Putt's Law

Putt’s Law explains a known concept: that the best engineers aren’t in charge, and those in charge aren’t deeply knowledgeable about the technology. While not universally true, this highlights a real challenge: managing technologists requires some understanding of their work. But managers often come from different backgrounds or have been away from the code for a long time.

The law’s corollary states: “Every technical hierarchy, in time, develops a competence inversion,” meaning the people at the top know less about the work than those below. The gap creates dysfunction: managers set unrealistic deadlines because they don’t understand technical subjects, while engineers build wrong solutions because they don’t understand the business context.

The lesson is clear: technical leadership should maintain technical competence or risk mismanaging the technical work.

Think of a software manager who came from a sales or business background. They might push the team to add complex features at warp speed, failing to understand why quality or testing is needed. They “manage what they do not understand.”

On the other side, a brilliant sysadmin knows precisely how to optimize infrastructure but isn’t involved in management decisions about budgeting or project direction. They “understand what they do not manage.”

Perhaps the manager promises a client a feature by next week (not understanding the technical difficulty), and the engineering team is frustrated because the manager didn’t realize what’s involved. Many startups initially avoid this because founders often manage and deeply understand the tech, but as companies grow, specialization separates roles. One remedy is to have CTOs or tech leads act as a bridge, with one foot in management and one in technical detail.

Putt’s Law was revealed in the satirical book “Putt’s Law and the Successful Technocrat” (1981). The author used the pseudonym “Archibald Putt.”

The book offers a cynical but insightful look at the dynamics of technical organizations and how competence often gets inverted as people rise through hierarchies. It overlaps conceptually with the Peter Principle (people rise to their level of incompetence) and the Dilbert Principle (incompetent people end up in management).