I thought it might be fun to remember the unforgettable Peter Principle by sharing anecdotes from our own lives (no names or pseudonyms please). The above is from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Principle Another good article is http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_15/b4126067338870.htm I hope you will have many good stories to share.
I fought the Peter Principle. when I was a teenager, my father told meYou are going to spend a lot of time earning a living. Find a job that you enjoy doing that they will pay you to do.When I left college in 1951 an Air Force colonel asked me to talk to him. It was while I was taking a pre-induction physical for the Korean War.I ended up in a Think Tank group planning WW3 using manned bombers & nuclear weapons. I learned how to program a primitive device called a Card-Programmed Calculator. I realized that I loved programming & problem analysis. When I left the Air Force, I started a career programming more sophisticated computers. There were many times when I was offered promotions to management positions. I always refused, costing myself a lot of money, but continuing to be paid to pursue a hobby. I think I would have been a competent manager if I had accepted the first promotion, but would have surely been a Peter Principle Dummy at some later step up the ladder. I was a gypsy, changing jobs every 2-4 years in order to work with new applications as computers expanded their scope of possible usages. By 1998, I realized that for about 10 years, I had a job instead of a hobby. A person had to specialize & the field became burdened with red tape & bureaucracy. I retired even though I could not really afford to do so. Now I live on social security, meager savings, & odd jobs like directing bridge games & helping computer illerates. Even though I am was less affluent than most of my high school & college classmates,I have never regretted refusing promotions
The Peter principle is why I like Sociology... It explains every upper manager I have ever worked with.
Yes, and as a blurb on the edition of the book I read, it explains why new multimillion-dollar bridges have cracks and why Johnny can't read. And why when CNN has an expert on North Korea, like they did at the time, to explain why Kim Jong-Il is (pretending to) test(ing) nuclear devices and al this Harvard expert who is fluent in Korean can do is whine that he doesn't really know and that it's all very complex. :bugeye:
