There's this concept out there called the Peter Principle. It is defined as "Employees tend to rise to their level of incompetence." In other words, people are promoted based on skills and achievements until they get promoted to a level beyond their abilities and there they remain. "[W]ork is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence." It basically sounds like a recipe for a workplace run by idiot bosses...a formula endlessly exploited by comics, television series, and movies. While bored at work one night, I was wondering if instead of the Peter Principle, it was more like promotion is related to evolution itself and that while goodness could come out of it, it's ultimately based on people being bad at their jobs.
It may sound weird, but one interpretation of evolution that I've had is that it is fueled by failure. In evolution, success leads to stasis. I'll start with fish to illustrate. The fish species which evolved into amphibians were not good at being fish. Their fins were bad for swimming among other things so they couldn't compete for food and resources like the other more suitably adapted fish species could. In this do-or-die situation, they learned to exploit the land somewhat. As you know with frogs and salamanders, they are tied to water but can exist in the air as well.
Those amphibians which sucked at being frogs and such would evolve into lizards and those lizards which sucked at being lizards became mammals and birds. And finally with humans, those chimps which sucked at being chimps became humans. We are here because of a long line of ancestors which sucked at their jobs. And before you object, remember that species such as sharks and crocodiles have remained more-or-less unchanged since dinosaurs roamed the Earth over 65 million years ago. Sharks and crocodiles are VERY good at what they do so there's no pressure on them to change.
I think the workplace operates in a similar manner. If you are really good at what you do, you will remain where you are because the Powers That Be will not want to lose their prized employee who allows them to not work as hard. Only those who are hampering efficiency and/or frustrating management get considered for promotion or at least lateral transfers to other departments until they find something the person is good at and leave him or her there.
How do you know it's because you're good and not because you already suck? I would say if managers are seeking answers to questions they should already know from you then you are one of those hyper-competent people who's probably right where they belong (and almost certainly underpaid).
If however management either leaves you alone or is always asking you to do other tasks than the one you thought you were hired to do, well then perhaps maybe you're not so good at your job and lacking justification to get rid of you, they're trying to see if perhaps you would fit better elsewhere because you're mucking up the efficiencies of the workplace where you're supposed to be. Maybe after a while, you actually get transferred officially (or even promoted) to another department (and thus made someone else's problem) and it will come with a pay raise in an effort to provide incentive to get you out of your current ineffectively performed job. And yes, this probably means the genuinely competent people who could've done the task the incompetent has now been assigned for more pay will now resent that person and/or the workplace as they languish in their same position for the same pay. But since they are competent, they can't mess up on purpose hoping to get the same result. They're too honorable to do something like this. Damned if you do; damned if you don't.
Put more simply, the people who aren't so good at the jobs they were hired for (but not so bad that they have to be fired) get more opportunities for promotion because management keeps shuffling them around in an effort to find their best fit. They "evolve" into department heads or managers because they suck at what they do. Ideally they become what they are in fact good at but I guess since we're usually witnessing the evolution itself rather than the evolved state, we are filled with resentment watching these people get ahead because pay raises are based on promotion and not competence in the workplace.
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