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APRIL 2023 I PCB007 MAGAZINE 77 the same as the Peter Principle 3 , "in a hierar- chy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence." Putt is arguing that there is an incompetence inversion in technical organizations. ose in managerial positions lack the technical knowl- edge to understand what they manage, and employees are, essentially, smarter than the managers. is perspective is reflected in the rest of his writings. Unlike Dilbert, he was not a syndicated jour- nalist or popularized like the Peter Principle. But among us few, he is still revered for his insightfulness and prose. PCB007 References 1. "The Successful Technocrat," by Archibald Putt, Research and Development Journal, January 1976 to December 1977. 2. Putt's Law and the Successful Technocrat, by Archibald Putt, Wiley-IEEE Press, April 2006. 3. "The Peter Principle: What It Is and How to Overcome It," by Adam Hayes, March 20, 2021, Investopedia.com. 4. "Part Dilbert, Part Dale Carnegie—one for fun," by David Bruggeman, Science and Public Policy, Vol.31, Feb.2007. Happy Holden has worked in printed circuit technology since 1970 with Hewlett-Packard, NanYa Westwood, Merix, Foxconn, and Gentex. He is currently a contributing technical editor with I-Connect007, and the author of Automation and Advanced Procedures in PCB Fabrication, and 24 Essential Skills for Engineers. To read past columns, click here. • C for Conservative: "Heavy penalties, given for a small failure, engenders a sense of resentment toward those who succeed." • D for Stagnant: "Repeated punishment for small failures eventually leads employ- ees to refuse to accept any risk at all. e organization succumbs to the Law of Stagnation: Organizational stagnation occurs when the punishment for success is as large as for failure." In advanced cases of hierarchiological aging and organizational stagnation, no decisions are made that are not fully specified. Any attempt to deviate from the status quo is resisted. is is the familiar condition of most government bureaucracies, the military, and educational institutions, where no one "rocks the boat" to minimize the pain. Chapter 11: Law of the Estimated Fact "Beware of giving a ballpark estimate. If it's credible, it will be accepted and disseminated as fact." Rowe's Law continues advice for the professional initiated by Archibald Putt. First Law: "Any estimate within the realm of credibility, given by anyone considered an expert, will immediately be accepted by the received and promulgated as a fact." Second Law: "When the source of an estimate is identified as an authority for the estimate, his conclusions, not his estimation parameters, are propagated." ird Law: "Regardless of the path followed from the expert to highest-level recipient, that person will only accept what he wants to hear." Conclusion Over the 46 years since the initial publica- tion of Putt's work, he has appeared in many blogs and other references. One is from David Bruggeman, "Part Dilbert, Part Dale Carn- egie—one for fun." 4 He said that, while not