Assholes are bad for morale, drive good people away and generally suck the life out of people like vampires. Those you mentioned are the survivor bias anecdotal

Assholes are bad for morale, drive good people away and generally suck the life out of people like vampires. Those you mentioned are the survivor bias anecdotal exceptions who only managed to succeed in spite of being assholes, not because of it. Everyone's replaceable, including the assholes. See also: Robert Sutton's book, The No Asshole Rule (Stanford prof) PS: I really do think corp culture falls in one of two main camps: those that defend civility/fairness like a family and those where employees have already mentally/emotionally disembarked, pining for warmer shores elsewhere.