[michaelrwolfe1]

I agree with you.

"Don't collaborate well" was poor writing on my part - I'm talking about a specific type of poor collaboration, including undermining and attacking co-workers. I clarified in the post. There are other kinds of poor collaboration skills that have nothing to do with assholeness.

Pissing people off and conflict are fine in the course of honest and healthy debate to get to the right answers. Good companies encourage that.

Assholes actively undermine healthy conflict by 1) cutting off debate so that their ideas win, and 2) resorting to personal attacks. This leads to an "unsafe" environment where people don't want to speak up.

Unfortunately the boss is often the asshole, which creates an environment where people just keep their mouths shut since speaking up is not worth the trouble.