Editing Dilbert principle (section)

==Comparative principles==
The Dilbert principle can be compared to the [[Peter principle]]. As opposed to the Dilbert principle, the Peter principle assumes that people are promoted because they are competent, and that the tasks higher in the hierarchy require skills or talents they do not possess. It concludes that due to this, a competent employee will eventually be promoted to, and then likely remain at, a job at which he or she is incompetent. In his book, ''The Peter Principle'', [[Laurence J. Peter]] explains "percussive sublimation", the act of "kicking a person upstairs" (i.e., promoting him to management) to reduce his interference with productive employees.

The Dilbert principle, by contrast, assumes that hierarchy just serves as a means for removing the incompetent to "higher" positions where they will be unable to cause damage to the workflow, assuming that the upper echelons of an organization have little relevance to its actual production, and that the majority of real, productive work in a company is done by people who rank lower. Unlike the Peter principle, the promoted individuals were not particularly good at any job they previously had, so awarding them a supervisory position is a way to remove them from the workforce without actually dismissing them, rather than a reward for meritorious service. An earlier formulation of this effect was known as [[Putt's Law]] (1981), credited to the pseudonymous author Archibald Putt ("Technology is dominated by two types of people, those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand.").