In my 4th year in college, we had to choose a professor to guide us for the BTech project.
At that time, I had become very good friends with a young professor of electrical engineering, who was kind, generous, and brilliant. But his area of work was not glamorous.
Had I asked him to be my BTech project guide, he would have been thrilled and would have guaranteed my success.
But I chose a stylish professor who worked in a glamorous area (signal processing). This professor was very nice but he was so hands-off that I had no idea what to do. Naturally, I crashed and burned, barely managing a passing grade.
But the other professor (my good friend) led his student team so well that they won the best BTech project award.
This is something I have experienced repeatedly — chosing glamorous projects over good people has almost always backfired. Even at McKinsey, I enjoyed mundane cost-cutting projects with good people. And my worst was a glamorous corporate strategy project with the wrong team.
People make this world a great place. And people make it hell. Everything else is a sideshow.
Almost always, choose good people over everything else.
– Rajan