It's because they're exaggerating or intentionally choosing to believe a simple narrative. Lots of people find they have to make a few decisions that are upsett

It's because they're exaggerating or intentionally choosing to believe a simple narrative. Lots of people find they have to make a few decisions that are upsetting, even damaging to others, in order to get ahead. Maybe when people see this, they assume that because a nice person would never do that, nice people can't get ahead. The truth is that the decision could be more complicated, with some people being helped, when others our damaged. It could be a straightforward decision that anybody in that position has to make. It's a lot easier to just look at the bad and say nice guys finish last or that leaders must be jerks. The truth is more nuanced and is more like: "Leaders sometimes have to make decision that hurts some people, and will almost always (save for maybe the best of times) be hated by some" > Perhaps because jealous and petty people are naturally inclined to have contempt for anybody with a higher status than them. By hiding behind platitudes like that, they can conceal the immature motives of their contempt I have to ask: Are you in management or an executive? This sounds like the version these people would tell themselves to sleep at night. "They just hate me because they're jealous" It's more that while management is important, many managers wind up being greedy and/or arrogant despite still being a small part of a big puzzle. They're privy to information that we aren't, get higher pay scales, and have an easier time protecting themselves and managing their careers, due to that position of privilege. They get raised to a higher class and it goes to their head. For some extreme examples you can see the fall from grace of a number of billionaires Musk, Zuckerberg... I'd even add Marc Cuban. What do these people really do that's so special? That's been called into question lately. I appreciate that they took big risks and won, but that doesn't pertain to ongoing projects; in fact, it seems to just give people god complexes. So it's more the entitlement, privilege, and how it goes to people's heads. Not "jealousy".