The US military is the ultimate representation of this "managers-are-replacable-units-of-work". Officers (managers) are yanked around the world from job to job every couple of years. There's a degree of specialization early (infantry, pilot, logistician, etc) but that is really just an initialization step to make sure the organization has sufficient coverage for all the junior jobs. Future jobs progress toward generality. This leads to generals and admirals with supreme knowledge of fundamental policy issues, and deep connections with lots of peers, seniors, and subordinates. But there is a frozen middle of non-attaining careerists who are either entirely competent but were passed over for the next rank and are now looking for the door, and incompetents trying to hold on as long as possible. The paradox is that, in this frozen middle, it's the incompetents who seek power (in the hopes of getting that promotion) and the competents who are unloading responsibilities as they prepare to transition.

This has created a new problem, where the existing leadership is looking for traditional signals for promotion and seeing this bizzaro world of incompetents doing the key thing it takes to promote: exercising power at a fairly senior level (a typical officer in the O-6 grade is responsible for about 1000-5000 people), and remember, the flag officers have those deep connections, they know who's competent and they know those people aren't seeking additional responsibilities. So they got Congress to authorize bringing in outsiders at the O-6 level (clearly competent, and have exercised authority at that key 1000-5000 head-count level, or at least 500-1000), which pisses off the career-competents to no end and puts the fear of god into the career-incompetents, exacerbating the situation. Yet it did nothing because who in god's name, making 500k on the outside, is going to take a $150k job at the Pentagon and live in a shack 20 miles outside the Beltway and endure that commute on the 66?

So now the flag officers have finally also gotten authority (finally) to start forcibly retiring the dead wood from the senior ranks: O-4s, O-5s, and O-6s who have failed to select for the next rank several years in a row, frequently sitting in jobs that could be filled by O-2s or O-3s. Keep in mind, the head-count at each rank is capped by Congress, so the competents can't even promote around the incompetents. It's a war of attrition where the dead wood wins because the opportunities outside outweigh the opportunities inside. At which point it really does start looking like a jobs program. Thus these new "continuation selection boards".

This is a real problem. I had one of these incompetent O-5s sitting in an O-3 billet working for me and getting that person transferred out of my group was the single best thing I ever did for group morale. And before you accuse of me of just pushing the problem onto another group, let me just say that steps were taken to ensure this individual will also be seen further up in the CSB list.

But even that new culling process seems insufficient. The standards for record review are too high, and the observed number of forced retirements is too low. The system is driven by fear, uncertainty, and doubt. All the way down.