I think this is true up to a certain point, then stops mattering. Once someone is at the 'pleasant enough to be around' level, I'd much prefer he/she be more intelligent or skilled than more fun if we're working together. This is partly because lower key, quieter, more intelligent people can often turn out to be more interesting and fun in the long run than people who have great social skills and confidence but less depth in their thinking and personalities.

If we extend "fun to work with" to include "quieter, more intelligent" people, I think palish's definition may work rather well. That group definitely falls into "people I want to work with."

Weirdly enough, I just finished reading about how NBA players overwhelmingly wanted to play with Bill Russell over Wilt Chamberlain, as part of an argument that Russell was the better player.

All (but not only) people with good people skills and zero productivity would be motivated to say this.

Edit: I think I might have misunderstood what palish meant by "By how fun they are." to exclude productivity and focus entirely on personality. My mistake, if so.

That might be true in the very short term, but in the medium- or long-term, no one actually enjoys working with "fun" people who have zero or negative productivity.

In which case you join me in disagreeing with the statement that 'the only real-world metric that matters is "how much other people want to work with you'."

No, he's saying that metric has components that include things like 'actually does their job'.

Okay, fair enough. I shouldn't have taken that sentence out of the original context, which said "By how fun they are." Or maybe I just totally misunderstood palish's point; actually rereading, that seems more likely than not. Apologies.