In more ways than one. When jerks are allowed to be jerks, people who do not want to deal with jerks leave the company. So the jerks bubble up to the top, while otherwise great engineers who don't want to be berated move along to better things.
Exactly. You have to pick: either the jerks, or the people who the jerks drive away. And that doesn't take into account the people who aren't quite driven away but find work that much more unpleasant as a result.
If you encounter many skilled jerks, consider why that might be, and why in the same environment you don't also encounter skilled people who are fun to work with. In such an environment, the skilled people who are fun to work with can afford to leave, while some of the non-skilled people may not have that option. So, it's natural that within such an environment (company, project, etc), it'll look like a correlation between jerkiness and skill. People then start assuming a causation, and thus contribute to that same cycle.
The opposite environment, with many skilled people who are fun to work with, will tend to reject jerks regardless of skill. I've also noticed that such an environment tends to have a much higher degree of mentorship and collaboration, in addition to being more fun to work in, and boosting energy rather than draining it.
Entirely possible. But the viewer may also just be in an environment with skilled jerks that have driven off skilled non-jerks. So whether the viewer is a jerk, nice, or indifferent won't necessarily change the apparent correlation they observe around them between jerkiness and skill. The danger lies in generalizing that observation and assuming it applies outside that environment.
In more ways than one. When jerks are allowed to be jerks, people who do not want to deal with jerks leave the company. So the jerks bubble up to the top, while otherwise great engineers who don't want to be berated move along to better things.