Disclaimer: my entire comment below hinges on very subjective definitions of the word "success". Take with liberal pinches of salt. > Excellence awards you the

Disclaimer: my entire comment below hinges on very subjective definitions of the word "success". Take with liberal pinches of salt. > Excellence awards you the choice of being an asshole. I would go a little further here and say personal/individual "success" affords you the choice of being an asshole. Excellence is not always a requirement for personal/individual success, as personal/individual success is not always equivalent to holistic success (i.e. success of a company/product/idea as a whole). > Some people will be assholes if allowed to, but I don't think it's (positively) correlated with success. There are levels of both (assholery and success), but I would guess there's at least some correlation purely because a level of assholery is often (not always) required to overcome certain hurdles on the road to that success. My point being that being an asshole may disimprove results for colleagues & collaborators, but may improve results when dealing with more oppositional / competitive situations.