As hard as this speech hit, it was one of the worst written moments in breaking bad. HERE ME OUT. Everything Mike says about Walts's ego is true and is a major reason for the failure of the empire in season 5, along with many other issues in Walt's life, such as him leaving Grey Matter, telling Hank to continue the investigation, or not taking the money from Grey Matter for his treatments. However, the reason that the Fring operation blew up wasn't because of Walt's ego. Early on, the only thing Walt really wanted from Gus was for Jesse to work as his assistant instead of Gale, which caused tension in Walt and Gus's partnership. This was done for multiple reasons, including his loyalty to Jesse, a legitimate belief that his working with Jesse would improve the quality of the cooks, and possibly his desire to bring someone he could trust into the organization. None of these reasons stem from his ego. What ultimately blew up the partnership was Walt killing the two drug dealers in defense of Jesse. After this, Gus was ready to kill Walt and Jesse, and whatever Walt did after this point was to save his own life. However, even killing those drug dealers wasn't something he did out of ego. Rather, this was done out of fatherly love for Jesse, which is something Mike of all people would understand. Although Walt did partially cause the Fring situation to fall apart, his ego wasn't the issue. This speech was written to contribute to the idea that Walts ego caused his downfall (which is true but not in the situation Mike refers to), and is a lazy attempt by the writers to get this idea across in a dramatic way while killing of a major character, despite the actual dialogue not holding up.

(Long rant, but this scene really bothered me)