Shocked by common sense

"We didn't assemble a mafia by sorting through resumes and simply hiring the most talented people. I had seen mixed result of that approach firsthand when I worked at a New York law firm. The lawyers I worked with run a valuable business, and they were impressive individuals one by one. But the relationships between them were oddly thin. They spend all day together, but few of them seemed to have much to say to each other outside the office. Why work with a group of people who don't even like each other? Many seem to think it's a sacrifice necessary for making money. But take a merely professional view of the workplace, in which free agents check in and out on a transactional basis, is worse than cold: it's not even rational. Since time is your most valuable asset, it's odd to spend it working with people who don't envision any long-term future together. If you can't count durable relationships among the fruits of your time at work, you haven't invested your time well --- even in purely financial terms."

From chapter 10: The Machanics of Mafia, section beyond professionalism.

In retrospect, these thoughts looks like common sense, but still shocked when I first come across them.