Yes. You’re lucky. They exist, and my first rule of start-ups is “no assholes”. I’ve encountered true jerks who naturally gravitate towards anger and abuse, an

Yes. You’re lucky. They exist, and my first rule of start-ups is “no assholes”. I’ve encountered true jerks who naturally gravitate towards anger and abuse, and I’ve even worked for a couple of them. It’s quite difficult. When it takes someone energy to keep from getting angry, that’s a dangerous boss to have. Conversely, what I have encountered more frequently over time is people taking firm refusal to give them what they want (e.g., sign off on a design) as meanness. Firm assertiveness has been conflated with aggression in some contexts. It’s a losing game to be put in an environment with technically weak people where accusations of meanness for holding to organizational standards are given weight. B-players will eventually recognize the crack in the incentive model and get ahead via complaints instead of competence. There was a point where Jeff Bezos advocated truth-seeking over social cohesion regularly for Amazon, and it resulted in a bruising but brutally effective culture able to attack numerous hard problems effectively. “Affable” can only get people so far in a productive enterprise, but it’s just no fun to work with a jerk. Jerks and mediocrity are both ways to kill teams.