The Peter Principle (from One Step for Activists)

Dar Williams - "I won't be your Yoko Ono"

The Peter Principle has come up in multiple conversations we've had via One Step for Activists, so we figure it is worth discussing here. (Update: Freakonomics podcast on the topic.)

The Peter Principle is often caricatured as saying "only pathetic people are promoted to positions of power" (while picking a peck of pickled peppers). But that's not right. It means that we are promoted to the level of our incompetence.

An example from my field: You can be an excellent engineer and then be promoted to team leader. You can be outstanding at that because it still involves working on a project, doing and understanding engineering.

But then you can be promoted to a solely managerial position where you're not doing engineering anymore. Now you have to deal with people and administrative details. Even though you were a brilliant engineer, you could very well suck at this new position. Now you don't do well as an administrator, you aren't promoted anymore - you are stuck at the level of your relative incompetence.

However, very few people ever pass on or give up a promotion. Not moving "up" - or worse, moving "down" - is taken as an admission of failure, that you are a loser. (Also, once we're in the "higher" jobs, we don't want to give up the extra money and status.) So now we're not good at our job and we can't get out of it. This leaves us unhappy and scared, and we often take it out on those who answer to us.

Ezra Klein is my favorite example of someone who was mindful and secure enough to avoid this. Even though he was the co-founder of Vox Media and the first Editor-in-Chief, he realized that he did not like that job and wasn't great at it. So he stepped aside and went back to writing and podcasting. 

Matthew Yglesias is another example - a co-founder of Vox Media who stepped aside and went back to blogging. He is making a mint because he has a widespread reputation as a thoughtful contrarian, but it's rare for someone to go from a big-shot position back to being a blogger. 

So what is the relevance of this?

One is to not always look for the next promotion. Instead, look for a job you enjoy and that allows you to have a good life overall.

It could be that a job with more responsibility is the more fulfilling job. Many of us take a low-level position that we don't particularly like in order to be able to get to a better job eventually. 

But it could very well be that the promotion you're being offered just isn't a good fit for you. There's more to life than moving up at work.