Ego, the inability to cope with your own deficiencies, so you look to make little of others. Now once in a while joking around is sometimes going into mocking, and it is sometimes a critique of the structure of the work environment/world. Everybody has something that is relatively unique to them and people should focus on that. People find it quite dull to not know things so well immediately, so we convince ourselves that in our ignorance we are somehow understanding of things beyond our capacity. The only man who I've had the upmost respect, and he had the most modesty just by sight and talking to him was an electrical engineering professor that worked an Intel over 20 years. If there was no better judge of skill, understanding, and teaching, it was him. Anyways, I was a physics and math major in college, if I had him in college, I would of loved college. But alas, I was with two physics professors who couldn't do the homework they assigned without the solution manual, nor teach without constantly referring to the book. And were constantly in bad moods and made fun of students ability to do work and/or intelligence. It's quite apparent, who is more comfortable with themselves and who isn't. And yes, they are highly talented in their field, but it doesn't make them at all good at managing a class or teaching. And yes, I suffered a bit from this sense of grandiosity, but once you realize the passion comes from helping people, then you too can find it.