> I have never seen an incompetent nice employee ever do anything so damaging.
They tend to climb management chain and then you are left with leaders who can't understand anything, that is by far worse than what any competent jerk can accomplish.
Is it? What happens when you need feature XYZ, and the competent jerk puts down their foot and says the system can't support said feature because of the way he drove the team to design it? Then you're left with a dilemma where you either lose your talent or lose the feature.
This kind of thing was something I saw when I did contract work because said competent jerks knew they could get their way.
That can work short term if the team is still full of competent people, but wont work long term since the manager is in charge of hiring, firing and promoting people.
They tend to climb management chain and then you are left with leaders who can't understand anything, that is by far worse than what any competent jerk can accomplish.