Psychopaths on the Job
Rob over at Businesspundit links a story about the B-Scan, a questionnaire designed to weed out corporate psychopaths. This part caught my eye:

"The professor believes that psychopath's cold-blooded ability to manipulate others without remorse, coupled with a veneer of charm and high energy can make them extremely successful in many walks of life.

They could be perfectly qualified for top posts in the military, politics or in huge multi-national companies as history has already shown in one notorious case."

Back in my days at a B2B e-commerce startup, this was an accurate reflection of more than a few of the corporate climbers that I had the misfortune to run into. The manipulation, bullying and lack of empathy exhibited by both male and female executives at this place were more worthy of a high school than a supposedly successful software company. It was a little bit discouraging for me, because I figured if this is what it took to get ahead in this industry, well then, I picked the wrong field. Thankfully that company has still never made a dime and most of the people that I referred to are long gone.

From what I have read, I get the sense that Andrew Fastow, of Enron fame, is this type of person so its nice to see that he is going to have some time to think about things.