Something to listen toGetting ahead
Why Are There So Many Bad Bosses?
A 50-minute podcast episode on why good workers get promoted into management jobs they're bad at
Why it’s worth your time
This Freakonomics Radio episode is worth its 50 minutes before you chase, accept or turn down a move into management. You get the economics from researchers who have studied bosses and promotions, and the human side from a data scientist who tried management and went back.
Why good employees become bad managers
- Listen to the episode.
It opens on Katie Johnson, a data scientist who became head of a team and found the job miserable despite good reviews. The middle carries the research: Steve Tadelis on what well-rated managers changed at one tech firm, and Kelly Shue on what happened when top salespeople were promoted. Stay to the end for how Johnson's story turned out.
- Sort your job before you decide on managing.
List the parts of your current work you'd miss and the parts you'd happily hand off. Then ask someone a level or two above you whether there's a senior path here that doesn't mean managing people, and what it takes to get on it.
Good moments for this: before accepting a management roleafter being passed over for promotionwhen a team lead job opens up
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Making it work for you
Every workplace is different. Here’s what to think about before you start, and what might get in the way.
Things to think about
Where there's a senior track for specialists, saying no to managing can cost little. Where management is the only way up, it tends to cost more, and that's worth knowing before you decide.
What might make this harder
Ask what the step after your current level looks like, and whether you could try part of the management work first, such as mentoring one person or leading a small project, before you decide.
Questions people ask
What is the Freakonomics episode on bad bosses about?
Stephen Dubner asks why people who are good at their jobs keep getting promoted into management jobs they're bad at. It's built from economists' research on bosses and promotions, chiefly a study of sales workers by Kelly Shue and two co-authors, and the story of a data scientist who became a manager and went back.
What is the Peter Principle?
The idea, from Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull's 1969 book, that people in a hierarchy tend to rise to their level of incompetence: they keep being promoted for doing well until they land in a job they don't do well.
Should I become a manager if I love my current job?
Not necessarily. Managing is a different job with different days, often with far more meetings. List what you'd keep and lose, and ask whether a senior path without direct reports exists where you work.
Do good managers make a difference?
In the research Tadelis describes from one tech firm, moving to a well-rated manager was linked to far lower attrition, especially among stronger employees, though not to measurably better performance, pay or promotions.
What it says, and how it holds up
The usual way up at many companies runs through managing people, so the best salesperson becomes the sales manager and the best engineer becomes the engineering manager. This Freakonomics Radio episode, first aired in 2022 and re-released in 2024 with a short update at the end, asks what that does to the quality of bosses. Doing a job well and managing others who do it call on different skills, and promotion systems often blur the two.
The center of it is a study by Kelly Shue, Alan Benson and Danielle Li of roughly 40,000 sales workers at more than 130 US firms. Top sellers were far more likely to be promoted, yet, as Shue tells Dubner, a manager who had sold twice as much before promotion was linked to about a 6 percent drop in their team's sales. Her explanation is about incentives more than foolishness: a shot at promotion motivates people and costs less than paying them much more, and firms put less weight on sales numbers when choosing managers for very large teams, which suggests they know the tradeoff.
The episode is open about its limits. Shue's data come from sales, where performance is easy to count; she argues the pattern likely holds wherever the next level needs different skills, while Dubner wonders about fields like journalism or health care. Nicholas Bloom says two decades of research still can't pin down what makes a good boss good, and much of the evidence rests on employee surveys, which Tadelis says economists are wary of. Seeing the incentive behind a frustrating pattern, which the episode does well, can make it easier to deal with calmly.
A single difficult boss is a different problem from the one the episode describes. If your manager is new and struggling, the research on how they got there probably won't change your week, and some patience, plus a clear word about what would make working together easier, may help more.
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Picked by Truest and described in our own words. The original belongs to its creator. Last updated October 9, 2026. We sell a career membership; where that’s relevant above, we say so.