2023-03-16
49 分钟People who are good at their jobs routinely get promoted into bigger jobs they’re bad at. We explain why firms keep producing incompetent managers — and why that’s unlikely to change.
Hey there, it's Stephen Dubner.
Do you ever wonder how your boss became a boss in the first place?
Yeah, we do too.
Especially when things go sideways.
In retrospect, it's easy to say that Sam Bankman Fried was not the best person to be running FTX, the bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange.
But retrospect is always easy.
What about right now?
Do you have a bad boss?
Have you ever had one?
Chances are yes.
So I hope you enjoy today's episode, which we first published last year.
It's called why are there so many bad bosses?
My name's Katie Johnson and I'm a data scientist.
Johnson is 32 years old and lives in London.
She grew up near Bristol, went to university in Birmingham, and since then has held a series of increasingly impressive jobs at a series of companies.
These were all what are known as IC jobs.
IC standing for individual contributor, which means.
What it is, someone who makes, as opposed to managing people who make.
Johnson loved being an IC.
She loved analyzing data, and she was really good at her job.