After they’ve been promoted to their level of incompetence, they lean in very hard on relationships to survive.
Organizations where they get away with this are miserable to work for, and their influence ensures nothing merit-related ever happens again. Literally the source of the famous expression “A-people hire A-people, B-people hire C-people”.
I think the Peter Principle addresses a good point, but misses a critical one: the hierarchy itself. Obviously, a manager requires different skills than an engineer, so why should a good engineer be a good manager? This holds the other way round: a good manager is not particularly likely to be a good engineer.
Both is fine, these are just different jobs. However, the problem is that the manager is 'above' the engineer in the generally accepted hierarchy. Consequently, engineers are pressured to become managers for the development. As long as this hierarchy exists, the problem will exist.
A manager that is not as good as the engineer they are managing / wasn’t ab engineer, would be managing a team where the actual engineers are doing all the job and taking all the critical decisions. The manager would feel weak whenever the technical side of the work is being questioned, reviewed, planned, explored; they can only listen to the engineers, they’d have no say in most topics, weak arguments, will look lost. However, a manager who was previously an engineer that actually worked for years, and got exposed to many projects, will lead by excellence and can intervene in most subjects with high confidence. As for the managerial skills, one could learn them with time (ofc some of them are naturally given), but i’ve seen managers with very little soft skills, learn a lot, and do well.
There's plenty of stuff that goes on in large organisations which sits in what I would call "minor illegality" i.e. technically illegal, but the sort of thing people are going to pretend not to notice as long as they can have plausible deniability themselves.
Usually, all sins are forgiven if a project launches on time.
Often it is board-level folks that have a naive understanding of the problem scope, and ruminate on their bruised ego from the harsh words burned-out staff spew.
There is also silly folks that honestly believe they will figure anything out faster, or can get away with a quick MVP bodge before jumping firms. I would argue they form an ecosystem, that keeps people that clean up messes fully employed. =3
Organizations where they get away with this are miserable to work for, and their influence ensures nothing merit-related ever happens again. Literally the source of the famous expression “A-people hire A-people, B-people hire C-people”.
Both is fine, these are just different jobs. However, the problem is that the manager is 'above' the engineer in the generally accepted hierarchy. Consequently, engineers are pressured to become managers for the development. As long as this hierarchy exists, the problem will exist.
Often it is board-level folks that have a naive understanding of the problem scope, and ruminate on their bruised ego from the harsh words burned-out staff spew.
There is also silly folks that honestly believe they will figure anything out faster, or can get away with a quick MVP bodge before jumping firms. I would argue they form an ecosystem, that keeps people that clean up messes fully employed. =3