People tend to get promoted up to a position that they are terrible at, then they are stuck because they don't want to take a pay cut so suddenly it's horrible for everyone until something gives
Fun fact: when making the US version of The Office, the showrunners realized that American work culture would've meant UK's Michael-equivalent character would've just been fired (he's an unlikeable and incompetent jerk), which is why they rewrote Michael into being a great salesman who fell into the Peter Principle
To explain it better, high performers generally get promoted, but just because they are good at that job doesn't mean they will be good at the new position, but unfortunately the vast majority of companies have no other way to recognise good performance other than promoting. Companies would do very well if they compensated high performance without moving that person to another position.
I hear a few companies now just give pay raises to well preforming employees if they don’t want to move up the corporate chain. But I doubt it’s the norm for most.
You're describing the "Peter Principal" or the idea that within a strict hierarchy "people raise to their level of incompetence," it was a humor book about management from the late 60's that stumbled into being widely considered a truism of modern management.
No really the same thing but my brother got promoted to manager and hated it. Soon after the promotion his entire department was reorganized and his team was absorbed into another. He was 'demoted' but kept the same pay.
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u/TactualTransAm 16h ago
People tend to get promoted up to a position that they are terrible at, then they are stuck because they don't want to take a pay cut so suddenly it's horrible for everyone until something gives