| > The only thing people will truly remember is how you made them feel during a crisis, not the minutiae of what you actually contributed I agree with your general point about relationships being the most important, but I disagree that your contributions don't matter. You need to have at least some good contributions combined with good relationships. Through my career I've encountered a lot of coworkers who were fun to be around but either produced very little or had poor quality output. The value of their good vibes declines as the consequences of their low output and/or poor code quality accumulate on the team's shoulders. You also see this a lot when vetting employee referrals. A lot of people will enthusiastically refer friends and people they like being around, but who are not necessarily great contributors. These people seek referrals at a disproportional rate because, well, they tend to be laid off more frequently and might struggle to get through job interviews through normal channels. Employees will refer this people because they want them around, but once you start communicating to people that referrals are equivalent to personally vouching for their referral's abilities, half of the time they start walking back referrals or saying that the person needs a good manager and so on. So agree that relationships matter, but it's going to be hard to build a career on relationships alone. You need some substance and contributions to build upon. |