"Incompetent nice people, as long as they are not so incompetent to be a liability"
This is veering into tautological territory but "not competent enough to be useful" is where my personal definition of "incompetent" would land. ;)
I also don't want competent jerks but... neither end of this spectrum is good.
(IMO the real trick is that neither of these scales (either competence or jerkhood) is universally the same across companies. Different people interact in different ways, and different teams have different problems to solve. Putting up with bad fits on your team for too long hurts your team regardless of the precise sort of bad fit. If you've tried to coach them on what's needed for months on end already with no luck, you have to make a hard decision, and "no action" isn't actually avoiding that decision.)
This is veering into tautological territory but "not competent enough to be useful" is where my personal definition of "incompetent" would land. ;)
I also don't want competent jerks but... neither end of this spectrum is good.
(IMO the real trick is that neither of these scales (either competence or jerkhood) is universally the same across companies. Different people interact in different ways, and different teams have different problems to solve. Putting up with bad fits on your team for too long hurts your team regardless of the precise sort of bad fit. If you've tried to coach them on what's needed for months on end already with no luck, you have to make a hard decision, and "no action" isn't actually avoiding that decision.)