How narcissists climb the career ladder quickly
Everyone, throughout their career, is going to see people excel that they feel are undeserving. The whole point of this article is that subconsciously, we all imagine so-and-so and think, &quot;Yes! Yes! That&#x27;s why they did well! They were just a narcissist. And me, not being a narcissist, I could never have adopted those strategies, I couldn&#x27;t have lived with myself. I&#x27;d rather have my character than a career.&quot;<p>What does it change? Does it make you feel better?<p>The prevailing thought around SV, or at least around the blogs of people in YC, is to make lossy generalizations about the types of people who should be accepted into an organization. They&#x27;ll say, &quot;Don&#x27;t work with assholes&quot;. To be fair, I think that&#x27;s pretty good advice for picking founders and early employees of a company. At the same time, I&#x27;m convinced that George Patton was an asshole and a bit of a narcissist, and was simultaneously a great asset in WWII for the US, and to accept both of these as true requires more room for nuance. The organizational structure of the military is not fundamentally different than any organizational structure.<p>This article tries to paint our inability to weed out strong personalities as a bug in human relationships, instead of a feature. I think that&#x27;s just plain wrong. Humans have had a <i>lot</i> of time to develop instincts when it comes to interpersonal relationships, and we would have a better sense of sniffing them out if it truly was as bad as it seems. It&#x27;s definitely not fun to <i>not</i> be a narcissist and see one excel, but that doesn&#x27;t mean that narcissists are toxic and detrimental to every organization they find themselves in. Sometimes, when the stakes are high, you need a George Patton to win a war. I think the corollary of this is that when business is good and the stakes are relatively low, you really don&#x27;t need or want narcissists. The problem is that it&#x27;s hard for an entire organization to know what camp they fall into.