In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.

Laurence J. Peter, a Canadian-born educator and management writer, formulated what became known as the “Peter Principle” while observing how promotions work in bureaucracies and large organizations. The line is associated with the popularization of his idea in the late 1960s, when Peter (with Raymond Hull) argued that employees are typically promoted for competence in their current role until they reach a position whose demands exceed their abilities. The aphorism crystallizes a critique of hierarchical promotion systems—especially in corporate and governmental settings—where advancement is treated as the default reward for good performance rather than matched to aptitude for the next job.

The quote proposes a structural flaw in hierarchies: promotion is often based on success in one set of tasks, even when the next rank requires different skills. Over time, this produces a workforce in which many roles are filled by people who were excellent in their previous positions but are now out of their depth—hence “rising” to incompetence. The point is less a moral judgment than a systemic diagnosis: organizations can inadvertently optimize for misplacement unless they distinguish between performance and promotability, create lateral career paths, or train for new responsibilities. Its enduring appeal lies in how neatly it explains everyday experiences of managerial mediocrity.