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larsinio 's review for:
The Peter Principle
by Raymond Hull, Laurence J. Peter
A book has never changed my life before. Sure i knew the tagline, sure i read about it on wikipedia and its relation to the dilbert principle. It was a cheery thought and interesting food for thought but didn't think too much about this. Found this book and the 2 that came after it at a local neighborhood book sale fundraiser for 50 cents each. Im a cog in a huge corporate hierarchy and so the subject was of specific relevance, so i gave the yellow'd book a shot.
What Larry Peter discusses, in a very systematic and extremely clever and well written way, is a completely different point of view to navigate through life. Not through explanation of power and personalities, not through technology and science, not through even histTry, but through our predominant social structual form - the hiearchy. Like spirals in nature, hierarchies are everywhere in human life.
The book opens up like a Wilde-esque flower of cleverness, starting off with the extremely concrete - the hiring and firing of the rank and file. It grows and grows as Peter gives more structure to the explanation with extremely funny terms like "percussive sublimation" and "lateral arabesque" used to describe methods to move inefficient workers. The book confronts the dark fear of every office worker - overwork and death. After such a nadir in mood, it then offers an extremely optimistic message and a way for not only to live your life happily but a way for humanity to step forward.
I thought this 1969 book would seem dated, but besides some over mention of people having multiple telephones, it seemed like it could have been written yesterday.
Its like if Douglas Adams wrote a business textbook.
What Larry Peter discusses, in a very systematic and extremely clever and well written way, is a completely different point of view to navigate through life. Not through explanation of power and personalities, not through technology and science, not through even histTry, but through our predominant social structual form - the hiearchy. Like spirals in nature, hierarchies are everywhere in human life.
The book opens up like a Wilde-esque flower of cleverness, starting off with the extremely concrete - the hiring and firing of the rank and file. It grows and grows as Peter gives more structure to the explanation with extremely funny terms like "percussive sublimation" and "lateral arabesque" used to describe methods to move inefficient workers. The book confronts the dark fear of every office worker - overwork and death. After such a nadir in mood, it then offers an extremely optimistic message and a way for not only to live your life happily but a way for humanity to step forward.
I thought this 1969 book would seem dated, but besides some over mention of people having multiple telephones, it seemed like it could have been written yesterday.
Its like if Douglas Adams wrote a business textbook.