re: #2 windsagio

I like a study that was put out awhile ago about competence in the workplace. I think, but am not sure, it was the University of Edinborough.

They were hired by Bank of Scotland and Bank of England to examine competence. They took their sweet-ass academic time about it.

Their definition of competence was something like “Whatever the job, arbitrary as it may be, if there is more work left at the end of a day than the beginning— not just a discovery of more work needed to do, but actual work added— then the employee is incompetent. Likewise, if the work is ‘done’ but does not actually produce any positive result, the employee is incompetent.” So you can be incompetent by causing other people work, or by doing a job in a way that does not actually produce equivalent output to a competently done job.

Their research basically showed that about 30% of employees, on average across companies, are so incompetent they actually cost the company time by showing up to work. They fuck shit up that other people have to fix, or propagate errors that waste resources and cost money. Another chunk are just non-competent— they don’t advance the company at all. Another chunk are competent. But about 10% are responsible for most of the actual work, the competence, the solutions that save a thousand hours.

When one vice president at some place was presented with these facts, he said it was ridiculous, and that if he had 30% incompetent employees, he’d know about it!

The professor responded, “This study applies to vice presidents as well.”