In 1969 Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull published The Peter Principle. Its rule: “In a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.”
The mechanism is that employees are promoted based on their success in previous jobs. Each success earns the next, larger job, until a person reaches a job he can no longer do well.
Elizabeth Holmes founded Theranos at 19. She promised to revolutionize blood testing, detecting hundreds of diseases with blood from a simple finger prick. Her board included the former secretaries Henry Kissinger and James Mattis. She raised billions of dollars, and the company was at one point valued at more than $9 billion.
According to NBC News, the technology did not appear to work as claimed. In January 2022 a jury found Holmes guilty on four counts of fraud and conspiracy involving investors. She was sentenced to 11 years and 3 months.
Merriam-Webster defines paying one’s dues as “to earn a right or position through experience, suffering, or hard work.” Its example: “He’s paid his dues and deserves a promotion.”
Dictionary.com gives another example. “She’d paid her dues in small-town shows before she finally got a Broadway part.”
The phrase credits long experience and hardship, not only results.
Missouri is called the Show-Me State. The Missouri Secretary of State traces the slogan to Congressman Willard Vandiver at a naval banquet in Philadelphia. “…frothy eloquence neither convinces nor satisfies me. I am from Missouri. You have got to show me.”
Vandiver did not invent the phrase. It was in print by 1893, when the Omaha Daily Bee printed a letter from a man who wrote, “I am from Missouri and they must show me something.” The state gives the banquet as 1899. One researcher, Barry Popik, dates it to 1900, and the slogan has never been made official.
Venture capital is released in stages. Economists describe it this way: “the infusion of capital occurs in stages, matching investment decisions based on information that arrives over time.”
William Sahlman explained the reason in 1990. “By staging capital the venture capitalists preserve the right to abandon a project whose prospects look dim.”
When the federal government buys goods and services, the Federal Acquisition Regulation requires that past performance “shall be evaluated in all source selections” for negotiated competitive acquisitions above a set threshold, unless the contracting officer documents why it is not appropriate. A contractor’s record on earlier contracts becomes part of the score.
A newcomer is treated neutrally. In the case of an offeror without a record of relevant past performance, the offeror “may not be evaluated favorably or unfavorably on past performance.”
Michael Watkins’s The First 90 Days was published by Harvard Business School Press in 2003 as a guide for managers starting a new job. It advises them to pursue small-scale “early wins” to build credibility.
A new professor at an American university is often hired on the tenure track. The American Association of University Professors and the Association of American Colleges set the rule in their 1940 Statement of Principles: “the probationary period should not exceed seven years.”
“After the expiration of a probationary period, teachers or investigators should have permanent or continuous tenure.”
A new federal employee in the competitive service serves a probationary period of one year. Agency guidance calls it “the final step in the examination and appointment process,” designed “so that supervisors can assess whether an employee can perform the duties of a job.” An employee can be let go if performance or conduct “fails to demonstrate fitness for continued employment.”
In February 2025 the Trump administration fired probationary employees across the government. A federal judge put the number affected at at least 25,000. Termination letters said they had “not demonstrated” that further employment would be in the public interest. In April a federal judge, William Alsup, ordered agencies to tell the workers in writing that they were not fired for performance reasons.
The judge explained why: “Termination under the false pretense of performance is an injury that will persist for the working life of each civil servant.”
The New England Patriots drafted Tom Brady with the 199th pick in 2000, in the sixth round. Their starter was Drew Bledsoe, who had signed a 10-year, $103 million contract. On September 23, 2001, a hit from the Jets linebacker Mo Lewis sheared an artery, and Brady got his chance.
In November, with Bledsoe back, Bill Belichick announced that Brady would remain the starter. Bledsoe said he had been told he would get a chance to win back his job. Brady finished that season as the Super Bowl MVP.