For those who have searched for a simple explanation of Murphy's law beyond a generalized pessimism, this is your book. It describes how organizations fail by describing how organizational structure serves to magnify the individual failures of the people within it. Simply put, the Peter Principle is thus: each person rises to the level of his/her incompetence in any organization, and then, unable to move up, spends the rest of a career failing to perform and making the rest of us suffer. I had heard of this principle before reading this book, but had not realized it to be more than a comedian's punch line. In fact, however, there's a frightening amount of wisdom to be found in this book.

Just ponder for a moment your own place of employ. Think of all the meetings and the futile attempts at correcting mind-numbing insults to productivity and common sense. Now hear Peter's explanation: "In time, every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out its duties...Work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence." Generally people make a good-faith effort to perform their jobs well, but the nature of bureaucracy takes its toll eventually. Peter's book explains how the system doesn't work and classifies the various forms of the problem. He helpfully provides ways to manipulate faulty systems and use the Pull of Patrons to rise to your own desired level. He also gives ways to evade succombing to final placement yourself through creative incompetence that masks a genuine productivity and thus avoids unwelcome promotion. By coining numerous deadpan terms, Peter actually communicates genuine organizational problems in a non-threatening way. Whether you are in business, government, education, or any other bureaucratic slog, you can at last see the reason for your frustrations, even if humor alone is often your only solace. There are, of course, some elements of the book that have not been updated. The phonophilia has morphed to gadgetophilia, and tabulatory gigantism to iphone polyappism, but some features such as compulsory alternation, are timeless.

Go read this book, before you are faced with that most sad sign of Final Placement, utter irrelevance.

Basically, the Peter Principle states that people usually rise to the level of their incompetence. Not content to do what one is good at, there is a need to rise in stature and financial status. This, however, often leads into areas that are not compatible with either a person's skills or personality. I did not finish this book because this was basically the mantra that was repeated over and over and did not seem to be arriving at any conclusions when I was three quarters through the book. The Peter Principle is a good one to remember, however, when you are thinking of moving on or up in your career or toward new ones. Stop and think what you are really good at.

A scary explanation about why we see much incompetence in daily life. The problem is that I am incompetent to understand the book myself. Most of the time I cannot tell if the author is serious or kidding. ( )

Why is the human race foundering in a morass of occupational, academic, and administrative inefficiency? Approach the gallows with humor -- and die at your highest level of incompetence.