for a permanent position, and that the hire will remain in it. It tends to ignore the potential risk that the individual, who may be perfectly capable for the job in question, might leave for another job elsewhere, and also tends to ignore their potential for development to higher positions. Admittedly, that is a factor that only applies to larger employers, where "higher" positions exist, and is also the sort of thing that no formalized tried-and-true methods exist for. And as the Peter Principle suggests, one also needs to know if the person one is hiring for their "promise" is strictly limited or not in that promise. Similarly, the person you're hiring also needs to have a realistic sense of what their own capabilities are. A person can have a skill-set for job A, be easily developed for job B, but lack the requisite competencies for bigger job C....even though they may *think* they have them and grow restless in job B.

The world is full of people who wanted the salary and power bump, achieved it, and are now privately thinking to themselves: "Oh shit, what have I gotten myself into? I'm in over my head.".


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## crann (May 10, 2014)

SWLABR said:


> Anyone can be fired. Unionized or not.


This is not true. We tried to fire a unionized worker from a Canadian university, she was in an admin role and was incapable of doing anything. She couldn't make an out of office sign, so she printed out each word, cut them out, pasted them to another piece of paper, and then hung it up where no one could see it. This took her a full day. By this point she was probably earning $50k plus at least $20k in benefits. Her history at the university: one department tried to fire her, so she was reassigned to another, and then again. That was probably 6 years total time. Once she was under my watch it took 2 years of "job training" before we would talk to the union about termination. Weekly awkward meetings. Termination negotiations took another 1.5 years. Another round of awkward weekly meetings. She then went on stress leave (full pay) for another year. She returned for 3 months and was close to retirement age so she took a massive pay out. I wasn't even mad, I tip my cap to her.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

crann said:


> This is not true. We tried to fire a unionized worker from a Canadian university, she was in an admin role and was incapable of doing anything. She couldn't make an out of office sign, so she printed out each word, cut them out, pasted them to another piece of paper, and then hung it up where no one could see it. This took her a full day. By this point she was probably earning $50k plus at least $20k in benefits. Her history at the university: one department tried to fire her, so she was reassigned to another, and then again. That was probably 6 years total time. Once she was under my watch it took 2 years of "job training" before we would talk to the union about termination. Weekly awkward meetings. Termination negotiations took another 1.5 years. Another round of awkward weekly meetings. She then went on stress leave (full pay) for another year. She returned for 3 months and was close to retirement age so she took a massive pay out. I wasn't even mad, I tip my cap to her.


Doctors vs engineers.


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## SWLABR (Nov 7, 2017)

crann said:


> This is not true. We tried to fire a unionized worker from a Canadian university, she was in an admin role and was incapable of doing anything. She couldn't make an out of office sign, so she printed out each word, cut them out, pasted them to another piece of paper, and then hung it up where no one could see it. This took her a full day. By this point she was probably earning $50k plus at least $20k in benefits. Her history at the university: one department tried to fire her, so she was reassigned to another, and then again. That was probably 6 years total time. Once she was under my watch it took 2 years of "job training" before we would talk to the union about termination. Weekly awkward meetings. Termination negotiations took another 1.5 years. Another round of awkward weekly meetings. She then went on stress leave (full pay) for another year. She returned for 3 months and was close to retirement age so she took a massive pay out. I wasn't even mad, I tip my cap to her.


I suppose I should have said, "anyone can be gotten _rid_ of". I did follow up to say; _The other option of course, is how much are you willing to spend to get rid of someone?_

Sounds like she managed to achieve that option, and you are indeed rid of her.


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## crann (May 10, 2014)

SWLABR said:


> Sounds like she managed to achieve that option, and you are indeed rid of her.


She ended up retiring at 63 or 64 so I'm not sure we got rid of her. Were she 10 or 20 years younger I'm convinced she'd still be on payroll.

Edit: Her daughter is a highly capable lawyer, so when things turned ugly, HR received absurdly well written correspondence from the employee in question highlighting labour union contracts, hiring practices, labour laws etc. It's really weird because she could barely reply to emails let alone draft documents we would let anyone outside of the department view. It's like she had help from someone....


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