# Is the Peter Principle a real phenomenon **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 18, 2009, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-peter-principle-a-real-phenomenon/493578 "2009-04-18T22:32:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Freddy\_the\_Pig](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a587f6/32.png) [@Freddy\_the\_Pig](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freddy_the_Pig)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2009, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-peter-principle-a-real-phenomenon/493578/21 "2009-04-20T00:17:59Z")
> [@Lantern](#): > > It may have started as a joke but it is actually quite an elegant piece of logic which can and [has](http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=403880)been modelled rigorously. Did you read your own cite? It describes the Peter Principle as “unnecessary and inconsistent with the data”. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2009, 12:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-peter-principle-a-real-phenomenon/493578/22 "2009-04-20T00:31:14Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > Well, since they seemed pretty cynical and bitter when I got there, I have to assume they were already like that. Fair enough. And as a manager myself I have had to fire people who’d been with the company for some time but who just weren’t putting any effort into the job. I’d never make it a blanket policy though; and your phrasing implied that you do. > [@](#): > > One thing that “techies” fail to recognize that inhibits their advancement is that it’s not just about being the best programmer. Management generally do not tolerate “delicate geniuses” who can’t interact with other people. It depends. In my industry it seems to be the culture that programmers are just assumed to be autistic, and kept away from clients or management or whatever. I resented that, and that’s partly why I’ve shifted towards a more managerial role in the last couple of years. > [@](#): > > If you weren’t head of your class in a top school with a shitload of extracurricular activities and currently working in your field of study, how did you get hired for your current job? Your employer probably settled on you. I agree with your overall point here, but I disagree with this particular way of putting it. You could be the world’s best “widget inspector” without having been top of your class or having gone to Harvard. Of course academic qualifications are a good guide, but they don’t actually sort people into aptitude for a given job (unless, perhaps we’re talking about _vocational_ qualifications). ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2009, 3:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-peter-principle-a-real-phenomenon/493578/23 "2009-04-20T03:06:32Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > Fair enough. And as a manager myself I have had to fire people who’d been with the company for some time but who just weren’t putting any effort into the job. > I’d never make it a blanket policy though; and your phrasing implied that you do. I don’t, but I see how more senior managers and VPs might. I generally don’t believe in “blanket policies”. > [@Mijin](#): > > It depends. In my industry it seems to be the culture that programmers are just assumed to be autistic, and kept away from clients or management or whatever. > I resented that, and that’s partly why I’ve shifted towards a more managerial role in the last couple of years. I never understood that. When I worked in consulting, technology experts were expected to also be able to work with clients and each other. Companies tended to value highly skilled individuals. Corporate America seems to actively resent them. > [@Mijin](#): > > I agree with your overall point here, but I disagree with this particular way of putting it. > You could be the world’s best “widget inspector” without having been top of your class or having gone to Harvard. Of course academic qualifications are a good guide, but they don’t actually sort people into aptitude for a given job (unless, perhaps we’re talking about _vocational_ qualifications). The head of the class or an Ivy League grad probably wouldn’t be a “widget inspector” in the first place. That’s sort of the point. And we’re talking professional qualifications, not vocational ones. I’m thinking about my first job with a small consulting firm. I was hired with mediocre grades in an unrelated engineering major from a good school through a friend of mine. It is unrealistic to believe that my managers and coworkers would have the same level of skill and professionalism as someone from IBM, Deloitte, Accenture or McKinsey or some other highly competitive company with high hiring requirements. And what I saw was anyone who did demonstrate extraordinary competance (like myself…aparently I had a knack for it) ended up becoming frustrated and ultimately quit and used their experience leverage a position at a better company. So maybe organizations as a whole suffer from a sort of Peter Principle. ---
**Author:** ![guizot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guizot/32/3636_2.png) [@guizot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/guizot)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2009, 4:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-peter-principle-a-real-phenomenon/493578/24 "2009-04-20T04:39:29Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > So maybe organizations as a whole suffer from a sort of Peter Principle. I’ve never met an institution that doesn’t have some firmly ensconced incompetents. But In my experience, if you really want to identify some kind of “principle” you need to include a corollary: “A person who has been hired for reasons other than demonstrable ability will most likely simply be shifted to another position in order to mask their incompetence.” I’m talking about large organizations, and bureaucracies especially. I’ve seen many people shifted around just because they have connections. It’s not that they are promoted. They just get moved to a place where their incompetence will be lesser noticed. ---
**Author:** ![Lantern](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/d26b3c/32.png) [@Lantern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lantern)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2009, 5:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-peter-principle-a-real-phenomenon/493578/25 "2009-04-20T05:44:12Z")
> [@Freddy\_the\_Pig](#): > > Did you read your own cite? It describes the Peter Principle as “unnecessary and inconsistent with the data”. No it says that the suggestion that the promotion process is a mistake is unnecessary. In other words you have to accept the Peter Principle as part and parcel of any promotion system. > [@](#): > > The Peter Principle, which states that people are promoted to their level of incompetence, suggests that something is fundamentally misaligned in the promotion process. This view is unnecessary and inconsistent with the data. Below, it is argued that ability appears lower after promotion purely as a statistical matter. Being promoted is evidence that a standard has been met. Regression to the mean implies that future ability will be lower, on average. Firms optimally account for the regression bias in making promotion decisions, but the effect is never eliminated. Rather than evidence of a mistake, the Peter Principle is a necessary consequence of any promotion rule. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2009, 9:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-peter-principle-a-real-phenomenon/493578/26 "2009-04-20T09:45:57Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > The head of the class or an Ivy League grad probably wouldn’t be a “widget inspector” in the first place. That’s sort of the point. And my point was simply that performance at any given job is not necessarily the same as academic achievement. One of the best programmers I’ve ever worked with had no degree and was basically self-taught. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2009, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-peter-principle-a-real-phenomenon/493578/27 "2009-04-20T15:28:01Z")
If there is one thing this economic downturn should have taught everyone it’s that most people’s bosses ARE idiots. ---
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2009, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-peter-principle-a-real-phenomenon/493578/28 "2009-04-20T15:54:49Z")
Well, haven’t sports fans seen NUMEROUS outstanding offensive and defensive coordinators fail miserably as head coaches? Guys who were brilliant strategists, top-notch X’s and O’s guys who fell on their faces when promoted to head coach? Sometimes that was because their people skills didn’t match their strategic skills; other times, it’s because they couldn’t see the big picture. The Peter Principle isn’t an iron law of science, but it wouldn’t have endured and been repated so many times if it didn’t describe a scenario people have witnessed man, many times. ---
**Author:** ![Freddy\_the\_Pig](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a587f6/32.png) [@Freddy\_the\_Pig](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freddy_the_Pig)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2009, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-peter-principle-a-real-phenomenon/493578/29 "2009-04-20T15:58:10Z")
> [@mswas](#): > > If there is one thing this economic downturn should have taught everyone it’s that most people’s bosses ARE idiots. The Peter Principle, however, says more than that bosses are idiots. It says that _everybody_ is an idiot, except for the people who haven’t had time to reach their level of incompetence. Of course, as **Musicat** notes, you can’t tell by looking at a person whether or not they will receive further promotion. So if you want to study the Peter Principle as a falsifiable “theory”, instead of humorous folk wisdom, you’ll need to study an organization over a period of many years. And, you’ll need objective measures of competence over a wide variety of jobs, which will be difficult to devise. ---
**Author:** ![Dangerosa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Dangerosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dangerosa)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2009, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-peter-principle-a-real-phenomenon/493578/30 "2009-04-20T16:49:01Z")
My experience is that you have to be more than competent in a job to get promoted to the next level, there simply aren’t enough next level spots to promote the simply competent people into them - you need to have excelled at that level, probably even taken on responsibilities that are commensurate with the next level - so that by the time you are promoted, you are competent for that next level. There are exceptions - a big one is people who excel as individual contributors often do not make good managers - the engineer who becomes a poor manager. But that is such a change in skill sets that it seems reasonable that there would be a lot of misses - few people are going to be both great engineers and great managers. Some companies have decided to create career paths for great individual contributors that don’t move them into management but still allow them to have a career ladder to address this. Another exception is when a company is going through a lot of growth, and makes a lot of personnel decision because they have those people there and they need to create a different organization RIGHT NOW. That can open up rationalizations to build under someone that in a more normal business climate might have take a more sensible organizational path. ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2009, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-peter-principle-a-real-phenomenon/493578/31 "2009-04-20T16:59:31Z")
Old management sort of joke. if you have a weak employee you can fire him or promote him. That makes him someone else’s problem. Especially if he has good connections. ---
**Author:** ![Cheesesteak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cheesesteak/32/3694_2.png) [@Cheesesteak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheesesteak)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2009, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-peter-principle-a-real-phenomenon/493578/32 "2009-04-20T17:40:12Z")
> [@Dangerosa](#): > > My experience is that you have to be more than competent in a job to get promoted to the next level, there simply aren’t enough next level spots to promote the simply competent people into them - you need to have excelled at that level, probably even taken on responsibilities that are commensurate with the next level - so that by the time you are promoted, you are competent for that next level. This was exactly the point I was going to make. Employees don’t rise to a level of incompetence, they rise to a level of mere competence from prior excellence. You don’t wind up with a company full of incompetents, you get a company full of people who are competent at what they do, where their competence has the greatest impact on the performance of the company, by virtue of promoting them to the highest level where they are still competent. Change one assumption, that it’s those who excel that get promoted, instead of those who are simply competent, and the Peter Principle goes from basically making fun of corporate idiocy to describing a very intelligent way to run your company. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-peter-principle-a-real-phenomenon/493578.md?page=1)