https://paulgraham.com/mean.html obviously everything Paul Graham said during his tenure at YC was more about what he wanted founders to be like than what they necesssarily were like...but i do think i agree, actually, that mean people fail. at least, I agree with the weaker claim that the most overtly nasty people are usually jobless and socially isolated. successful people may be ruthless, but almost all of them have manners.
https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-is-a-space-to-think I like that Anthropic is branding itself as the less-skeezy AI. i want to use products that have a "we're the Good Guys, we keep it classy" brand identity, even if obviously there are some compromises made for the sake of profit. a company culture of "we don't do that lowest-common-denominator shit, we have Honor" is obviously toothless from an incentive perspective but can in fact hold out for some time and provide a better-quality customer experience.