In my experience almost any level of assholery is tolerated if the person is a good performer, or has made themselves indispensable.
"Cultural fit", when it isn't an excuse for various kinds of discrimination, seems to be more of an issue with stuff that's not so easy to quantify. If there's a guy who likes going off on long expeditions into learning new tools, and the rest of the team are PHP meat-and-potatoes guys. Or if you have a place where cultish worship of the CEO is the norm, and one person don't exhibit any outward signs.
And the definition of "asshole" behavior can even vary. In one job I worked at, replacing someone's code with your own that works better made you a hero, and it was incumbent on the other person to have no ego about it. In another job, that was tantamount to insubordination, and not respecting the blood, sweat and tears that had been spent before you got there. (Full disclosure: I did the former behavior at the latter place. It wasn't the only reason things didn't work out, but it was a factor.)
"Cultural fit", when it isn't an excuse for various kinds of discrimination, seems to be more of an issue with stuff that's not so easy to quantify. If there's a guy who likes going off on long expeditions into learning new tools, and the rest of the team are PHP meat-and-potatoes guys. Or if you have a place where cultish worship of the CEO is the norm, and one person don't exhibit any outward signs.
And the definition of "asshole" behavior can even vary. In one job I worked at, replacing someone's code with your own that works better made you a hero, and it was incumbent on the other person to have no ego about it. In another job, that was tantamount to insubordination, and not respecting the blood, sweat and tears that had been spent before you got there. (Full disclosure: I did the former behavior at the latter place. It wasn't the only reason things didn't work out, but it was a factor.)