Can You Scale A Company Without Being A Total Asshole?

I feel like this is a pertinent question of the modern age: can you be a good leader, i.e. possess leadership competencies and drive growth/revenue, without being an asshole? I’m honestly not that sure. We can run down the major examples. <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-jerk-2011-10" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">Steve Jobs was an unbelievable jerk.</a> He made a ton of people rich, disrupted multiple industries, and built the №1 company in the world. (Although that’s shifting.) Jeff Bezos, who ostensibly changed commerce, <a href="http://www.theverge.com/2013/10/10/4823296/jeff-bezos-book-excerpts-published-by-bloomberg" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">is purportedly a jerk.</a> Amazon’s work culture is <a href="http://fortune.com/2015/08/19/amazon-work-culture/" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">notoriously pretty awful.</a> Wal-Mart has long been near the top of the Fortune 500; most people that have come to run it <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/22/opinion/22Lichtenstein.html" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">are authoritarian jerks in their own right.</a> That’s three examples, which is the journalistic gold standard for “a trend,” but I’ll do one more. It’s nearly impossible to read anything about Travis Kalanick (Uber CEO) and <a href="https://pando.com/2014/10/22/the-horrific-trickle-down-of-asshole-culture-at-a-company-like-uber/" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">not view him as an asshole.</a> His Vanity Fair profile from a few years ago is <a href="http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2014/12/uber-travis-kalanick-controversy" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">one of the worst things you’ll ever cringe through.</a> Now, look, there are counter-examples. Google (Alphabet?) makes a bunch of money, and it mostly seems like a good culture — and guys like Page and Brin seem OK. (<a href="http://www.vanityfair.com/style/2014/04/sergey-brin-amanda-rosenberg-affair" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">Well, OK, maybe Brin has some issues.</a>) Berkshire Hathaway makes a ton of money, and Warren Buffett is America’s fiscally-aware grandfather. So you can be a good CEO, and possess leadership competencies, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/asshole-ceos-startup-founders-and-success-2014-11" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">without being an asshole</a>. But that’s the exception and not the rule. Why is this, though? <a href="https://tedbauer.medium.com/can-you-scale-a-company-without-being-a-total-asshole-855d30563eba">Learn More</a>