Why do incompetent managers get promoted?
I don’t agree with anything in this article. Incompetent managers get promoted because the things they are competent at are not the things their employees want them to be competent at. There is a dichotomy between traits that get people promoted at large companies and traits that make a good manager from the perspective of subordinates. Those traits only sometimes overlap. Thus the whole argument is predicated on a false definition of “incompetent”.<p>edit: people might ask, so here's a list of things that, in my experience, get people promoted at large companies:<p>politics, self-promotion, networking, choosing the right (high-visibility) things to work on, taking credit, delivering new revenue and/or new marketable shiny products/services, having the right senior leadership mentors/wing-people.<p>Note how none of these really require that a person be good at actually managing a team of people effectively.