Hard disagree. I've yet to see a "brilliant asshole" with anywhere near the kind results I expect from my teams. The usual pattern is your typical asshole will ship broken stuff and then blame everyone else for the breakages.

Now, average assholes who self-promote as brilliant and hope no one will see through their crap, sure, plenty of those. I'd recommend against failing to see through their crap, though. They'll make your actually good engineers leave.