The work culture and environemnt is an important factor here. In my recent experiences for example, an environemnt where people are constantly pitted against each other and appearing weak/not-smart can have dire consequences (e.g.: seen colleagues fret over visa issues) results in an environment where there are a lot of people with a smile on their face while holding a sharp knife behind them, waiting to stab whomever they can in the back. Loyalties and betrayals, doing things for the sake of appearances,etc...<p>I have also seen environemnts where all that matters getting prominent people in prominent cliques to like you. When I had more manual work, meeting your metrics exactly, not less or more, showing up on time and being friendly/chatty mattered the most.<p>Everyone has their personalities and I will leave it to the psychoanalysts to asess people but since the subject is specific to work environments, my opinion is that sociopathy, egocentrism and machavellianism are esentially traits you are forced to develop to make ends meet or move up the corporate ladder. These horrible perosnalities are a problem only if you have a healthy top-down environemnt and culture to begin with.<p>For example: work environments where people like to argue about politics every single time have egomaniacs influencing cliques. But this is tolerated by management and rewards these people.<p>Humility being rewarded,a "no stupid questions" culture, firmly and strongly enforcing separation between personal and professional lives and being fair to everyone (really gets under my skin when people gossip/slander, managers use back channels to dig info about candidates and bullying people) is what I consider a good work environment.<p>It is good for workers and it is good for productivity and the bottom-line. But people are short sighted and care about ego stroking and sociopaths become managers all the time and the problem with these people to me is that they care about things other than money and people. At work, everyone is there to make money, help the company maximize profits and do so ina sustainable way (treat coworkers and subordinates right).