But what if you reduce the range in the example? Would you rather work with an asshole who is mildly better than you are, or someone agreeable who is mildly worse?
Given a collaborative environment, I'll always choose agreeable/worse. Because with the disagreeable/better collaborator, I suddenly have a barrier between potential productivity and output: I have to co-ordinate with the asshole.
The friends I've enjoyed working with and whom I've learned the most from and been the most productive with are generally a bit disagreeable (in the Big Five definition of the word).
Your personal bias towards agreeableness as a universally good trait is muddying what I think is an otherwise valid point, that people are more productive working with people they like (and sometimes, they like working with disagreeable people, as hard as that may be to believe).
I'm not drawing up a psychological profile here, so no need to try and bring in psychological definitions of words.
Agreeable/disagreeable is a subjective judgement, and I'm the one making the judgement in this scenario. Whether someone is agreeable and whether I like to work with them are synonyms.
The conversation was generally talking culture fit and not universal qualities, after all.
Honestly, a lot of the people I'd consider disagreeable to work with are actually so overwhelmingly positive that it makes me feel like a cynical asshole if I don't severely self-censor. To the wrong group, I am the asshole.
If they are truely an asshole or barrier to productivity then that's a nonstarter, they need to be dropped. All things being equal, certainly the friendlier the better.
Given a collaborative environment, I'll always choose agreeable/worse. Because with the disagreeable/better collaborator, I suddenly have a barrier between potential productivity and output: I have to co-ordinate with the asshole.