[jimbo808]

As I get older and gain first-hand experience in the orbit of some extremely successful people, I'm starting to realize that what I believed about how to succeed appears to be quite the opposite of what I've believed for most of my life, at least anecdotally. I've been bummed to realize how manipulative and dishonest the most successful people I've known have tended to be. I think hard work, integrity, conscientiousness, etc will get you pretty far in life, but there seems to be a certain threshold level of success that starts to favor the Machiavellian types.

[seec]

Almost all "successful" people in white collar jobs are just better sociopaths than the ones below them. That's pretty much it.

Hard work is somewhat necessary at the start to buy you legitimacy (aka school & diploma) but it's not really a big difference maker after that.

In fact, I would say that if you work hard and produce great work this pretty much guarantees that you'll never evolve past a certain level.

I think that's actually the major difference maker for rich people: they got there that way and demonstrate how things work to their children who integrate the concept intuitively.