So far in my career I've tried been hired to a startup, two medium sized consulting agencies and a Fortune 500 company.

Trying to figure out why the startup and the big company managed to attract so many assholes.

I've heard similar trends from friends in the industry.

The same reason why you have them in real world. If you find out about that, then it is easy to correlate

Probably because those are trendy places to work, therefore most people apply there. HR being retarded like HR is hires them and ta da.

Strong personalities impress people with low self confidence.

Can't comment on startups, but in big corps, people can deliver empty talk and cover it up with pseido self confidence because there are so many people that nobody will notice that they don't actually deliver anything.

Optimum strategies: either going the eternal architect route and leave projects once shit starts getting real (in favor of architecting future projects or such BS), or becoming "leaders" and taking credit for other people's work.

@SortOfTested weak personalities impress no one.