It is thought-provoking to consider how much the success of the Apollo programme depended on courage as well as other qualities of character:
"When Shepard was grounded in October 1963, Grissom and Borman became the prime crew of Gemini 3.[41] Grissom invited Borman to his house to talk to him about the mission, and after a long discussion, decided that he could not work with Borman.[34] According to Gene Cernan, "the egos of Grissom and Borman were too big to fit into a single spacecraft".[44] Slayton therefore replaced Borman with John Young.[41]
Slayton still wanted Borman for the two-week flight [...] so Borman was assigned as backup commander of Gemini 4, with Jim Lovell as his co-pilot. [...] Prime and backup crews trained for the mission together, and Borman found the experience as a backup valuable, amounting to a dress rehearsal of their own mission.[49]
> ... and after a long discussion, decided that he could not work with Borman.
This I wish was (still?) acceptable. It's like somewhere along the way we decided that everyone must be able to cooperate effectively and efficiently with everyone, and largely (do our very best to) ignore all the problems that brings.
I've only been at one company where they tried to address this, and actually let us form our own teams. It worked better than expected.
AAUI an airline captain can refuse his/her first officer assignment if there is a history of them not working well together or, boiling it down, they just don't get along. IDK how often it actually happens.
Not working together in a situation where character differences can mean life-or-death in a high-stakes mission that depends on a few souls ...
... is not the same as refusing to work with someone in an office doing low-stakes work.
That said, humans cooperate better when they get along, but the lines are in totally different places and the degree to which character differences matter in those two settings is radically different too.
Assembling a team, I would take care to pick people who get along, just to lower day-to-day friction. But if two people can't leave some of their emotional baggage at the door to write some code ... well, they need help frankly.
The office isn't and shouldn't be a high enough stress environment that character flaws are involuntarily amplified, therefore different rules of thumb apply.
Funny. That was the EXACT advice / instruction we got from management when I was in such a team. It had already been going on for years when I went there, to the point where half of the team (the ones not involved in the clashes) rotated out on a yearly basis.
"When Shepard was grounded in October 1963, Grissom and Borman became the prime crew of Gemini 3.[41] Grissom invited Borman to his house to talk to him about the mission, and after a long discussion, decided that he could not work with Borman.[34] According to Gene Cernan, "the egos of Grissom and Borman were too big to fit into a single spacecraft".[44] Slayton therefore replaced Borman with John Young.[41]
Slayton still wanted Borman for the two-week flight [...] so Borman was assigned as backup commander of Gemini 4, with Jim Lovell as his co-pilot. [...] Prime and backup crews trained for the mission together, and Borman found the experience as a backup valuable, amounting to a dress rehearsal of their own mission.[49]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Borman#Project_Gemini