People prefer friendliness, trustworthiness in teammates over skill competency
Roger Sterling of Mad Men said it best [1]:> I don't know if anyone's ever told you that half the time this business comes down to 'I don't like that guy.'In all my years of working, this is probably the most important thing you can learn. Except for marginal cases, it's not about how good you are at your job. You just have to be liked while being sufficiently good.It's also why the perennial "hiring is broken" posts and threads miss the point completely: really they're just trying to find someone they like. It's what "culture fit" really means. And people like people like themselves. This is part of what can lead to unlawful discrimination.Trustworthiness is an interesting one as it seems to be hard to define but some people just have it and some don't. This has been studied and can have a profound effect on, say, criminal sentencing [2].[1]: https://twitter.com/madmenqts/status/783648743690231808?lang...[2]: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/07/17/4236009...