I have been thinking about this post since I read it a few days ago. I think that’s because I had a workplace compatriot at three different locations, and we were both better together than either one of us was by ourself. He would say the same thing, I know because he has.


That can be very true. I worked with a few people where we just clicked. It didn't relate to a common background but just the way we thought. In one case the engineer seemed to know what my question was before I finished and once he started his answer I knew exactly what he was talking about. With another engineer it was so bad I just gave up talking to him.

In another case we sketched out how we were going to exchange data, ran our two software apps and it worked the first time. That never happens because there is usually some kind of data mismatch (which bit goes where). I think we ended up testing it more than normal because we couldn't believe it didn't have a bug.

I've never wanted to be the leader since I'm not a people person but I'm strong with technical stuff and figuring out strange problems so I always preferred to be the secondary person.

Also often coworkers just aren't honest with each other, especially now, so you often don't get true opinions or see true flaws in software or whatever it is you are working on.