The Peter Principle
· 1 min read
We have all seen it. A great engineer gets promoted into management, everybody claps, and six months later that person is miserable and the team has lost the best person it had on the hardest part of the codebase.
Nobody did anything wrong. That is the uncomfortable part.
What the Peter Principle says
Laurence J. Peter wrote about this in 1969, in “The Peter Principle”, with Raymond Hull:
In a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.
We promote people because they are good at the job they have now. So they keep moving up until they land in a role they are not good at. Then the promotions stop, and they stay there.
The gap between senior engineer and engineering manager is not a step up. It is a different job. One on ones, hard feedback, cancelled projects. Those are separate skills, and the promotion does not teach them.
What helps
Promote for the next job, not the last one. Let people try the work before it is permanent, with a way back. Keep a real technical track, with real money, or everyone reads it as a consolation prize. And make going back to an individual contributor role normal, not a demotion.
A promotion is a change of job. It is not a prize for good behaviour. The kindest thing you can do is be honest with someone about which one it is.
I hope this was useful for you, Rodolfo