>Really smart people who are really insecure about their intellect?

Condescension. Condescension everywhere.

It is people who are at the top of their game that are the nicest. My old CEO, who is head of a company everyone here probably knows about, was such a chill and friendly person.

And that insecurity manifests itself as a facade of arrogance and condescension?

Sometimes, but not necessarily. Sometimes it's people who always have to be "right" - which means every conversation (whether about technical things or what you did last weekend) devolves into a carefully orchestrated dance of definitions that allows everyone to escape with their egos intact - because he conceives of himself as "the smart guy" or "the guy who is always right" - so if he's wrong, he changes the rules[1].

Sometimes it's the reverse - the exhaustion of needing to always be "on" intellectually, because someone will point out the smallest inconsistency or fuzziness (again, in non-technical contexts where it doesn't matter)[2].

Sometimes it's because I'm super bored by conversations that mostly consist of geek-culture or technical references, where I get the reference but don't laugh because it's not that clever or not that funny, and people assume I don't get it (maybe that one's on me, though).

I've never been to a Google campus or event so I don't know what it's like there - I'm just describing my own experience at a place like CMU CS.

[1] An absurd example was the guy who claimed the song "Right Here Waiting" was by Bryan Adams. I told him it was Richard Marx, but he insisted that it was Bryan Adams. I didn't care so I just let it go. Later that day he emailed me a link to a mislabeled Youtube video as "proof" - when really it was just an ego salve for him to prove to me that he was justified in claiming that it was Bryan Adams. I offer this anecdote because it illustrates a common personality flaw of smart people (especially ones who spent their formative years as the smartest person they knew)

[2] Think comic book guy's xylophone comment from The Simpsons

Thanks for a very interesting perspective. To further your argument RE:[2], I would like to point out that comic book guy was not the one who made the magic xylophone comment. Though I did not attend CMU nor do I work at Google, so perhaps pedantic jerks are simply endemic to our profession. ;) Possibly because it attracts the sorts of people that have no problem fighting compilers, I'm not sure.

> I would like to point out that comic book guy was not the one who made the magic xylophone comment.

That is hilarious and quite appropriate in this context :)

I too enjoyed Richard Marx's cover of Bryan Adam's song.