Disrupting the Hierarchy

From Peter and Hull’s The Peter Principle: Why Things Always Go Wrong (1969):
“Employees in the two extreme classes–the super-competent and the super-incompetent–are alike subject to dismissal. They are usually fired soon after being hired, for the same reason: that they tend to disrupt the hierarchy. This sloughing off of extremes is called Hierarchal Exfoliation.”

When I first started working, in my teens, my father explained the Peter Principle to me during many informal chats. Now that he’s long gone, I realize the importance of his message: Don’t ever let your boss know you’re smarter than them.

In practice, the way the best of us are exfoliated is to creatively conflate our super-competence into a super-incompetence, for the HR department’s legal files. So, if you really like your job, feign stupidity and stay under the radar.

Otherwise, you too will be exfoliated.