pyramids

A reply to someone who asked why they have never been promoted at work. 

As someone in the upper end of the pyramid, it's not that they don't want to bring someone "up from the bottom," it's that you can't have stability at the top if you weaken the base.

Something my grandfather told me when I was 6 years old stuck with me, he said "don't be good at something you don't want to do."

If a "bottom" worker excels at their job, you can't just promote them. There are certain people at every job that do their assigned role so well that to remove them would require two people to replace them. Also, just because someone excels at one set of tasks doesn't mean they have the attitude or outlook to be an effective manager. Often times, people who make shitty "workers" are the ones who perform well as managers.

But without those high performing workers, the ones you can depend on to execute the day-to-day tasks with minimal direction and without constant follow up, the manager would quickly begin to fall behind in their tasks as they would become just another worker.

It's possible to be so good at what you do that you make it difficult to promote you