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Let's flip your question: what's the reward for being hard to work with?



There is a middle ground between going above and beyond and being difficult to work with.

I tend to have no problem saying no to things that I think are bullshit, I have no problem skipping out on extra "team building" efforts or declining to attend the happy hour. I let my work speak for itself and I figure companies keep me around for that, and coworkers know they can come to me with any issues they might be having.

But I have never purposefully taken a coworker out to lunch or asked about their life outside of work (except for when we're on a call before anyone else and they start the conversation), and yet I've had just as much success as people who I've watched do that.

That's not to say that I don't get to know my coworkers I just let it happen organically as we're building things and solving problems together rather than going out of my way to make it happen.


Don't be hard to work with, but don't spend any extra effort on being effective either.

I take the sycophant model of being easy to work with, but I also make sure I don't learn anything outside my silo so that I don't get a lot of work and can interview prep.




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