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I doubt that it has anything to do with technical proficiency. People like Steve Wozniak, Alan Kay, Tim Berners-Lee don't have the reputation of being assholes.

In general, sites like Hackernews or Stackoverflow wouldn't work at all if smart people couldn't handle answering basic questions without being jerks.

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For every non-asshole, you can find an asshole with technical proficiency.

For every Steve Wozniak there is a Steve Jobs.

You're incorrectly implying that Steve Jobs is technically proficient. He's an electronics technician and a cult leader, not a hacker.

I've known people compensate for their technical shortcomings by playing nice to everyone. Usually Engineers who happened to be Engineers by having a degree but don't have the passion for it and just in for the money. Asshole ones are the type that don't compromise just to be agreeable.

You may have posted this in the wrong subthread; we were talking about Steve Wozniak, who's toward the top of the the 99th percentile both for niceness and engineering passion, and Steve Jobs, who's such an asshole he cheated Woz on contracts they were doing together and whose engineering skills are limited to stuffing circuit boards.

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