Why Are Managers Bad At Their Jobs? (The Peter Principle)

40 thoughts on “Why Are Managers Bad At Their Jobs? (The Peter Principle)”

1. Top players should be paid more than top coaches, to improve retention.

2. Yeah, it’s why I think of companies expanding too quickly are just bubbles waiting to pop.

   As promoting people to roles they will not be suitable for, is equivalent to making a fish climb a Tree.

   It’s better to pay that productive employee better, and leave them in that position but with addendum of advising the current manager of how things in the workplace operate and prevent the new manager unfamiliar with things. To tey and unilaterally change everything.
   And if want to move to a social role like management, have them go do training of new employees to transition them and or check their qualities for it.

3. So you should promote people who can't do their job? Glad we figured that out

4. Guess it depends on the goal of the organization. Military promotion system, as it is, is built to make those below suffer and to promote the truly incompetent. Potentially, when its robots on the bottom, it will be easier. Most folks quit their bosses in the military, not the military.

5. Sometime in the future, please go deeper on this topic.

6. A long time ago, I was promoted from a graphic designer to assistant studio manager. The first thing my boss did is sponsor me for part time leadership and supervisory training which skilled me to become a more effective people manager, a leader. The problem with the promotion is that the current leadership do not upskill the people they promote to become leaders which leads to toxic management.

7. I see this in my job every day, and have seen this for the last 10 years as well haha

8. The fact that random or worst/best promotions are better than the common method does not mean they are particularly good. It just means that the common method is really bad. Promotions are just taking place using the wrong criteria.

9. I was always told that managers are unskilled people who are inevitably promoted to their level of incompetence.
   From experience I tend to agree.

10. 11:58 I’d prefer a higher salary promotion 😭🤲

11. Simple. Rich gotta rich. 💪😎✌️ If you're wealthy, you LOOK the part, but it's all smoke and mirrors. Chump, 3lon, Bezoz, Zuck, Bankman-Fraud, Mr. Bleach, Theranos chick, Madeoff, and thousands of others are prime examples. They're griftin' gods of greed and falsified fortitude. BUT IT WORKS. 💵🇱🇷💵 Image is all that matters in a materialistic society, and that's just a global truth for us all. Face it: YOU ADORE THESE PEOPLE. You want to be Chump, 3lon, Gates, Eyegurr, KK, LH, Whyteetee, and all the other powerful, influential, ultra-wealthy nothing-burgers. 😜 It's just how you were programmed. #copium

12. I’m a truck driver, drivers earn more than their managers at most companies so I half expect my boss to be incompetent.

13. I went from being in the field to being a “House Cat” looking out of the window and sending others out. I felt out of my depth, and was never given any training on the new skills needed as a manager, and had to seek out managerial reading topics. I think I did okay, but I’m sure there would be a few of my former subordinates that would disagree (with good reason, I sure, I wasn’t perfect…far from it)

14. How would you deal with employees who dont take work seriously, taking frequent leaves, think job as picnic, not very serious??? Its not always the manager, it also the employees

15. If your boss is incompetent, what does that make you? Stop relying on corporations for quality of life.

16. Random promotions can make good employees to quit their jobs.

17. Taking it with a pinch of salt and the video did say humans are complex than this and anything. But another perspective is if the senior employee made it thus far from say an associate, he should have the wisdom to be successful in the leadership ladder. Not to mention a bit of luck and the right place would throw all equations off.

18. I haven’t worked in IT or tech like most of the audience, but I’ve worked in several different fields. Military, universities, gyms, sales…and what I’ve noticed is most people don’t have leadership qualities. The truth is most people don’t and will never be good leaders. My guess is only one percent or even less of us will develop those skills to be good managers.

19. The US Army used to have a rank for those that wanted to continue being a hands on worker without the added responsibility of being an NCO (sergeant).
    It allowed highly skilled junior soldiers continue to get promoted and earn more wages, while not having to be leader.
    So they had a choice to either solely become an expert in their job or become a leader.
    With that rank structure now changed we either have the a tiny amount of the experts become a different kind of job focused officer (warrant officer) or they become leaders or they are forced to leave the military for not getting promoted

20. Lazy people who seeking ways to dodge the work are the best managers and CEO's. The laziest he is the most intelligent he is.

21. The book, "The Peter Principle" was NEVER a joke. It was a serious thing in the 1980's. That, 'All persons will eventually be promoted to their level of incompetence.', idea was only 1 small part of that book.

22. No I'll be the one to say if you are a manager and are offended, that should be a sign you can't lead and need to move on to something else.

23. I think it’s the issue is that most people who are driven to be managers are never “chill” for lack of a better word. And once they gain any sort of power they start acting more like their inner tyrant

24. Being micro-managed is what I hate the worst. Starting a job with lots of freedom to do what needs to be done and then the 'rules' kick in where they conflict with each other and the employee doesn't know what the heck to do anymore.

25. That is a very interesting topic, I often think of. In my opinion after promotion, the biggest problem is that the person has other responsibilities, and is not ready. Like starting a new job. The right solution is to start a proper training for that "new" job. But usually that does not happen, the person is like "I come from the bottom, I worked for years, I know/should know everything I need!"

26. It depends on what "lateral" promotions mean. Does the person get moved to a different department? Are they given different tasks to complete? IMO, it should at least involved teaching employees the core skills required to fill the needs of whatever promotion they're considered for.

27. This should be used by any one in a leadership position

28. Can such skills be learned and taught? My feeling is that the answer should be a resounding yes. But, in reality, most companies seem to not fit a normal pattern of management role responsabilities and expectations. As opposed to technical roles, management roles are a lot less standardized and prone to improvization as well as being very specific to a certain company. Some call it the culture. And it is the culture, but it is the invisible, non-transparent part of the culture I am talking about here. And a reason why it is not transparent might be because the number of management positions is limited and, thus, a conflic of interest is created: current managers and leaders see it as detrimental to train other colleagues and share their knowledge out of the fear of being replaced or made redundant. So what about instead of random promotions, just rotations in a hybrid flat hierarchy? Keeping levels, but rotating roles at each level, because unpromoting is also a bad idea.

29. I enjoyed this video, now I would really like for a new video that actually shows the basics of how to be a good manager or "Why Managers are good at thier Job?"

30. 10:30, random promotions better than common promotions.
    That’s why our multi-billion dollars tech company is now run by Juan, our janitor from Mexico. 👍🏻

31. How about employees choosing their manager

32. This may have been true or more true at some point…but really, all companies are run by HR idiots and the widen the idiot pool to unsustainable levels. Also, incompetent middle managers dont buck the status quo, or ultimately side with their employees, and are more or less just a circuit breaker / fire shield for HR and the ppl above them whenever they need a qualified candidate to throw under the bus.

33. eyeopening ❤

34. Based on 20 years of work experience in Finance, I agree that the Peter Principle exists. It is inevitable, because the best employees will leave in case they do not get promoted. This leads to managers who were great at their previous jobs, but who are not necessarily great leaders and supervisors. There are worse managerial problems though: Many companies are biased to believe that external candidates for some reason are more suited for senior management roles than internal candidates. These newly hired, high-ranking employees then often struggle with the high expectations that they have to meet, one reason for this is that they lack a complete understanding of what exactly the company and their employees are doing exactly. This often leads to a culture of pressure and frustration resulting in high employee turnover and bad business decisions. I have seen it over and over again. Research should be conducted, on what exactly causes the biased believe in externally hired senior managers.

35. Managers and bosses are just that. They aren't leaders.

36. As someone who is in this kind of situation, I really really wish I didn't accept my promotion. Thanks COVID, now I'm fucking stuck in this shitty position as a Team Lead/Manager I never wanted in the first place. Funniest thing is, I don't even care about career progression or an increased wage but I was kinda forced into the role because they taught I was doing good when I never really thought of myself as anything special at work. I've been literally winging it for years, all I have to think about and work on is how my team does their work. I'm not even sure if I am someone they should even follow and I honestly have nothing good to teach them. But so far, I'm somehow appreciated by my co-workers, but man I hate this position so much. All the responsibility but little to no power at all since all you do are meetings, following whatever Upper Management wants, and have no way to actually help your direct reports because you're stuck with what the top wants and not what you think is best for your people.

    I've been wanting to quit for years but I honestly don't know what to do next since I have no career goals or anything so I'm stuck in a position I don't like and have no way out.

37. Big part of it, often times, is simply narcissistic traits, plain and simple. They want everything that comes with power and nothing to do with the responsibility that comes with power. They almost always over-anticipate the good things and are caught blindside by the bad things. This is one of the reasons the turn sour – they didnt see the amount of work that had to be done.

38. I usually make fun of business school graduates that go directly into middle management, but they're usually competent at their role

39. Didn't know MBBs were top law firms 😂…pls fix

40. I am a manager but believe that I am not doing an acceptable good job , but will still try to learn and improve

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