Psychopathic tendencies help some people succeed in business

Remember Machiavelli's "The Prince"?

“I conclude therefore that, fortune being changeful and mankind steadfast in their ways, so long as the two are in agreement men are successful, but unsuccessful when they fall out. For my part I consider that it is better to be adventurous than cautious, because fortune is a woman, and if you wish to keep her under it is necessary to beat and ill-use her; and it is seen that she allows herself to be mastered by the adventurous rather than by those who go to work more coldly. She is, therefore, always, woman-like, a lover of young men, because they are less cautious, more violent, and with more audacity command her.”

I'm not surprised by this, especially on the trait of fearlessness. Check many successful entrepreneurs, and you'll observe that they're crazy.

Take Musk for example, you really have to be fearless and delusional to think that you can build a successful electric carmaker from scratch and a company making re-usable rockets at the same time. These traits serve him positively in business, but it's no surprise to also see it manifest negatively in other areas...

I appreciate this comment.

Unlike this article, at least Machiavelli didn’t pretend he was doing science.

It is a self-reinforcing cycle. Upper management hires a manager the manager meets all of the sales/service metrics but the employees complain about the managers style. Upper management feels they set the metrics high so this managers style must be working so they promote the manager and dismiss the employees concerns as complaining.

If the manager starts missing metrics, manager start firing employees to cover up for these misses and maybe moves to a different region because they have laid as much destruction as one place can handle.