This felt similar to me to the academic world. I'm a lowly graduate student, but one thing I've been consistency surprised by is the way the most senior people in the field are often the nicest. Sure—there are assholes everywhere. But when you hear horror stories of a professor mistreating their advisees or writing horrid reviews or submitting trash papers, they are often the junior folk. Partly because this behavior doesn't pass muster in the community, and so people who act this way don't get tenure; partly because senior professors have tenure and thus less to lose by acting nice; and partly because, just as I think in the startup world, being nice actually carries large benefits. In fact, I might argue that recognizing the benefits of niceness—valuing future rewards, trusting other persons—requires intelligence, so that maybe nicer people are in fact more intelligent as well.
But maybe that is Berkson's paradox: I'm more likely to hear about mean or successful researchers, so they appear anti-correlated even if they are in truth independent.
This is a general principle; the meanest people are, as pg once put it, "the nervous middle classes" on a status hierarchy:
"Another reason kids persecute nerds is to make themselves feel better. When you tread water, you lift yourself up by pushing water down. Likewise, in any social hierarchy, people unsure of their own position will try to emphasize it by maltreating those they think rank below. I've read that this is why poor whites in the United States are the group most hostile to blacks."
"If I remember correctly, the most popular kids don't persecute nerds; they don't need to stoop to such things. Most of the persecution comes from kids lower down, the nervous middle classes."
In this case, though, I would object to this idea of bullying being a bad strategy. I think the general consensus of literature on adolescent bullying in US and US-like countries, including some not, like Japan and China, is that bullies are among the most popular people in the school context.
There are also studies showing that bullies experience protective effects against some psychological issues, such as social anxiety and loneliness.
Also, both bystanders rate bullies as the most popular people, and they also list them as the most desirable people (victims do too, which is very unintuitive).
Also very interesting: bullying behaves like a social position, with people moving in and out as bully one year, but not the next, whereas victimhood is more stable, like an identity, and may persist from school to school and to online social contexts.
Here's what I'd like to know. Since I haven't read a shred of literature on adult workplace bullying, I'm curious to see if bystanders still behave the same way. Because if they do, that means backstabbing, mudslinging, and office politicking are still vibrant strategies, because it's bystanders who bring the rewards of bullying. The people emote to the tyrant emperor their whims regarding an office gladiator.
It has to do with confidence. The nicest scientists are often very old, without anything to prove, and genuinely passionate about their subject.
Hotshots that are mid career have a bimodal distribution - there's some incredibly nice ones, and there are some sharks that enjoy pushing their students to the brink of exhaustion to crank out another paper so they can feel bigger than the person with the office next door.
The meanest people tend to be mean not out of malice or spite, but out of insecurity and a constant need to prove themselves.
If Napoleon was good at judging people, they are driven by 2 things only: greed and fear. The most successful people career wise have to be greed-driven, confident, and mentally strong. The meanest ones are typically fear-driven, insecure and mentally weak. My life lesson is to stay away from those driven too much by fear, who are usually losers in Darwin's game in the long term.
Having dealt with a wide range of great to a-hole scientists, I think you're subtly onto something here.
Great scientists propagate through having a strong lineage. They effectively train, nurture, and then spin out more great scientists. The a-holes drive their progeny away from science. They effectively kill their own future. The great scientists end up promoting and extending their work through their academic children and grandchildren. I've seen both patterns up close and personally.
The big difference with investors is where academic progeny are closely related, usually in one field, investors are challenged by investing in closely aligned companies, given the many conflicts of interest. That's not to say an investor can't have a sector bias. But even companies close to one another are unlikely to benefit from each other.
But maybe that is Berkson's paradox: I'm more likely to hear about mean or successful researchers, so they appear anti-correlated even if they are in truth independent.