Who taught: Jeff

Peter Principle (source: http://www.buzzflash.com/)

Today, Jeff, one of my friends at CMU, and I had meetings with students. The meetings were for testing an application done by students and reviewing source code. As we talked about work, we got into a conversation about his previous works and how much he had to travel. He said, at one point in his past, he went to the airport to go to Chicago or New York in the morning and had meetings during the lunch time and, after the meetings, came back to be with family for dinner. This all happend in one day. Pretty intense, isn’t it? Anyway, as we talked about this work stuff, we had the following conversation.

Jeff : “So, Terry, have you ever heard of Peter Principle?”

me: “I have no idea what that is. What is it?”

Jeff: “It basically means that everyone in an organization tends to rise, or be promoted, to the level of incompetence.”

me: “Huh! So, do you think someone whose name is Peter came up with the expression?”

Jeff: “I believe it is from another expression, ‘petered out’.”

Then, he started to google it. We, of course, found a wikipedia page. To save your time for reading the page, my initial impression was right. The principle was made by Dr. Laurence J. Peter in 1969.

me: “Looks like ‘petered out’ expression is from ‘Peter Principle’.”

Jeff: “I do not know. Sometimes, native English speakers use expressions without knowing their origins.”

So, at this point, let me ask you a question? What do you think ‘petered out’ or ‘peter out’ means? Assuming that it is from Peter Principle, it should have something to do with incompetence, right? I would say it has to a certain extent. If something is petered out, that means it is not as it used to be anymore. And, sometimes, if you peter out on someone, that means you kind of give up on him/her. Another time you can use ‘peter out’ is when you run. Suppose that you run a marathon, you would peter out after the first 2-3 miles if you are not good at running. Don’t you agree? Now, can you feel the expression?

Hope you would not peter out on my blog!

Have a great day, my friends! Peace out, not peter out! 🙂 Pun intended!

By the way, did we find out where this ‘peter out’ expression is from? I do not think we did. How about you tell me? Can you?