
The Peter Principle Revisited: A Computational Study (2009) - sejtnjir
https://arxiv.org/abs/0907.0455
======
irq-1
> in order to avoid such an effect the best ways for improving the efficiency
> of a given organization are either to promote each time an agent at random
> or to promote randomly the best and the worst members in terms of
> competence.

Too funny. Ever think your company was promoting without thought or reason, or
promoting the worst people? It turns out the corporate HR/Management system
has evolved to defeat the Peter Principle.

~~~
kybernetikos
It's a natural consequence of making the promote decision only available to
higher ups, who have already found their level of incompetence.

Ideally this study would have included this effect too.

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folli
I wonder about a possible opposite principle: a person best suited for a role
in leadership is stuck at the bottom of the hierarchy, because he's not fully
competent at this current role, so he has no way to climb up.

~~~
nerdponx
How far up in the hierarchy do you have in mind? It's hard for me to believe
that you could be a good senior engineer without having been a good junior
engineer.

~~~
sejtnjir
A mediocre individual contributor could be a competent project manager.

~~~
carlmr
I'd agree with this, there is some overlap, but mostly these are distinct
skills (people skills vs. technical skills).

~~~
watwut
You cant manage project on people skills alone. That just don't work all that
well and is likely to lead to crappy product and massive crunch. You cant
manage project without at least some technical skills. You don't need to know
all details, but you need to know enough about tech to understand general
concepts, what is possible, what is risky, what technical debt means, when
people lie to you about tech. In order to be good project manager you need
both, but you don't need to be super genius in either.

And there are also skills (or attributes) that makes you both better
programmer and better manager: being organized, systematic, being responsible,
willingness to do also boring tasks, understanding what people say when they
talk to you, ability to explain yourself, good memory, etc.

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megaman22
I recall that I first learned about the Peter Principle at the same time that
I was reading _Lee 's Lieutenants_ by Douglas Southall Freeman, and there was
a weird synergy between the two.

As the war continued, attrition took its toll on the Army of Northern
Virginia's officer corps, notably after Jackson's death at Chancelorsville.
The two generals that replaced him, Ewell and A.P. Hill, were very good
divisional commanders, but poor corps commanders. That tome is littered with
other examples of officers excelling at one level of command, but being ill-
equipped to perform at the next level.

~~~
smogcutter
It's really interesting just how rare those skills are, even at the top.
Napoleon made 26 marshals of the empire, and only 3 would have been remotely
capable of stepping into his shoes: Davout, Massena and Suchet. (Murat, Ney
and Soult are all hype, don't @ me)

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richmarr
A lot of comments here are using word like "promotion", starting at the
"bottom", powers reserved for "higher ups", etc. following the standard
framing of hierarchy as a vertical pyramid, which I think possibly encourages
the view of promotion as status.

My favourite reframing of team hierarchy is to change the language to make it
horizontal or fully inverted.

In the horizontal case, promotion might be 'stepping back a rank to help co-
ordinate'.

In the inverted case, promotion might be 'stepping down into a supporting
role' (although that particular language bumps into confusing euphamisms left
over by the pyramid framing).

I'm sure some better language can be found but you get the idea.

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jezclaremurugan
But promotion is one of the incentives to be best - so unless the other
incentives are stronger - promoting randomly or promoting the worst performers
will remove a strong incentive and will pull down the productivity of the
organization anyway. Or there should be an explicit test for the skills needed
at the next level.

~~~
Firadeoclus
> But promotion is one of the incentives to be best

Is that because many organizations tie together the concepts of higher
pay/benefits and moving up in the managerial hierarchy?

Considering there is evidence that the Peter principle holds to a certain
extent, that has always seemed odd to me. A person being best at one job is
not a strong indicator that they'd be best at another. Personally, I have no
desire to be promoted into roles that don't suit me.

~~~
jezclaremurugan
Yes - pay/benefits are mostly related to hierarchy unless someone is a tech
star mostly.

And even if not - the folks higher in the chain also get to decide what gets
to be worked on.

~~~
carlmr
My idea for a solution would be to offer better pay/benefits opportunities for
your good developers, at the same time giving them also more creative freedom
when they rise the ranks in a technical role.

Making management the only option for having a "career" is the issue.

Another option to avoid the downsides of the Peter Principle is to test drive
people in their new roles. Basically you slowly add responsibilities that look
more like the post-promotion job, if they do well they get the promotion and
they've already proven to be able to do these things. If at some point you
notice it isn't working, well then you don't promote them, or promote them to
a different position.

~~~
gowld
This was famously discovered 60 years ago:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skunk_Works](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skunk_Works)

> The designation "skunk works" or "skunkworks" is widely used in business,
> engineering, and technical fields to describe a group within an organization
> given a high degree of autonomy and unhampered by bureaucracy, with the task
> of working on advanced or secret projects.

One of the key findings of the Skunk Works project is that you unlock
potential, a company needs to be willing to pay individual contributors more
than their managers.

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ythn
Why not just have a configurable threshold (say, 2 years) where if the
promoted person is determined incompetent in their new role, they are bumped
back down to their previous role (keeping their same pay) where they are more
efficient/competent.

~~~
gowld
There's a cult myth among even the "enlightened" rockstar companies that it's
better to fire a person than demote them. Not sure why this holds root.
Something to do with the idea of "trajectory" and that employees are paid and
retained for their future potential performance, not their current
performance.

~~~
ythn
If I were running the company, I'd just masquerade the demotion as a
promotion:

1\. Promote from principal engineer to technical manager

2\. 2 years later -> this person sucks at management but they were a great
engineer

3\. "Promote" from technical manager -> principal engineer level 2

~~~
s2g
moving backt o high level IC isn't usually considered the same way. You just
move the person to work on something else as IC, and they say it was their
choice because they like being a Principal engineer better.

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cbcoutinho
View the arxiv paper as a webpage: [https://www.arxiv-
vanity.com/papers/0907.0455/](https://www.arxiv-vanity.com/papers/0907.0455/)

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failrate
It should also be standard practice that a person's promotion is accompanied
by expectation setting and training. Otherwise, no one could ever grow out of
their current shell.

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ManFromUranus
The gervais principle is more interesting than the peter principle.

[https://www.ribbonfarm.com/the-gervais-
principle/](https://www.ribbonfarm.com/the-gervais-principle/)

~~~
bsilvereagle
> Sociopaths, in their own best interests, knowingly promote over-performing
> losers into middle-management, groom under-performing losers into
> sociopaths, and leave the average bare-minimum-effort losers to fend for
> themselves.

HN discussion (2009):
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=881296](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=881296)

------
anotheryou
which is why you shouldn't promote by the numbers and instead have a look for
who is best at the qualities required for the level above. A good manager
shouldn't find that hard to figure out and can also probe at it by changing
responsibilities more gradually.

