If people can maintain a sustainable advantage through being nasty, those that are willing to be nasty will rise to the top. I think that relying on feelings o

If people can maintain a sustainable advantage through being nasty, those that are willing to be nasty will rise to the top. I think that relying on feelings of "don't be nasty" to keep businesspeople in check in the face of nastiness that confers sustainable advantages is... not so sustainable. Some people /enjoy/ being nasty. So yeah, we have to build the world we want, and social mores are strong things. One thought, from a market efficiency perspective, is that when I see an apparent sustainable advantage to being nasty, when there are successful people not being nasty in that way, is that maybe it's not as much of a sustainable advantage as it seems? In this case, I think that jacquesm nailed it when he pointed out that this can happen, at most, one time for each programmer, and relying on only fresh programmers is difficult, just because without past experience, it's very difficult to judge the quality of a programmer.