It's more-or-less impossible to become a sufficiently-senior executive at a sufficiently-large company without being a psychopath. You should have a baseline assumption that all executives at large corporations have no values whatsoever beyond doing what benefits them personally, you'll be a lot less surprised at their behavior if you do.
Depends on how they got there. It's in the selection process. Anything with competition about 1000:1 leads to cheating and psychopathic behavior. Anything below 1:4 doesn't. Iterated 1:4 does again.
That's generally my assumption, but with some exceptions. What selects for psychopaths is the process of climbing the corporate ladder. However, there are ways to get to the top of the corporate ladder without climbing it.
For example, Larry and Sergei didn't seem like psychopaths. Neither did Omar Bose. Many other founders aren't.
Ditto for most processes with extreme selective pressures (e.g. most senator, PoTUS, many elite academics, elite law firm partner, etc.). People win by optimizing to the process. People with ethics, or who don't cheat, don't win. There are exceptions, but they're in the minority. For example, if you are an extreme genius or stumble on a major breakthrough, in science, and don't have it stolen by a psychopath.
You got downvoted, so I'll provide two references:
* Power by Pfeffer
* Dictator's Handbook by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita
Very different takes, but same general conclusion. Both are respected academics at Stanford and NYU, respectively, with de Mesquita being far more respected, and an excellent read. Power is a bit less so
