I will take someone nice and incompetent every day of the week over a competent jerk.
The competent jerks destroy team morale, make good people leave, and paralyze junior employees and those lacking self-confidence. They may be good at their job, but they make others worse.
Incompetent nice people, as long as they are not so incompetent to be a liability can at least contribute to a strong team culture and make good competent people want to show up.
Of course, ideally, everyone is somewhere in that top right quadrant, but in my experience on large enough teams you usually have at least one not so nice person on the team and one or two not so competent people on the team.
The competent jerks destroy team morale, make good people leave, and paralyze junior employees and those lacking self-confidence. They may be good at their job, but they make others worse.
Incompetent nice people, as long as they are not so incompetent to be a liability can at least contribute to a strong team culture and make good competent people want to show up.
Of course, ideally, everyone is somewhere in that top right quadrant, but in my experience on large enough teams you usually have at least one not so nice person on the team and one or two not so competent people on the team.