| If the reward for competence is promotion, in the steady-state equilibrium everybody's incompetent at their current job: If they were competent, they would have been promoted into a different job. It's called the Peter Principle [1] and it's pretty well-known. I suppose Facebook's realized it's in a Peter Principle situation, and the remedy for it would, in theory, be to send some of the people back to previous jobs where they were competent. The problem is that, in practice, it seems a lot like a demotion, especially if the original move was touted as a promotion, and the pay and prestige of your new old job is less. It's a real puzzle how this can be done without demoralizing the affected employees into quitting -- especially the best ones, who presumably have lots of good career options elsewhere, and whose value is the entire reason for doing this in the first place. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle |
I’ve also seen people who are great at their current role but lack the attributes to rise into higher roles.
So the premise of competence being rewarded by promotion doesn’t really seem useful in practice.