I had the same experience in the dance world. I was privileged enough to be able to train with national and world champions. At the lower end of that scale, people were incredibly full of themselves.
Work with somebody who's recognized world wide? She's the nicest person ever. (Even though I clearly wasn't as good as she'd have liked me to be ;)
It's inspiring to work with people who don't have anything to prove to you, but have more than enough to show you.
Yes, this is because the experts don't feel threatened by noobs. They know they are actually experts, so they don't need to stoop to the level of picking on noobs to make them selves feel like experts. It's the "nervous middle classes" that feel a need to pick on noobs to reassure themselves.
PG wrote an article that describes this same phenomenon vis-a-vis nerds and popular kids in school:
If I remember correctly, the most popular kids don't persecute nerds; they don't need to stoop to such things. Most of the persecution comes from kids lower down, the nervous middle classes.
Generally it ranges between "reasonably good" and "better
than most people I know" [...] [b]ut there it stops.
I don't believe it's necessarily true. It has more to do with how they think they are perceived. Look at Kobe Bryant, one of the best basketball players to ever live. I've seen videos where someone will challenge him, "I'll get 2 before you get 10". Kobe takes that as disrespect. This person doesn't realize how good he is. He then goes on to dominate the 1-on-1, aggressively trash talking throughout. Try upsetting a doctor by calling him/her "mister"/"miss" repeatedly.
Some surgeons (who, these days, happen to hold the degree of MD) still find the "mister" thing respectful of their specialty. Sure, it may be a hangover from a time long past when surgeons usually weren't qualified physicians, but now it signifies that you understand they aren't "mere" GPs/physicians attending. (Interesting note only, not a rebuttal.)
there might also be an element of countersignaling [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countersignaling] involved - the real experts prove that they are not "nervous middle classes" by actively being nicer.
These nervous middle classes who aren't experts in anything more complex than "fizz without the buzz" often rise to project manager status by taking out the existing leaders. These are the "open source project leaders" who engage in backslagging, usually indirectly, e.g. telling their clueless minions that so-and-so represents a threat to revenue and perhaps someone should "earn another stripe for their hacker colors by putting a dent in this problem".
The funniest thing is that they tend to rise, rise some more, until they reach a level that they're not really skilled enough for, and that's where their career plateaus. In case you wonder how all the incapable people end up there.
Yeah, there's a theory that people tend to get promoted to their level of incompetence.
Also related is the "Dilbert Effect" where the incompetent get promoted to management so they can't screw everything up by doing actual work, so they get to just have meetings instead, while the competent workers continue working away.
The humblest, nicest, friendliest instructor I've ever had - in MMA-style kickboxing, generally a pretty macho area - was the one with multiple world championship belts.
I've been in the dance world years ago, and I knew several champions. They were all very nice. I suspect that being nice was a very large component of their success. For example, they were always willing to help out their rivals, cheer them on, etc.
Work with somebody who's recognized world wide? She's the nicest person ever. (Even though I clearly wasn't as good as she'd have liked me to be ;)
It's inspiring to work with people who don't have anything to prove to you, but have more than enough to show you.